Posted on 07/23/2012 7:06:51 AM PDT by Pharmboy
Contrary to legend, it wasn't the federal government, and the Internet had nothing to do with maintaining communications during a war.
A telling moment in the presidential race came recently when Barack Obama said: "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." He justified elevating bureaucrats over entrepreneurs by referring to bridges and roads, adding: "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet."
It's an urban legend that the government launched the Internet. The myth is that the Pentagon created the Internet to keep its communications lines up even in a nuclear strike. The truth is a more interesting story about how innovation happens—and about how hard it is to build successful technology companies even once the government gets out of the way.
For many technologists, the idea of the Internet traces to Vannevar Bush, the presidential science adviser during World War II who oversaw the development of radar and the Manhattan Project....
...by the 1960s technologists were trying to connect separate physical communications networks into one global network—a "world-wide web." The federal government was involved, modestly, via the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. Its goal was not maintaining communications during a nuclear attack, and it didn't build the Internet. Robert Taylor, who ran the ARPA program in the 1960s, sent an email to fellow technologists in 2004 setting the record straight: "The creation of the Arpanet was not motivated by considerations of war. The Arpanet was not an Internet. An Internet is a connection between two or more computer networks."
If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did?
(Excerpt) Read more at professional.wsj.com ...
Vanavar Bush? Even if the government did invent it, a Bush being involved in it is irony at its sweetest.
Is the power plant building still standing?
-— “Government research created the Internet so that all companies could make money off the Internet.”
I agree that Obama’s statement shows his misunderstanding:
a) It was NOT the government’s MOTIVE to “create the internet so that companies could make money off it”
b) This shows Obama’s clear misunderstanding of how free markets work. He thinks government’s lofty hand is always guiding free enterprise, but it’s the reverse: It hinders free enterprise. And IN SPITE OF government, free enterprise always brings innovation to the market because of THE PROFIT INCENTIVE.
I beleive so, and with the original turbines
I was on Compuserve and used their boards. Since we had to pay for the long distance call some idiots would waste hundreds a month in “chat” rooms.
I just used the bulletin boards that were very similar to FR. To save money I’d log in, download the messages to me and a few topics then log off. You could respond offline. Then log back in, load your responses, and get back off.
Then they started giving us about 30 free minutes a month so that kept me from wasting money.
And, of course, it eventually became unlimited usage for one price. But by that time Yahoo had come out and made a lot of the features on Compuserve redundant (AOL also).
I remember the first time I bought a 2400 baud rate modem for $170. I thought I was on the cutting edge! lol
I had heard it was Scientist and people in the Medical field. Am I wrong?
SAME HERE!!! :) :D My day just got brightened!
“Xerox’s copier business was lucrative for decades, but the company eventually had years of losses during the digital revolution. Xerox managers can console themselves that it’s rare for a company to make the transition from one technology era to another.”
The IBM Division in Germany in 1973 developed a piece of software for a German company to tie a number of tables together to support the firm’s accounting requirements. They sold the software and then the “Home Office” found out. They explained IBM was in the equipment business and not software business. The creators quit, bought the rights back from the customer and formed a business called SAP. Today SAP is one of the primier software companies on the planet.
The USAF had SAGE (Semi-Automatic Ground Environment) sectors all over the U.S. I used a grease pencil and piece of tin plastic to run intercepts with fighters on “unknowns”. The SAGE controllers used the largest vacuum tube computer in the world. The diesel engines used to power the air conditioners was as big as a small apartment complex.
The father of a girl I dated in college, Col. Tate, if I remember correctly, was instrumental in helping to decentralize communications in case of war, nuclear or otherwise. He and I had a long talk in the early 80’s about why it was necessary and that the civilian component, Universities and Colleges at the time, were crucial to keeping it up in case one area was brought down. He had a lot of “inside” knowledge of how it worked and he even talked about how civilians may someday be the bulk of the users, but in time of war, it would belong to the military.
AUTOVON or AUTODIN?
My pleasure. I learned more from the thread than from the article.
AutoDIN?
AutoSeVoComm?
Way too many in the military. What I hated was recursive acronyms.
??
“Sham-Wow was invented in the last 10 years.”
Oh, yeah. I forgot.
Interesting, thanks Pharmboy!
Did you have an IP address ?
what is autodin
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