It's hard to believe, but there is some organization to the Internet. The libertarianism that seems to be the dominant ethos rests not-too-lightly atop a neatly organized technical foundation. It has to be this way: The Net is a network of addresses and someone somewhere has to make sure that they hook up. There has to be a coherent system of names and addresses.
During the Net's infancy, the U.S. government took up the burden. A few years ago, the government decided the task was best left to others,and it turned the naming business over to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, a nonprofit organization.
There is general agreement that more names are needed. Five million new names were registered in the first three months of this year, or nearly 40 names a minute. Experts forecast that there will be about 60 million by 2202; real optimists put the number at 75 million.