But on the internet, omniscient calculations aren’t possible. On the internet, the two “stores” don’t know they’re next to each other. As their internet protocol is programmed to do, they chatter constantly, sending each other “are you there?”, and “yes, I’m still here” messages. Some rival systems learnt where computers were and trusted them to stay there. But the Net’s basic protocols don’t; instead, they show the paranoia of the terrorist cell: zero trust and short timeouts before they decide that the machine being contacted has vanished. This has its consequences, and they are not always good.A rookie postman soon learns that on the high street, Woolworths is located next to the Virgin Megastore, and isn’t about to disappear.

Karl Auerbach, one of its pioneering technicians, wrote last year: “There are indications that the internet, at least as we know it today, is dying.” He was referring to the flow of “junk” traffic; a sort of background static in the world of the Net. Unnoticed by you or me, it is the result of neglected machines making eerie “zombie” calls.The problem is that while we expect machines to work smartly, the internet was designed with stupidity foremost. Stupidity – that is, a small pool of shared assumptions about the world, and a tiny pot of residual trust – is baked into the architecture of the internet, and was valued by the its sponsor, the US Department of Defense, which wanted a protocol malleable enough to create a network that would work after a nuclear attack.These values proved to be smart decisions for the durability of the internet, which until recently was just one style of networking computers. The constant chatter of machines that lie awake while we sleep, and their long memories, pose a threat to future health of the system.
Some of the internet’s most senior figures now think this issue needs urgent attention. The internet’s watchmen have discovered that their network tumbled into the world with a potentially fatal birth defect The cause? “Background radiation”. As the adverts used to say back in Mr Green’s days with BR: We’re Getting There.m.harrison independent.co.uk. Save for an unpleasant but mercifully brief spell at English Heritage under the heel of Jocelyn Stevens, he has been a railwayman all his working life.

Now the time has come to take a back seat at Virgin Trains, where he will swap the job of chief executive for that of part-time chairman in September and take on the role of roving ambassador and spotter of new rail opportunities.The timing is designed to coincide with the introduction of 125 mph tilting Pendolino trains between London and Manchester – a vision Mr Green has been waiting to see turned into reality since 1984 when he ran the line in the good old days of InterCity.Unlike the Advanced Passenger Train, its predecessor of 20 years ago, the Pendolino actually works. There is real money for the railways, though it is often badly spent, and the staff treat passengers more like customers and less like a necessary evil. A new structure requires a new set of directors and since demutualisation is still two years away, it has time yet to ring the changes.All change at VirginChris Green has pretty much seen it all, from Dr Beeching back in the 1960s, to the ham fisted privatisation of the railways three decades later and now Labour’s belated recognition that Britain’s train set really is not working. The attacks yesterday on the credibility, competence and experience of the directors are a taste of things to come. The board survived a revolt over pay by the skin of its teeth yesterday. But it is not the right one to guide Standard into the future. Sir Brian is not the toast of Edinburgh and nor is his chief executive Sandy Crombie, another former mutual stalwart, who finally replaced Iain Lumsden at the top of the greasy poll last year after a lifetime in the business.Standard Life once ruled the financial capital of Scotland with a rod of iron and a degree of hubris to match.