Happy Belated Birthday
I’m lousy with dates. So this is a belated birthday notice for the 40th birthday of the internet.
It was born on September 2, 1969 at UCLA when two computers in a lab passed data using an very early version of IP (Internet Protocol) using a short cable. This was part of an ARPA-funded research project lead by BBN in Cambridge. By the end of the year, a nascent network was formed with SRI, UC Santa Barbara, and University of Utah. This was the beginnings of the backbone of the internet. Years later, at the University of Florida, I helped connect up some Computer Science Dept machines to this backbone network through first a daily, then an hourly dialup.
Most machines were not continuously connected at that time. By the time I started using the ‘net the major uses were email and “netnews” traffic traveling in a store-and-forward manner. This was also before the name@domain email address format was widely used. You had to know the route your email was to take and manually put it in the address like name!machine!secondmachine!thirdmachine!…!ultimatedestinationmachine. This was called the bang path address (the “!” is referred to as a “bang”) and used UUCP instead of the more recent sendmail system. We would use this to route mail from our own accounts, around the country, then back to our account to learn the network. It was like you had to be able to tell the postman how to deliver mail.
Netnews was the Usenet network. It was (and is) a large connection of, well, basically internet forums to trade information, discuss various topics, etc. In those days it was largely content driven and not full of spam and malicious cross-postings as it is today. I’ve not looked at it for years as it became largely unusable when the web browsers vastly expanded the internet population. Today Google and others have put it on the web. Old tech doesn’t go away, it just becomes a niche in the new tech.
The protocols have changed, in some cases drastically changed. (See the early RFC (Request For Comments - the internet standards documents) sometime to understand some of the technical history. They’re fascinating reading if you’re into that! One large part of my eduction in network protocols was reading all of those.) There’s been vast expansions in capabilities, in people using the ‘net, and resulting changes in the culture of the ‘net. The biggest change was of course Tim Berners-Lee’s introduction of the web server and web browser. He’s often credited with the browser, but one with out the other is like having syrup, but no pancakes.
Change is inevitable of course. In fact as the curious mammals we are, we might say change is required for us to live. However it is nice to once and a while look back and examine our path to where we are now. Doing so provides lessons for our future choices sometimes, and just appreciation for what we’ve done.