I’m sorry, but this article is inaccurate and substantially denigrates the role that Robert Taylor’s championship of ARPAnet and the funding he provided to build the equipment and the network used to try out the idea of packet switching, a la ARAPnet.
There are several fine books on the history of the Internet that accurately depict what really happened.
Given the right circumstances, small amounts of government funding for advanced technologies can be beneficial, and ARPA/DARPA has been one of the most successful of all the funding agencies. Like the Bell Labs of yore, visionary leaders unfettered by bureaucracy and politics would place bets on small groups of INDIVIDUAL geniuses and their ideas and then get the hell out of the way and let those geniuses do their thing in a conducive environment. At Bell Labs we got the transistor, satellite communications, information theory, the MASER, the LASER, cellular telephony and fiber optics, just to name a few of the peace-time revolutions fostered there with that model.
And ARPA/DARPA was instrumental in fostering the foundation technologies of the Internet using similar methods. That simply cannot be taken away from them and Robert Taylor.
However, what does NOT work is crony capitalism, a la our Communist-in-Chief Barrack Obama (which was never meant to accomplish anything but kickback taxpayer bucks to campaign fund bundlers anyway) or legions of ignorant bureaucrats shoveling taxpayer money by the truck-load to politically favored “researchers” pursuing politically favored theories (e.g., anthropogenic global warming, Darwinism, etc.)
I was present in academia during the post-ARAPnet to current Internet transition, and in fact, played a part in that transition, including performing the system engineering and obtaining grant funding for a short-lived transitional Internet technology post-ARPAnet that was used to boot-strap NSFnet.
I would also add that one of the absolute great and unsung heroes of the Internet saga is a fellow by the name of Stephen Wolff at the National Science foundation, who DISMANTLED and DEFUNDED NSFnet following its wild success in interconnecting the major university and civilian research centers around the nation. Most in academia thought Stephen was crazy, but I immediately understood his goal, namely to vastly expand to the whole world the reach of the Internet from just the elite few who were funded exclusively by the taxpayer, by having the government fund only PRIVATE enterprise to replace the academic NSFnet services which had heretofore been directly funded and operated by government entities.
Steven recognized that continuing with the NSFnet as a government-operated Internet stifled its expansion to the great unwashed masses outside of academia, and he recognized the enormous potential of this technology for the whole world, and he understood the massively building demand to expand NSFnet services.
Steven also recognized that private enterprise was the best way to expand the Internet, that competition for profit amongst private enterprise would vastly outstrip any feeble government Internet expansion efforts, as well as driving costs down due to competition, none of which was possible with a government Internet monopoly.
Steven’s visionary plan was to defund the direct operation of the NSFnet by government entities by defunding those entities and instead parceling out the same funds to the academic end-user-academic-institutions who would replace their previous NSFnet Internet connection by bidding for services from one or more private entities who would build NEW privately-operated Internets with the seed money from those bids. Once built for academia, the private networks could then expand to eventually encompass the whole world.
As we all know, Steven’s brilliant visionary plan worked, even though almost no one knows that there was in fact such a plan or that it was Steven’s!
Don’t get me wrong, NSFnet and its government funding was a VITAL step towards the world wide Internet. It was the testbed for the original commercial Internet equipment makers and the original communications links providers. It was in fact what allowed Cisco and many others to start up in the first place. But. And that’s a big but. Without Steven Wolff and his visionary plan to convert the successes of the government-operated NSFnet into a private-enterprise proposition, the Internet would have remained nothing more than a slightly glorified version of France’s defunct government-operated Minitel network.
Should the NSFnet have transpired today under the Obammunistic reign of terror, there would have been no Steven Wolff at the NSF as Obama has stocked all Federal agencies from top to bottom with those who must past his litmus test of fascist socialism.
Prior to Obama and his predecessor ilk, giants did indeed use to stride the earth: intellectual giants of individual genius, perseverance and accomplishment. Today our ground is trod merely by envious socialists who coast along on the past genius and work of others, and who spend no energy except to obstruct, denigrate and steal the accomplishments of those from the past, present, and future.
Think about it. What was the last transformational technology post-WWII that has occurred after:
1. The invention of the transistor,
2. Invention of the technologies for geosynchronous satellite communication,
3. Invention of the cellular telephone system,
4. Invention of the PC,
5. Invention of the Internet,
6. Invention of the solid-state laser,
7. Invention of fiber optics,
8. Invention of the integrated circuit,
9. Invention of the microprocessor?
Nothing like those transformative technologies have been invented during the last 20 years. Why is that?
Think about it. What was the last transformational technology post-WWII that has occurred after: 1. The invention of the transistor,
2. Invention of the technologies for geosynchronous satellite communication,
3. Invention of the cellular telephone system,
4. Invention of the PC,
5. Invention of the Internet,
6. Invention of the solid-state laser,
7. Invention of fiber optics,
8. Invention of the integrated circuit,
9. Invention of the microprocessor?
Nothing like those transformative technologies have been invented during the last 20 years. Why is that?
PCR - Polymerase Chain Reaction which is the basis for all of modern molecular biology, invented by some surfer dude out of Santa Cruz named Kary Mullis in '83, not inside your 20 year window, but think of all that flowed from the fruit of that tree since.
Oh, and Bob Taylor was an ass, world class.
I, for one, welcome our new Cybernetic Overlords /.