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Who Really Invented the Internet?
jaymzter writes "The Wall Street Journal is running an article that it claims seeks to dispel an urban legend about the internet: 'The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet.' The position of the piece is that it was Xerox's contribution of Ethernet that enabled the global series of tubes we know and love today, and what's interesting is that the former head of DARPA supports this claim."
A general wiring specification is hardly on a level playing field with creating the internet. That's like saying Xerox's mouse created the PC. A nice piece of the puzzle perhaps, but not credit-worthy.
Why exactly do we need to pay continual homage to Xerox? To create more urban legends instead of dispel and dismiss them?
When the foot seeks the place of the head, the line is crossed. Know your place. Keep your place. Be a shoe.
It was Al Gore, duh.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
'nuff said.
"See, it was never the government who created the Internet. The Free Market (peace be upon it) did it all by its lonesome!".
Color me shocked that a Murdoch paper's using that line.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Yet another Flamebait Headline?
You mean it wasn't Al Gore?
Every generation of teenagers thinks they invented sex and music.... and the internet.
We used to laugh at "al gore invented the internet" but the next generation of people will laugh at "zuckerberg invented the internet"
The other problem is there is no "internet". No one thing you can point at. Who invented "the space shuttle" as one individual inventing one object is an equally dumb question.
Another problem is best displayed by analogy. Who invented God? There's 10000 religions all saying they did, and the other 9999 got it all wrong and the 9999 others are all going to hell. Odds are all 10000 got it wrong not just 9999. Or another great analogy, at least to educated people: Who caused the decline and fall of the roman empire?
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
How about this: it was thousands of individuals, working both in the public and private sector on different pieces of the puzzle, when all taken together, who developed the Internet.
And then it gets crazier: if any of those pieces were missing, the same problems would have been present, and they would have been solved in similar but slightly different ways. If not for ARPANET, perhaps Project Xanadu would have yielded a working model, and something like IP would have been developed to make the networking work.
And to top it off: regardless, the state of the Internet at any particular point is largely a function of the available computing power. Moore's Law is highly resistant to challenge, and it's unlikely that any major change of players would have affected the outcome much. My BBS'ing days on a C=64 with a 300-baud modem might have had hypertext in the Xanadu model, but it still would have been an 8-bit experience.
In summary: there are stupid questions, like "who really invented the Internet?"
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
the free market freaks are trying to rewrite history to cover up that government spending created the greatest technology in a lifetime and in turn lead to MASSIVE economic growth!
Then, in 1979, Steve Jobs negotiated an agreement whereby Xerox's venture-capital division invested $1 million in Apple, with the requirement that Jobs get a full briefing on all the Xerox PARC innovations.
Wait, Jobs gets money from Xerox and also makes demands on them?! As far as I know, when you get money from investors, they are the ones making demands.
I am amazed at the deal he cut. I don't know if it's because he's God's gift of businessmen, Xerox' management were push overs or a ratio of both.
Wait till I get that patent granted! The court cases will be held in that part of Texas which is forever patent-troll-land!
ok, maybe not.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
It invented itself.
and each of us is merely a cell, at part of the body.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This isn't an attack on Obama; it's an attack on Al Gore!
He just made it available to everyone, which is what the free market does. If this had not happened, the Government would have been perfectly happy to continue being the exclusive user of the net. The market has always worked to make products available to as many people as possible. Governments have always worked to served themselves.
According to Wikipedia, the first two computer networks were connected together (to form an "internet", because that is what the word means) was in 1969, more than 10 years before Ethernet was invented. That means an internet proceeded Ethernet in existence. Ethernet was created as one means of transmitting networked data. It was not the only possibility: dozens of other standards could have been adapted for a de facto LAN standard (note the "LAN" part of that: Ethernet isn't even really part of the Internet per se). It did not invent it, it did not proceed it, and in fact it was not even necessary to the Internet's existence. Hell, the backbone of the Internet is fiber optics, not Ethernet.
Also, I'm a little confused by them calling ARPANET "not an Internet" (not least because "Internet" shouldn't be capitalized in that context), since it was a connection of multiple networks together.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
"is no better than Fox News"
Isn't it interesting how you just assume that everyone agrees with you.
You do understand that FNC consistently has the highest ratings of the lot don't you?
The truth, therefore, is that you are in the minority. How do you like that?
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/category/ratings
See Facebook, the iOS app store and AOL.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
It did not start to grow "MASSIVELY" until private industry got into it. There were not even ISPs then, because they were private industry. Just shut up and watch your compuserv.
The guys bio suggests he knows at least a little bit about software (or at least running a software company) but he's obviously an idiot when it comes to hardware.
Those who fail to understand communication protocols, are doomed to repeat them over port 80.
As someone who was actually in University as a math major (which is what computer science was back then) in 1978, I disagree with the depiction of the Internet or ARPA*NET as it was called when we used it, being privately funded.
It was a government financed program, and we were thrilled when we got 300 baud modems, you revisionist scum!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Regardless of the protocols or the cabling, until you have peering agreements, you don't have an Internet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peering
So, Robert Metcalf invented the internet!
"In before some idiot posts AL GORE LOLOLOLOL," but there's 5 of those in 43 posts already. So...good to see Slashdot keeping consistent standards of "humor".
'Internetworking' predated Ethernet by a long shot. One could argue that the UUCP network was the progenitor to or perhaps the first incarnation of the Internet - it had file transfers, email, usenet news, and was a loosely-managed, cooperative network of systems across companies, universities, and government. It was mostly modem-based; those with dedicated leased lines were the envy of all.
It was store-and-forward, explicitly routed, and relied on config files like this. Contained within this example is my UUCP node definition from 22 years ago. I'm not tellin' which one.
Speaking of ethernet, anyone else remember thick ethernet cable and vampire taps?
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
wasn't the whole idea of hooking up different networks into a common wider network (and the whole mesh thing) started by ARPAA Net??
then of course .EDUs wanted to play (they had .mil contracts) and it kind of went from there
Xerox invented The Internet like the guy that invented Asphalt invented the InterState Highway System
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Xerox gets full credit for creating the Internet because they created ethernet and other computing ideas? If this is true what prevents me from using the same device to assign all credit to inventors of integrated circuits?
Who did what is no mystery all you need to do is pick an RFC and look at the authors list. RFC 760 and 761 are a good place to start.
As far as nuclear survivability my understanding is this was a mixed bag. Some people were pushing this very meme for political reasons and others had different intentions. It comes down to who you ask and value judgements you choose to assign to each actor.
Given the "logic" displayed in your post, you are clearly an avoid Fox watcher.
That they don't let facts get in the way of a good, old ideological rant...
Regardless of one's opinion on the Wall Street Journal...
This is a WSJ Online article in the Opinion section. So, it's one of many blogs, essentially, under the WSJ name. The standards for the real Wall Street Journal and for their online-only content (particularly the Opinion section) are dramatically different. The online-only content is absolutely terrible.
Didn't the Ethernet specs solve some problems such as collision sensing, retrys, etc.?
Claiming Ethernet is 'just wiring' misses a big point. Without wiring, the Internet pretty much can't exist. Those three layers are essential. Before Ethernet, the options were a choice between awful and marginal.
Does no one remember IMPs?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Isn't it interesting how you just assume that everyone agrees with you.
So, just to clarify, you judge accuracy of a news source in terms of popularity? You're really not doing anything to dispel the stereotype of a Fox News watcher...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
He built the Apple Computer, giving all of us access to a personal computer.
-- By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
Stupid quote is stupid: "It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. "
Ethernet != Internet
right, because nobody but the government would have been smart enough to create a similar method for connecting computers together.
Good perspective here, IMHO:
Ars Technica review of this op-ed
Discussion System prefs link: http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=editcomm
Was a gift of our corporate overlords. We have always been at war with Socialism.
Basically they are saying xerox dropped the ball AGAIN on technology they invented.
GUI, MOUSE, INTERNET... Xerox had it all to begin with. And did nothing with any of it.
That is some epic fucking up for sure.
HMMM.. lets go raid xerox. what other tech are they sitting on and have no fucking clue about... the cure for cancer?
BSD and UUCP invented the internet.
It sprung organically as Usnet with !(bang) codes and route maps.
Bear with me: Plato's world of forms; the realm of mathematical possibility - does it exist? Looking around you, noticing that it's very hard to escape world filled with man-made structures. Can you argue that all of these first existed as ideas, before made reality? Following this line of thought - how did man come to become intelligent in the first place? And similarly, you can hardly argue with the poetic beauty in the fact that a brain consists of many similar neurons, working in tandem, and that these are based on the template of billions of similar cells, vitally supporting it. Likewise, this perspective can be applied to the internet. Internet. A network connecting a lot of brains together? What will this interconnectedness wield? Will we find the common denominators in our diverse fields of study? Will this yield the algorithm to intelligently crawl a network of associations? Perhaps leading to the reverse of Godel's theorem of incompleteness: learning. Perhaps we are unwittingly building a central nervous system, under guise of our own brands and territories, that will allow a higher being to come into this world. Shouldn't the real question, therefore, perhaps rather be - can we stop the Internet, and why would we ever want to? Will it's intelligent inhabitants come to see us as peers, pets or threats? Just a perspective, to give meaning to the phrase: sometimes the truth is stranger than fiction.
The WSJ and Fox News are both are owned by Rupert Murdoch. In effect, the WSJ is Fox News.
Sure, Ethernet is important. Ethernet contributed to the success of the Internet. But Ethernet only connects hosts on a local network. It isn't the Internet by any stretch of the imagination. The whole underlying premise of the article is just plain wrong.
The article is just a poorly executed attempt to glorify private enterprise and denigrate public involvement in technology. Why is this even on Slashdot? If you can't get the most basic technical information correct, what gives this any relevance at all? Sure, it's possible to have an interesting and valuable discussion of how the Internet came to be, and what part private and public investment played. But if you start with a blatent attempt to misrepresent the basic facts then all you've done is wasted my time.
http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/internet_sterling.history.txt
SF and S-fact author Bruce Sterling did a fine little "short history" essay back in 1993. It was not only "not just Xerox" or "not just government" or "not just private industry", it was "not just America".
Note that 'Packet' is a very British term - and one of the really, really crucial developments was thinking of communications with packet-switching, not "opening a continuous line between sender and receiver".
It's a classic Wall Street Journal piece: reasonable research and fact-finding, but then they have to put the spin on it. That predates Rupert Murdoch by quite a bit.
Even today, almost none of the connections between Internet nodes are ethernet. Your home broadband connection is not ethernet - it's DSL, cable modem, or fiber. Back in the day when most Internet nodes didn't have dedicated connections, they used dialup modems over POTS, not ethernet. Most dedicated connections used the X.25 network provided by the phone companies for dedicated data lines.
What enabled the Internet was the idea of layering communications. That way your applications saw the same packets coming from the network regardless of whatever software or hardware lay underneath. That is, rather than try to translate TCP/IP packet data into ethernet packet data, then translate that into DSL packet data, etc. for this post submission to get to slashdot, each layer just encapsulates the higher layer's data. So the TCP/IP packets never know they've been split up into 1542 byte chunks to be transmitted along ethernet to reach my DSL modem. They don't know they've been converted into whatever tortured protocol DSL uses, and so on all the way to slashdot's servers.
You just have underlying layers treat the above layers are data streams. Then the higher levels (e.g. apps) can interoperate completely agnostic to what underlying layers are used. Ethernet was one of those underlying layers, so had nothing to do with it. Ethernet's simplicity and versatility had a lot to do with it being adopted at the hardware level for LANs (as opposed to, say, Token Ring), but it had nothing to do with the Internet.
you mean like the interstate and highway system? sure the government stole the idea from the Germans, but hey road networks have been around for ever.. i'm sure some company would have built them, in an open manor for that allowed for all companies to benefit from shared use and upkeep..
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Amtrak is $1000 for a cross country journey?! Do you bother to check anything before you put your drivel in to writing?
Here is the Amtrak site: http://www.amtrak.com/home
You can look up ticket prices right there.
From New York to Los Angeles: $212
And once more: Fox News is 'entertainment news.' Of course it has higher ratings, because people don't want truth and they don't want to think for themselves and develop their own opinions. They want to be told what's exciting, and what they should think about it. ... Actually, that's kind of a type of honesty, in itself, I suppose.
Most news channels are like this, actually, just Fox tends to revel in it rather than try to give the illusion of honesty or neutrality.
#include <disclaimer.h>
So, just to clarify, I judge the accuracy of comments with the English language.
Please indicate where I made any statement at all referring to accuracy?
Int he 1980s there were several broadband networks: ArpaNet, NSFnet, Milnet, dialup bboards. Its was a pain to send email and files between them. In the late 1980s there was a real effort to standardize naming, use of TCP/IP, etc. And the US Congress financed the first couple of rounds fiber optic broadband among universities. And Gore pushed this financing really hard.
The Internet graphical User Interface had to wait another few years until it exploded circa 1993 with Mosaic and html. Moasic came out of the US Supercomputer Centers, but was rapidly commercialized.
There's a lot of merit in this story I think, but ultimately it muddies the waters. Certainly, it's claim that government-funded research played a less than key role in the development of internetworking seems to be just plain false.
First of all, the work Xerox did that most resembles the Internet protocols was not Ethernet, but PARC Universal Packet (PUP), which is indeed quite directly comparable to the IP in TCP/IP. Ethernet, while a terrific piece of work, mostly served to facilitate networking within a single site.
The article also says implies that the Government-funded ARPANET wasn't really the precursor of the Internet. I think that's an over-simplification. Arpanet wasn't the very first packet switching network (see the work of Baran and Davies), and it certainly wasn't an Internet (network of networks), but it really was the direct antecedent of the Internet as we know it. Arpanet connected universities and other research establishments. It proved the viability of a packet-switching network with all the application smarts at the periphery of the network. In almost all cases, what had been Arpanet connections among the early sites evolved (sometimes by way of NSFnet) to TCP/IP Internet connections, running essentially the same applications and services. So, in all those ways, Arpanet was a crucial step on the way to our TCP/IP-based Internet, and of course, ARPANET was government funded.
A much less sensationalist but much more balanced history of all this can be found at: http://www.nethistory.info/History%20of%20the%20Internet/origins.html . The record there strongly suggests that Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf were discussing approaches to internetworking (connecting networks) in spring of 1973. Interestingly, the official PARC Research Report on PUP actually cites the Internet work of Cerf and Kahn, specifically their 1974 A Protocol for Packet Network Intercommunication.
So, the government-funded work on internetworking seems to have started before the Xerox work, and the Xerox research time explicitly cited Cerf and Kahn as sources of inspiration for the Xerox work on internetworking. Wouldn't it be nice of the WSJ article made all that clear before everyone started using these over simplifications to prove the futility of government-funded research?
Highest popularity is a plurality of viewers... but is it the majority? Your data says "no." Plus, some people may not watch TV news at all, rather they get their information by listening to NPR news, reading, etc... I, for instance, never watch *any* TV news. My opinion of the people for whom television is a primary source of news is... not high. Looks like people who can actually read seem to prefer non-Fox sources http://www.newscorpse.com/ncWP/?p=2345
I do not have a signature
posting to kill a mistaken mod.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
No disrespect to Dr. Bob Metcalfe, but internet would be nothing without a router.
.
dreaded scurrilous bit-twiddler from Oklahoma
If you read nothing else, read the first and last paragraphs [following this one ;)].
They address exactly what the OP brought up and why it is not accurate.
Putting aside for just one brief paragraph whether Ethernet has led to the Internet,
Ethernet was developed by DIX - Digital [Equipment Corporation], Intel, and Xerox
in no particular order except that's the name they used. Bob Metcalfe -- cofounder
of 3Com -- has lectured about this for ages, Don't confuse the network we use
today (Ethernet II, 802.3, 802.1q, 10Base-T, 100Base-TX, 1000Base-anything, etc.)
with the original Ethernet [I] spec. Always build on the works of other giants.
Now back to the original claims. There were many networking standards, and IP was
just one of them. Originally computers did not talk to many other computers, even
in the same room. Original DECnet systems would each talk to one or more other
systems, and would relay messages -- much as Usenet did to text.
Ethernet was not the first bus-based network topology. Token-Ring was a strong
competitor, pushed by the great might of IBM. Debates raged as to which was
better, 4Mbps guaranteed-time slots (think like TDMA) or 10Mbps collission-detect
carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) that guaranteed nothing. The rule of thumb
was if you had two "stations" and one was transmitting a bitstream and the other
was sending nothing you could APPROACH 10Mbps. If the two talked to each
other then 5Mbps, and so on. The advent of full-duplex technology (10Base-T)
moved the "bus" into the center of one device (a hub) from which spokes connected
nodes. (You'll note that means it really is a star configuration).
Original Ethernet ran on big fat cables. To connect to it you used a big clamp on
connector with a "tooth" that pierced the outer insulation and hit the center conductor.
Those were called vampire taps. Ethernet at that point was 10Base5. 10MBps, 500m.
Then came "thinwire". Using BNC connectors, T-s for taps, and dual-connectors to
extend, 10Base2 got us 10Mbps at 200m. That was pretty much it.
Aside: around this time someone thought to resurrect token-ring but make it use
expensive glass fiber that needed expensive splicing -- to power the "desktop!"
This 100Mbps network was Fiber Distributed Data Interface.
Anyway so now we come to the part where we have
a. IP and TCP/IP
b. A bus-based network to allow many to many communication
And thus the ARPANET was born. It wasn't to fight a war, it was to do research.
The US military -- reporting to the same US DoD that funded ARPA -- thought it
was such a great idea they created a network called MILNET.
The original systems used specialized computers running specialized code to be
Internet Message Processors (IMPs). These complex one-of-a-kind systems are
what today are outscaled, outpaced, outperformed, and outfeatured by a $50
router running DD-WRT (not to mention WiFi)...
The Internet did not exist because computers in one room could talk to each other
via Ethernet. It exists because that one room could talk to ANOTHER ROOM in
a far away place. Internet means "Interconnected Networks". One Ethernet in
place A talking to one Ethernet in place B.... now THAT's interconnection.
Ehud
"As a practical matter it is prohibitively expensive to link each [nuclear] command center independently to every other."
— Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces, 1983.
British tabloid papers like The Sun always outsell the broadsheets like The Times. Does this make The Sun a more accurate paper?
Drill baby drill - on Mars
avoid Fox watcher
Now there's a freudian slip I can wholeheartedly agree with.
Someone had to do it.
Moreover, he doesn't seem to understand the difference between a plurality and a majority.
Someone had to do it.
It did not start to grow "MASSIVELY" until private industry got into it. There were not even ISPs then, because they were private industry. Just shut up and watch your compuserv.
It didn't start to grow "massively" until it was popularized by the World Wide Web. Who invented that? An Englishman working at that well known bastion of free market Americana: CERN in Switzerland.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
Rational people believes in evolution, not creationism. Maybe the basic dust that evolved into today's internet was created by some star X back in the old days, but since then it evolved, a lot. Is not to take out the merit of creating that original dust, but what we call internet today is a very different thing.
Popularity != accuracy.
God you conservatives are fucking stupid!
> And Gore pushed this financing really hard.
That's great. Good for Al Gore. But that is hardly "inventing" the internet, is it?
The question is pointless. It's like asking who created society, or civilisation.
The WWW, however, now that's another story. I'd say CERN, Switzerland is to be held responsible for that. More specifically, Tim Berners-Lee, creator of HTTP 0.9, HTML, the first web browser, the first web server, and the first web pages.
Somewhat related, the first images to be served on the WWW is believed to be promotional shots for the parody pop group Les Horribles Cernettes.
Ars on the story: WSJ mangles history to argue government didn't launch the Internet
Would it be simply safe to say that the //internet// was not created by a person, a business, or a group. But it was created by *us*, us being people from around the world all giving rise to inovations, Individual's solving problems figuring out how to accomplish something. Just as easily you can give a HUGE amount of Credit to Paul M. and Paul V. for their respective works. You can give credit a large number of people but the internet even today exists in large as an //agreement// a handshake among peers of how things should work, and what we will do with it. There are stringent standards underneath but so much of it is changing so much that I don't think you can ever give credit to an individual group or organization. Doing so is more paramount to accrediting the creation of the car to that of the wheel. It started a process that evolved across several to become what it is today.
Everyone deserves credit. I don't see one person as the definitive "creator".
Just my .02 worth
The WSJ posting function is FUBAR because it offers to have you log in using Facebook but even if you do you also have to do a second human interaction process.
That said the Obama claim which is the basis for that article is that business relies on decades of infrastructure to function and we have the government to thank for that.
WRONG.
The government made a rule that it could confiscate assets and manage an effort to install infrastructure in SOME LIMITED AREAS. In other areas infrastructure was privately installed typically with some sort of government easement. Railroads, television, cell phones, power lines, gas lines, water lines, etc.
The areas where the government itself owns and manages the assets the outcomes are FAR WORSE, such as highways, human rail, schools, police, fire, prisons. These have gross overheads, massive recurring costs and bad and declining outcomes. Massive fiscal mismanagement. Unfunded mandates.
Not only that, let's take highways. The money for them was taken from taxpayers and given over to congress to manage to begin with! They have managed it grossly badly. Then there is the cost shift called gasoline or road taxes. Exxon has a $0.06 per gallon fees to do all the aspects of delivery from well to tank profit. Federal tax is $0.66 per gallon (stossel).
That means for only 11x the Exxon piece we have the highways we have, with the repairs we have, and with the expansion we have. Why? Gas and road taxes are far more than needed to maintain the crippled highway system in a perpetually crippled basis, so Congress steals it to spend on stupid stuff.
The whole thesis of Obama on this topic is false and misleading.
JJ
Sputnik invented the Internet.
HRH The Duke of Windsor
"I, for instance, never watch *any* TV news."
Hence you have no idea what you are talking about when assessing FNC based on what NPR and John Stewart tell you. Check.
"My opinion of the people for whom television is a primary source of news is... not high."
Guess what? I don't give a shit. How do you like that?
I repeat from above. Please indicate where I made any statement at all referring to accuracy.
Any other questions fucking dipshit libtard asshole?
See, I can do it to. Aren't you all a predictable bunch of drones.
This is the Wall Street Journal engaging in advocacy journalism. They cannot allow the existence of any perception that there is any value to having a government, because that would mean the notion of taxation is a reasonable one. Make no mistake, their position is not that taxes are too high, it's that they should not exist. For them and the people they represent.
There is a much better argument that the protocols upon which the Internet is based are a much bigger part of the 'Net's origins than the physical wires that were first used to connect computers. They might as well have said that Thomas Edison invented the Internet.
It's simply more of the anti-government propaganda that the Wall Street Journal engages in every day.
Think about that: Xerox invented the Internet because they invented ethernet. It's like saying that Corning should get the credit for the invention of every new drug because they made the beakers.
You are welcome on my lawn.
They are owned by the same company and thus run by the same corporate dictator. Who is, of course, backing Romney. So think of this as one Rupert Murdoch's many campaign contributions.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
BBS's, the SysOps that shelled out their own money to run them, the BBS software creators, the BBS users - what - don't we get a mention in history? If it wasn't for those of us that either ran a BBS or visited a BBS, the "model" for "Internet Users" would not have come about in the same manner as it has - and business would not have taken to realising that BBS's provided a great new ground - with multiple uses. God it shits me when we're neglected.
YankDownUnder Veni, Vidi, volo in domum redire
Governments do not invent anything. Corporations do not invent anything. People invent things.
People invent things, but people need resources. The question is, who has the incentive to provide resources for an open ended network which does not have a built-in competitive advantage to the entity which funds the development?
The answer is government. Now that's not to say that scientists at corporations don't invent cool stuff. It's just that the executives don't allow the scientists to release it into the wild without a competitive advantage for the corporation.
I thought it was the University of Hawaii in 1971?
(And they probably based it on something earlier.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Then I noticed that you forgot to add the phrase "communist fascist" to the mix.
Government doesn't "invent" anything. By some measure, the nuclear bomb was invented by Einstein. The internet would not exist if government hadn't paid for its creation. There were plenty of private networks that existed along with the internet - Compuserve and AOL both were private. THE Internet was only unique because it was an open network that anyone could connect to.
Now that the WSJ says that Xerox invented the internet, get ready for the biggest IP lawsuit of all time, as Xerox sues the internet! .... For 21 Trillion Dollars!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
I never knew the entire Internet ran on Ethernet. Must require a lot of repeaters. I guess fiber is not in use yet.
Gore
Korma: Good
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn should get the lion's share of the credit for inventing the "internet". Their protocols made networking scaleable in a way that had never been done before. You take two internets and plug them together and you get *one* internet (assuming everyone is registering addresses from the same global pool). It seems so obvious now, but it wasn't then.
Ethernet has nothing whatever to do with internet. Ethernet won the local area network contest because all the universities on the ARPAnet/NSFnet bought Sun workstations and VAX mini-computers. Both ran Berkeley Unix with TCP/IP (thanks Bill Joy from UCB) and Ethernet. Ethernet runs IP, DECNET, LAT, Novell, ARCNET and lots of other protocols because it's simple, but it doesn't scale to internet scale.
The Ethernet we use today is nothing like the first Ethernet, which was a very clever re-purposing of a radio technology called Alohanet (thanks Univ. of Hawaii). Bob Metcalfe of Xerox PARC deserves a lot of credit for getting the coax Ethernet of olden times up and running. We all cut our teeth on it and blessed our lucky stars when Cabletron and Synoptics got Ethernet running on twisted pair phone wiring. That was the only way we could scale Ethernet. But all the cleverness is gone and all that is left are the packet specs and the address syntax. Not much of a protocol, but Ethernet is what we still call it. Might as well call it HDLC.
Internet requires routers as well as host implementations of TCP/IP. The first IP router was a Honeywell front-end processor on the ARPAnet (thanks BBN, DARPA contractor). The second IP router was a DEC PDP-11 (thanks Dave Mills at U of Maryland) on the first NSFNET. The second IP router was an IBM PC with a T-1 interface card (thanks IBM and U of Mich) on the second NSFNET. The first commercial IP router was from Proteon who dropped the ball (thanks token ring) in favor of cisco. Proteon's software was derived from MIT and cisco's from Stanford. FTP Software commercialized TCP/IP on PC (thanks Dave Clark from MIT). Apple gave us AppleTalk but jumped on the bandwagon with their own TCP/IP (thanks Carnegie-Mellon).
But even after all that, the Internet was nothing but the NSFNET which was composed of government, universities, and corporate research labs. Al Gore found the money to pay for the backbone of T-1s and then T-3s and the IBM and UMich contract and the rest of the Internet paid for the other 90% of the cost, including all the local area networking and regional networks that connected to the NSFNET backbone.
Once the Internet became commercialized, the lower level protocols fossilized (thanks IPv4) and the research universities went on to create Internet2, a government-subsidized research network exactly like the old NSFNET. Deja vu all over again. We do it because it works.
Well obviously there was no one person who invented the internet, but if it were put to me on the one person most responsible for our current internet my vote would go to Vint Cerf. He was the driving force behind TCP/IP which is basically what spurred the modern internet movement.
Obama is the typical college professor who knows a lot of facts and information and theory, but very little real world knowledge. President Woodrow Wilson had the same flaw. (And also lied that he would not take us to war.)
Obama, like Clinton, are 2 of the very few US presidents who came from *nothing* families (alcoholism, dissociated family life, working class at best). Look what they each achieved in their lives. Meanwhile the Bushes and now Romney were born into US$ multimillionaire political families and never had to fight or work to get anything. I ask you this: Look at what you are in life. What have you achieved? My bet is you're still living in the basement playing games. As to Obama's "real world" experience, he has lived many places, seen the world up close. In contrast you probably haven't been out of the basement much. In your 3 short sentences you have shown your total ignorance, and there is no one alive without "flaws" including you... Had you achieved anything your sig wouldn't be "HP Desktop with i7 at 3GHz/8GB versus Dell i5 at 3GHz/12GB. To buy or not to buy?" You'd be able to afford both and a few more. In my home office I have 4 different computers doing different jobs surrounding me, and 2 more around the house (kitchen and bedroom) plus 5 "retired" computers in a closet (all of which still work). Get off my lawn...
This passage illustrates the extreme bogosity of this article: "It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks." It is, of course, bullshit: an Ethernet is a type of computer network, it does not link different computer networks. The glory of the Internet is that it can link computers on Ethernet, serial lines, EVDO, token ring networks (if any still exist!), carrier pigeon, whatever; and those protocols were developed with publicly funded research.
Typical ahistorical right-wing bullshit from the WSJ.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
The internet isnt something you just invent and build. Sure there were pre-cursors to it like localized networking and directly connecting pc to pc for data transfers but no one person invented the internet, designed it and built it. The internet is just something that grew over time and evolved till we have what we have now.
The closest anyone came to actually inventing it was tim berners when he proposed the world wide web, along with some swiss guy they essentially came up with the "internet" as we know it. They just made it so people could browse things at will, but the backbone of the internet was already in place. Just using the world wide web opened it up and made it accessible to everyone.
But at the end of the day it doesnt matter because no one invented it. The net isnt like a car, a airplane or something like that where you can point to a definite person and definite time and say "Thats where it came from, that person invented it first".
Ahh most popular.
Also Least Informed!
http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/survey-sunday-show-viewers-npr-listeners-most-informed-fox-news-and-msnbc-viewers-least-informed_b129286
Looks its even from the same source!
You'll also be excited to find out that the Daily Show viewers were much more informed then Fox viewers. Comedy Central is a better unbiased news report then almost anything that contains "News" in the title/acronym.
~Cwix
You are entitled to your own opinion, not your own facts.
*sigh*
The mouse was invented at SRI (then the Stanford Research Institute. As in Stanford University.)
Xerox no more invented the mouse than Apple did. (Xerox invented windowing, icons, and menus. Apple invented double-clicking and dragging.)
It's only a series of tubes! But if credit is really due, it must have been either the chicken or the egg.
Forward! -- Emperor Norton, 2012
It gets blown out.
[citation needed]
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Most of the early turnpikes were privately owned.
Even today, almost none of the connections between Internet nodes are ethernet.
From the context, I assume that you mean something less than every machine that isn't behind a firewall, NAT, or is otherwise not globally reachable.
How about if we use "globally reachable machines that route IP traffic" as a definition of "Internet nodes" and "connections between Internet nodes" to refer to a "direct" path that doesn't require an IP router to reach it.
A *LOT* of these Internet nodes and the connections between them are in data centers with some form of Ethernet running between them, very often running over "LAN-length" (under 100 m) or even "switch-room-length" (a few meters or less) runs of CAT5e or better "Ethernet" twisted-pair copper wire.
I think what you meant was that connections between equipment spaced more than a some minimum distance - 100 m? 1km? 10km? - run over Ethernet. As others have pointed out, Ethernet can and does connect computers over city-wide and longer distances.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
>>>a self-centers brat like you think he has any form of world knowledge
I've visited every state and province in North America except Nunavut. I've lived in Europe and visited Japan. I have had all kinds of job from butchering cows to working in retail (from stock all the way up to supervisor) to designing military equipment & performing government audits. I've been poor (no income) and upper middle class). I've run my own business, run a club as president, helped people in need on the street...... to sit there and say I have "zero world knowledge" is fucking ridiculous. You look like an idiot with that remark.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
wow, you just don't get it man. if it wasn't for the government research there never would have been anything for private industry to "get in to".
newscorpse huh? Is that how Obama pronounces newscorp?
http://www.newscorp.com/
Isn't that clever. /not
I think I stated that FNC is most popular, which it is. FACT.
You're welcome.
Does anyone here honestly believe the government that runs the DMV and Post Office is capable of creating an internet without at least hiring it out to private businesses? Point is it's important to realize our problems cannot be solved by the government and we rely on it and expect far too much of it. The bigger the government the more problems, more waste and less freedom. Obama may be a charming guy but his philosophy of big government is bankrupt.
Btw it was not an article in the WSJ it was an opinion piece in the Opinion section. Not a regular article.
It was Ma Bell's T1 and Frame Relay that carried Arpanet traffic. In fact it was also Ma Bell's dial-up network that did it too. Ethernet is a LOCAL area network. Even to this day - FRAD's of different interfaces such as T1, T3, Cable, etc. present an ethernet interface on one side.
No mod points to give today, but +100 - I wasn't directly involved until the 1980's but I do know the history and you're right on. I was working for a defense contractor and also saw quite a lot of the pre-history of what we have today.
I was even running a POTS BBS running BBS-PC on an Amiga 1000 from 1986 to 1990. Not the internet, I know, but my motivation was working with was the "internet" at work at the time. I started my first internet web site in 1995, all hand coded (no WYSIWYG program) and it went public on 5 January 1996 (that one is still online today).
I'm also in the "Stay Off My Lawn" stage of life and am continually amazed at the expansion and evolution of electronics and communications. When I was in college I was lucky to have a portable electric Olivetti typewriter and Sharp 4 function "portable" calculator which would run on AC or it's internal rechargeable batteries (I still have it in storage!). That Sharp was great for physics and math classes and it only did add, subtract, multiply and divide. I bet you, like me, remember the time period where slide rules became obsolete for all intents and purposes.
I remember it well. 1996, while at a conference in Melbourne I attended a seminar by Microsoft.
They proudly exclaimed they discovered the Internet and were now working out what to do with it.
Shortly after, the browser wars began.
"The Wall Street Journal is running an article that it claims seeks to dispel an urban legend about the internet: 'The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war".
It would be easier if techno journalists didn't keep repeatidly repeating that particular fable without first doing any fact checking. Vint Cerf himself has said that surviving a nuclear war was never an original design consideration.
Meanwhile we have self-styled 'guru of the digital age', Ben Hammersley of Wired Magazine erroniously stating that the Internet was designed to withstand a nuclear attack, this on page 2 of '64 Things You Need to Know Now for Then'. If Wired can't even be bothered to do any fact checking, what chance do the rest of us have.
AccountKiller
Leibniz invented the outhouse.
1) "The Internet" was invented by Vint Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine who worked for Stanford University and issued RFC 675 "SPECIFICATION OF INTERNET TRANSMISSION CONTROL PROGRAM", and they were funded by ARPA.
2) Lots of other people and organizations developed lots of networks. ARPANET between University of California, Los Angeles and the Stanford Research Institute (funded by ARPA). There was also privately operated Telenet & Tymnet, and university lead MERIT networks as well as UUCP started at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
3) I worked for one of the first private Internet Service Providers - tt was also one of the first providers of dial-up shell accounts, and later had one of the first national DS-3 IP networks. When I started cold-calling people for web design, they often told me "My customers will never use the Internet" (if they even knew what the Internet was). Suffice it to say that a lot of very forward-looking private providers of capital made that company possible, and they all made a lot of money in the process, and that turned the Internet from something you tinkered with at University into something real.
Also look at private companies like Cisco that made IP routing practical at large scales.
So I will 100% agree that government funding of university researchers created the Internet. However it would have never gone anywhere without private money funding a massive expansion and buildout of it.
Think university solar cell research funded by the government - good. Solyndra funded by government - bad.
And it would have also gone NOWHERE if government tried to regulate early ISPs as roughly as it regulated the incumbent telecommunications companies. We could do pretty much whatever we wanted with little regulation or censorship.
IEEE Comsoc have a series of so far five articles on history of packet switching, including An Early History of the Internet by Len Kleinrock which starts with:
"It is impossible to place the origins of the Internet in a single moment of time."
The others are of the Internet and related technologies from different perspectives:
UK by Peter Kirstein
Canada Datapac
France Transpac
US Telenet currently paywalled but will probably soon be available at
http://www.comsoc.org/commag/history-communications
Come on, get busy.
Yes. And then Berners-Lee's WorldWideWeb.app was reinvented as NCSA Mosaic, which was ported to a whole bunch of platforms and was most people's first exposure to the world wide web (WorldWideWeb.app being a NeXT-only program, so a little specialized). NSCA stands for the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, it being yet another bastion of free market Americana, headquartered at the University of Illinois (har). Then the people responsible for Mosaic left NCSA and became private entrepreneurs at Netscape, and made a lot of money off those ideas. And then Microsoft eventually caught on and released Internet Explorer and crushed them, and so on.
So, no question, private industry is what eventually made this stuff much more popular. But there's no *way* the world wide web was initiated by private industry, or that they wanted it to play out this way. What you have here is private industry realizing there is money to be made -- after the fact -- and often trying their best to corner the market by creating de facto standards. Microsoft almost succeeded with its bundling of IE and its non-standard extensions.
For private industry's idea of what a hypertext and network-based system would be like, refer to CompuServe or AOL.
Gordon Crovitz lives in lower Manhattan around Wall Street. In fact, he lives near Zuccoti Park that Occupy Wall Street was camped out in.
During the occupation, Crovitz appeared in the local Community Board hearings to argue that OWS should be kicked out because they were making too much noise and disturbing his sleep. Most of the people who came before the Community Board supported OWS (First Amendment and all that), and the Community Board voted to support OWS and let them stay in the park, although they asked OWS to try to keep it quiet at night. Crovitz published a whiny editorial page essay complaining about it.
So Crovitz actually did say, "Hey you kids! Get off my lawn!"
But, They seem to be saying that because Xerox invented Ethernet (Along with DEC I might point out) that they invented the internet. The Ethernet that xerox invented ran on RU6 coax, about as thick as your thumb, and was good for a distance of 100 Meters. It seems if you want to give Xerox credit for the internet you should at least mention XNS which was an internetworking protocol.
Going back to the bad old days, we really have to give TCP/IP credit for connectiog computers. Prior to TCP/IP the IBM mainframes ran SNA; the Vaxen used DECnet; the PCs were running either Netware (pretty much the same as XNS), NetBios or Vines; Apples were running AppleTalk; and I can't remember what Sperry/UNIVAC called thier protocol. TCP/IP was the first protocol that actually allowed all of these systeem to talk to one another. (I don't mention Suns and BSD because ther were allready running TCP/IP)
As for the growth of the Internet after it was privatized. It was growing expontentially when it was DARPAnet, it continued to expand expontentially as NSFnet, and it continued to grow after privitization.
http://econ-ecoff.blogspot.com/2012/07/wsj-internet-invention-spin-job.html
The Internet wasn't invented by the "Internet Protocol" (though the name is pretty catchy) let alone a lower-level transport protocol like Ethernet. If we honor Ethernet then we might as well honor the Telegraph and Ponies and Pigeons. The reality is that at a certain time people started actually wanting to interact in a massively distributed, asynchronous and autonomous way and they used whatever was handy. Nobody "invented" it.
All this fighting about who invented the "Internet" is not really logical. It is not based on human implementations for current needs, not on observations. It is not about "who first discovered Jupiter" or "who first discovered blood cells". This is more about "evolution" of practical applications and we get similar fights over who "invented electricity", a lot more simple concept but still something to fight over.
You should post a full CV.
Perhaps the collective consciousness of slashdot would crown you King then.
Don't quote me on this.
What really made a difference was all the institutions, the colleges and universities and developmental labs out there, who (by hook or crook, usually through a casual contact) hooked into the budding ARPAnet. Remember all those minicomputers and old mainframes that appeared everywhere, all the Seven Dwarf names? All the file archives with unbelievable wonders, source code, yet another version of STARTREK or Colossal Cave?
There were actually damned few military organizations on the net in those days. I know my XVIII Airborne Corps and 82d Airborne at Fort Bragg were, for very limited functions. There was a contractor who managed the whole thing. As an S2 NCO I discovered this terminal connected to a big old DEC-20 mainframe out at Berkeley, with software running that supposedly managed our security access rosters.
That was all very nice. But then I discovered DEC BASIC and found I could write my own stuff! And the other geeks (although the word wasn't well known then) pointed me to the games and fun stuff. From then on there was no holding me back! Ah, what a wondrous place it was .. and all free! You had to know your way around, there were no maps, only friends and acquaintances. Software was free, source was everywhere. The BBS's were budding at the time, for the Apples and then later the CP/M and early IBM systems .. but nothing was as great as the ARPAnet! Anyone else remember SIMTEL20? The huge microcomputer software archive stored on an underused DEC-20 at White Sands Proving Grounds?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simtel
http://old.cni.org/docs/farnet/story149.NM.html
Good times, I'll tell you. We all knew ARPA had started it, that XEROX had made a lot of contributions. But it was all the grad students running all those Vaxen and old IBMs out there, hacking and coding and communicating, keeping the USENET distribution going ... that's where the real credit lies. And the universities and colleges that funded them.
Toad
Just the first two sentences of this article disqualify this shill from being taken seriously. The claim that Obama "justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs" is a disingenuous straw man.Obama is not doing that. Obama's speech is a direct response to the republican party line that:
1. Taxation is bad
2. Regulation is bad
3. Unions are bad
Obama is correct in saying that no one succeeds in a vacuum. The wealthiest need the government protections, regulations and infrastructure to succeed. The fact that they enjoy these benefits, but don't want to pay for them is understandable (many of them are psychopaths), but the the rest of us should not allow them to get away without paying their fare share. This is not elevating bureaucrats, it's recognizing the legitimate power of the government and the people of a republic.
The difference between truth and fiction is that fiction has to be plausible.
Right. Not actively watching BS on TV means I've never been exposed to enough BS on TV to know what it's about. I know you don't give a shit. Otherwise you wouldn't be willing to waste your time watching Fox News.
I do not have a signature
Al Gore invented the Internet. Everyone knows that!
pay up suckas
...was not created to connect *networks* but *devices*, and was explicitly a Local Area Network. The title on the spine of my copy reads "Ethernet" A Local Area Network: Specification" (Xerox, 1980).
I stopped reading there.
Nobody invented the Internet - It evolved and continues to do so.
It can be argued, with strong evidential support, that we do not, invent or create artifacts or systems but that , rather, these are more properly viewed as having evolved within the collective imagination of our species.
To quickly put this counter-intuitive view into focus, would you not agree that the following statement has a sound basis?
We would have geometry without Euclid, calculus without Newton or Liebnitz, the camera without Johann Zahn, the cathode ray tube without JJ Thomson, relativity (and quantum mechanics) without Einstein, the digital computer without Turin, the Internet without, say, Vinton Cerf.
The list can. of course be extended indefinitely.
This notion will, of course offend the natural conceits of many but the Universe as a whole does not require the assumption of any kind of "designer", merely the full appreciation of the observable fact that selection is a function of dynamically changing prevailing conditions which are themselves subject to evolutionary processes such that they are sufficiently often "just right". This seemingly an intrinsic property of natures machinery.
This very broad evolutionary model (extending beyond biology) is expanded upon (very informally) in "The Goldilocks Effect: What Has Serendipity Ever Done For Us?" which is a free download in e-book formats from the "Unusual Perspectives" website.
Trying to take credit for "inventing" the internet is about as exciting as taking credit for inventing the telephone wiring networks.. People don't CARE who "invented" the telephone network.. they only care about who invented the TELEPHONE! Same with the 'net.. Look, *really*, to give fair credit, it was as much the Universities, besides the military that "invented" the internet (and what brilliant "tech" writer at WSJ used the "series of tubes" analogy? Krikeys!).. Nobody CARES who laid down all the wires.. People only care about the WWW, which is the only part that they are ever exposed to..Sheese! Must be an election year....
Maybe not a full digital data network in the modern sense, but a large number of the fundamental ideas of such networks were exercised well before the introduction of the (serial) telegraph system.
Further reading : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line
I learn that the Internet Engineering Task Force has produced an RFC ( http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc4824 ) for using semaphore systems as a physical layer under IP and TCP.
The status of this post is : ha-ha, but serious.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
so much self-inflated puffery and then you still think you can claim to not be a spoiled self-centered brat. you'd be funny if you weren't serious.
The article is clearly an attempt to twist history to favor a right wing agenda. I'm a conservative and I'm annoyed by it. It also serves the bizarre Rand version of conservative philosophy that finds no purpose for the commons. These petty squabbles put both liberals and conservatives further and further out on limbs. They make us all stupid. The founding fathers managed to reconcile an amazingly broad view of human freedom and property rights with the public provision of libraries, postal services, courts (yes, courts have been and can be private), police, harbor management, roads, scientific and geographic research.... There is a role for government in our lives and the only reason to deny that is in order to win a stupid argument. There is also the capacity for people to live entirely without government and not devolve into drooling animals - so government isn't the source of civil society. That doesn't mean that the best life is had in its total absence.
The problem with the article, no matter whether you agree with it or not, is the underlying premise. Here's what I think that premise is: "If the government provides you with benefits then they have plenary power to tax you at any rate the collective deems fair."
We Americans are on a slippery slope to a very bad place. We got here and are continuing down the slope because of the confluence of rising government power with a fact of political life - cronyism. You can't get rid of cronyism and still respect the rights of people holding office and those who know them. You can reduce the power of the government such that cronyism doesn't create crushing burdens on average people.
TFA wouldn't exist unless Obama had made that speech recently. The purpose of the speech was to advocate raising taxes. Yes, it was about raising taxes on "the rich" but ultimately it was still about raising taxes to fund a GIGANTIC government that never, ever shrinks no matter how badly it hurts the people it's supposed to serve. For some reason American tax payers are on the hook for enormous amounts of money. We aren't, for some reason, arguing about why we are letting ourselves collectively be on the hook for this much money. Instead we're arguing about which group of us should pay it.
The other part is that the cuts necessary to even hope to maintain a functioning government and a taxable economy together, are going to hurt someone. They could hurt farmers, oilmen, the poor, endangered species, the environment, people who buy healthcare, people who can't buy healthcare.... All kinds of people.
The bottom line is that you can't borrow, inflate or tax your way out of a corrupt government bent on knocking down the boundaries that keep it from being a tyrant. You can, if you work hard at it, reduce the size of the government to the point where the middle class can survive. You can also regulate big business in ways that avoid its failure destroying the country. Teddy Roosevelt had the right ideas about big business and progressivism. Woodrow Wilson and FDR, not so much....
Ultimately, we have the DOD and a bunch of universities (most of them public) to thank for the Internet. Xerox played a role.... The question is, HOW MUCH TAX is that worth? Are we supposed to pay an infinite license for the use of TCP/IP and its related services? The answer has to be no. If it's yes than the government can hand you a sandwich and take 100% of your income in payment. No matter what the government delivers, at some point there must be a limit to what it takes. In order to set that limit, we the people need to limit the scope of the government services. We paid for the Internet. Those dollars are spent.
Every rule has more than one consequence.