How the internet was created by government -- not private -- innovation

[marmar]

How the internet was created by government — not private — innovation
The military-industrial complex played a critical role in funding scientific research for the future Internet

By MATTHEW ROZSA
PUBLISHED JANUARY 7, 2023 10:00AM (EST)


(Salon) Residents of the United States are raised to hold two seemingly paradoxical beliefs: That the American nation's greatest contribution to humanity is its supposedly free form of government — and that this same free government stifles innovation. Similarly, Americans are taught to believe that so-called rugged individualists (often white men) are the great creators and inventors who change our lives. These ideas are especially ubiquitous online, where conservative commentators have influenced elections by popularizing right-wing political ideas.

Yet ironically, the same Internet which is used to propagate conservative assumptions is proof of their historical inaccuracy. The Internet as we know it would not exist if not for generous investments from the United States government. Hundreds of years from now, long after the United States of America no longer exists, it may be that the Internet is a far more important American contribution to humanity than the American government itself.

Ignoring its social merits for a moment, the economic activity generated by the internet is staggering. While it is notoriously difficult to attach an exact monetary value to the Internet (one of the Internet's pioneers, David D. Clark, balked at even trying to ballpark a figure when asked by Salon), a 2014 study by the Internet Association (a trade group that represents, among other companies, Google, Facebook and Amazon) estimated that businesses involved in the Internet generated $966 billion that year. The Internet has only grown more lucrative ever since; industry research organization IBISWorld estimates that in 2023, the percentage of business conducted online will be at roughly 28%. These financial estimates are, of course, only one part of the picture. It is impossible to calculate how the Internet has transformed music, food, cinema, television, video games, transportation, politics, dating, communication, science and almost every other sphere of human existence.

And it all exists because, during the heyday of the Cold War, the government decided to listen to — and financially back — a group of passionate intellectuals with a vision. That said, it is not as simple as saying that cyberspace exists solely because of the government; in reality, despite popular misconceptions about "inventors," there was no single person who "created" the Internet. The Internet as we know it exists not because of rugged individualists, but rather a group of visionaries working together with the help of a complex system of creative and financial support from both public and private sources. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2023/01/07/how-the-internet-was-created-by-government--not-private--innovation/

[Haggard Celine]

1. I didn't remember Al Gore running for President in 1988,

but I looked it up. The GW Bush campaign made fun of him in 2000 by saying that Gore claimed he "invented" the internet, but Gore didn't claim that. I think he actually claimed to be instrumental in the process. Bush beat Gore over the head with something Gore was merely telling the truth about, but it was effective. I think that accusation helped Bush get just enough votes to steal that election.

[Pobeka]

2. What Al Gore was refering to with his comment, I believe, was "Information Superhighway"

Not the actual network technology, but bringing that technology mainstream as a communication infrastructure that enabled business, media etc to reach the masses.

And he certainly promoted that more than any other public figure during his time as VP.

I've never checked up up on my take of it, but one thing is certain, it is absurd to assume he meant he actually sat in a lab and soldered electrical components together.

[Haggard Celine]

3. Yes, it is absurd, but a lot of people

accepted what the Bush campaign said without ever stopping to think about how silly the accusation was. We have far too many people in this country who can't or won't think critically.

[Pobeka]

4. yep. nt

[Uncle Joe]

5. That's only because the corporate media as an institution parroted Republican absurdities

and those "lot of people" made the mistake of trusting the corporate media to be honest brokers.

But they didn't want the best qualified candidate to be President, it was all about "who you wanted to have a beer with," earth tones and shit, of course this was before 9/11, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The corporate media's corporate conglomerate ownership hated and were afraid of the Internet, it was a threat and they resented Al Gore precisely because he was the preeminent legislative champion for opening the Internet up to the people.

[NullTuples]

6. As with many tech inventions, the birth of networking was laziness + geeks allowed to run free

Bob Taylor didn't like having to copy information off one screen at the Pentagon and type it into the terminal next to it because the two mainframes couldn't talk to each other. He went on to direct the newly created lab Xerox PARC, which was funded but virtually ignored by Xerox management on the East Coast. So he gathered up some of the most brilliant minds in electronics & computing and gave them a playground. The result was ethernet (the ability to connect different brands of computers and allow them to send data packets to one another), the graphical user interface, the computer mouse, laser printers and a few other features of modern computing still in use today.

Meanwhile though, grad students were fleshing out the solution to the problem Taylor identified and procured the initial funding for when he worked for the Defense Dept. The first node of the internet was at UCLA; it connected to the second node at Stanford Research Institute, which was just down the hill from PARC & people freely collaborated at all three locations. Then University of Utah was added, and UC Santa Barbara. This was all done under DARPA although Taylor had moved to PARC by then - where he continued to ensure that the Steve Wozniacs of that generation wouldn't be constrained by things like product or doctorial deadlines (although many of those were picked up along the way, along with the founding of many companies like 3COM). Because they weren't constrained by strict business or armed forces restrictions (or even door locks or security), anyone who had access to the buildings or a terminal connected to these early machines either directly or over a phone line could play in the playground, too - although usually at a strictly social level. This was a massive shift in how computers were used. People used the system to communicate with each other, to create & collaborate on non-work-related documents, print them out and distribute them (outside of work) and so on. There were no restrictions. Guys like Jobs & Woz even wandered in and out of the realm picking up ideas, and that was okay; everything was "open source" back then because there was no profit motive yet.

So there was this early network of computers, not being used for defense purposes but funded by defense dollars. Here in the SF Bay Area, something interesting happened. Two somethings, really...from VintageComputer.net:

"The Peoples Computer Company tabloid was started in 1972 by Bob Albrecht and others. Included in the PCC tabloid were pictures of events, program listings of BASIC programs and suggestions on buying computer parts. Lee Felsenstein occasionally wrote a hardware column for the PCC publication. As you might have guessed the Community Memory Project and The People's Computer Company were closely affiliated. The People's Computer Company was the birthplace of the Doctor Dobbs Journal.

"The original Community Memory machine sat just inside the entrance of Leopold’s Records in Berkeley, California, next to a physical bulletin board for musicians looking for gigs or potential bandmates. The original Community Memory terminal at Leopold’s Records (via computerhistory.org) In 1973, the word “digital” didn’t mean much besides….perhaps “pertaining to your fingers and toes.” So when Lee Felsenstein was tasked with explaining Community Memory, that very bulletin board became the best available frame of reference. The idea was simple enough: written messages could be recorded and entered into the machine, where they would be stored, categorized, and made discoverable by anyone through simple text searches. People would post information about events, attempts to organize, job opportunities, and other classified ads."
(from https://lookbothways.kinandcarta.com/community-memory-the-decentralized-web/)

There would go on to be a number of such terminals scattered around the Bay Area. This arguably was the start of the Internet as we know it today. Non-techies using computers in a social manner rather than for the joy of playing with the hardware and code itself.

From there, control and support of the Internet moved to the National Science Foundation which simply assumed the point was to commercialize the infrastructure and for the government to eventually remove itself. Very quickly in the late 80's/early 90's companies popped up that provided access to anyone with a home PC or terminal and a credit card account. (http://som.csudh.edu/fac/comm.htm for an early 90's accounting of the shift). From there, it was the Clinton Administration that strove to shift the Internet to a fully commercialized entity. Eventually even the most basic functionality of the Internet was handled by non-government entities and then, companies.

A fun read for techies: RFC 1192 - Commercialization of the Internet (RFC's were the community driven Bible / Binder for networking and thus, the standards documents for the Internet itself. RFC stands for "Request For Comments" as they were also a communication medium. Available over the the network, of course.
https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc1192/


(feel free to add any additional facts or events or corrections)