The World of Ends: What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else is a short, provocative philosophy-in-a-list by Doc Searls and David Weinberger:
3. The Internet is stupid: The telephone system, which is not the Internet (at least not yet), is damn smart. It knows who's calling whom, where they're located, whether it's a voice or data call, how far the call reaches, how much the call costs, etc. And it provides services that only a phone network cares about: call waiting, caller ID, *69 and lots of other stuff that phone companies like to sell.
The Internet, on the other hand, is stupid. On purpose. Its designers made sure the biggest, most inclusive network of them all was dumb as a box of rocks.
The Internet doesn’t know lots of things a smart network like the phone system knows: Identities, permissions, priorities, etc. The Internet only knows one thing: this bunch of bits needs to move from one end of the Net to another.
There are technical reasons why stupidity is a good design... 
[Be sure to scroll down to the ten points.]
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