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The Day the Infant Internet Uttered its First Words

cs.ucla.edu

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Re: The Day the Infant Internet Uttered its First Words

#2

Post by cperciva »

The Internet has obviously had many "beginnings" at different points in time, but to me this seems like the most natural one: To me, the most essential characteristic of the Internet is that it involves computers talking to each other electronically, rather than merely computers talking to people (e.g., terminals) or reading and writing to physical media (punched cards, magnetic tape, etc).

In that light: Can we do anything later this year to celebrate the Internet's 45th birthday? I'd love to get some media attention on the 45th part there -- I think the popular media often treats the Internet without adequate gravitas out of a mistaken belief that it only came to exist in the mid-90s, while in fact the Internet is very much middle-aged.

I don't have anything particular in mind, I'm just throwing this out to the HN community for brainstorming. :-)

Re: The Day the Infant Internet Uttered its First Words

#3

Post by rootbear »

cperciva wrote: post #2

The Internet has obviously had many "beginnings" at different points in time, but to me this seems like the most natural one: To me, the most essential characteristic of the Internet is that it involves computers talking to each other electronically, rather than merely computers talking to people (e.g., terminals) or reading and writing to physical media (punched cards, magnetic tape, etc). In that light: Can we do a…

I guess I'm too much of a pedant, but I don't consider the ARPAnet to have been the Internet in any significant way. The whole point of the "inter-" in Internet is that it's a network of networks. It also uses a different protocol from the ARPAnet. And there were computer networks before the ARPAnet. The real innovation of the ARPAnet was packet switching. In that sense, it is the precursor of the Internet, the proof of concept.

Perhaps a better argument in favor of the ARPAnet as baby Internet is that the early Internet culture was largely carried over from the ARPAnet.

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