Internet Turns 35 Today

shadowspar writes "The CBC is reporting that the Internet turned 35 today. The story talks about the less-than-prophetic beginnings of the net: 'In order to log in to the two-computer network, which was then called ARPANET, programmers at UCLA were to type in 'log', and Stanford would reply 'in'. The UCLA programmers only got as far as 'lo' before the Stanford machine crashed.'"

1968

[Trurl's Machine]

1968 was an important year in world history, no doubt about it. In 1998, there was a wave of documentaries, books and essays about that year. The authors focused on yippies [colorado.edu] trashing democratic convention in Chicago, Warsaw Pact invading Czechoslovakia [globalsecurity.org], student uprising in Paris [utoronto.ca], Mexico massacre [worldpress.org], flower-power, maoism, Vietnam war, Beatles recording white album or Che Guevara in Bolivia.

Almost nobody noticed that 1968 was also the year when Noyce an Moore founded Intel [computerhope.com], Douglas Engelbart demoed [stanford.edu] for the fist time GUI, mouse and word processing, UCLA and Stanford started to build their networking connection. Even today, scholars seem not to notice the relevance of these facts.

Re:a graph of internet growth?

[aacool]

THe growth of the Internet is http://www.icdri.org/technology/indexbp.htm#d1 [icdri.org] here

Other useful charts are at http://navigators.com/stats.html [navigators.com]

A map of global internet connectivity is http://navigators.com/globe16b.gif [navigators.com]here

The real question is - where does the Internet go from here?

Didn't this already happen?

[flycrg]

I seem to remember that the internet apparently already turned 35. Well heres the link to the slashdot post about it. So who's right, CNN or CBC? http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/08/29/225625 9&tid=95&tid=1 [slashdot.org]

A great book on this topic

[patjenk]

Katie Hafner wrote a great book entitled "Where Wizards Stay Up Late" thats all about the creation of the arpanet. It is more focused on the work that was going on in Boston and I believe MIT at the time than the specific stanford happenings but has a ton of information on both. This is a very interesting read. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684 832674/qid=1099089921/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/102-7568 317-3623330?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

Vint Cerf

[Anonymous Coward]

...has some interesting comments on his collaboration with Robert Kahn and where the net is headed in his blog [mci.com].

Re:Story summary sounds fake...

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you're ignorant and choose not to investigate for yourself doesn't make the story fake. It is very true; the Stanford system had a form of auto-complete which attempted to complete the word "login" when it saw "log". The UCLA system wasn't expecting to see any data at that point and it promptly crashed when it recieved "in" back from the Stanford machine.

Re:Man

[Flashbck]

Considering this monumentous occasion. I suggest everyone head on over to ebaumsworld and check out the 70's/80's video [ebaumsworld.com] about "Internet" and how great it is!

CBC news report on "Internet"

[xdc]

That was interesting. At one point in the video, I saw a 1992 copyright flash across a screen, so this video [ebaumsworld.com] must date from circa 1992.

Re:Didn't this already happen?

[blue trane]

According to the article linked from that story, "computer scientists at UCLA linked two bulky computers using a 15-foot gray cable, testing a new way to exchange data over networks" and "Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf were among the graduate students who joined UCLA professor Len Kleinrock in an engineering lab on September 2, 1969, as bits of meaningless test data flowed silently between the two computers."

The CBC article linked from the present story:
"After the hardware was put in place, researchers at UCLA attempted on Oct. 29, 1969, to log in to a computer at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif."

So, the first "birthday" was meaningless bits of test data between two computers in the same room, this "birthday" is the first connection (and attempt at a meaningful natural language exchange) between computers in geographically separate locations.

Re:Now tell Joe Beer this.

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you tried going from (example) HP-UX administration to Solaris administration without knowing how to work with the other system's needlessly complex system management interfaces? Although the basic system user interface and command-line tool sets are identical, you might as well be starting out on a completely new system.

Re:Didn't this already happen?

[isny]

Well, according to this article [pcworld.com], the internet just turned 20 last year.
Here's one [dailywireless.org] that said it turned 35 last month.
Here's yet another one [slashdot.org] at a reputable site [slashdot.org] that has it as 20 years ago, but this was Dec 31, 2002.
Any reason to celebrate, I guess.

Re:1968

[Anonymous Coward]

... the hotbeds of psychedelic activity and the hotbeds of technical activity and finds them rather well seperated in space, and slightly seperated in time ...

You don't know what you're talking about. The computer science dept at UCLA at that time was definitely a hotbed of psychedelic activity.

Re:21

[Alric]

I know you're joking, and I do appreciate the humor of Gore's choice of words.

However, it should be noted that Gore's words in a CNN interview, as quoted by Wired News, were as
follows:
"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the
initiative in creating the Internet."

Gore's meaning was fairly obvious: that he was one of the critical political supporters of the Internet. This is absolutely true. Without his support in the Congress, the Internet would have matured less quickly.

He never claimed to have "invented" anything. His efforts did help "create" the Internet though. And it is an accomplishment to be lauded...not mocked.

I wish people would stop misrepresenting this fact.