On Memorial Day, the tradition is to remember lost loved one and veterans of the military. I find today fitting to remember one military creation, which sparked a social change so enormous that we are still feeling the shockwaves today. I’m talking about the birth of the internet.
Advances in technology during World War II led the way for the computer age. The Cold War followed, keeping military spending levels high, which spurred more technological advances in computers. Researchers at MIT suggested linking university and government computers together. They saw it as a way to increase computing power for scientific research and also as a defensive tactic against a Soviet attack. With the computer spread all over the country it would be difficult to take out the whole network. In 1962, Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency took over the research and by 1969 had a prototype that hooked up four universities in the southwest United States. It was called ARPANET.
“I don’t think any of us had any idea of what the implications of this would be in the long run,” said internet pioneer Vint Cerf who worked on the ARPANET project. “We knew that we were exploring new territories.”
The network continued to expand and in 1972 the first e-mail was sent. During the 1970’s, other universities outside of ARPANET created expanded their own campus computer networks to aid research. Users also increased during this time as giant computers became smaller, which increased the amount of computers the university had around campus.
During the 1980’s, the personal computer gave birth to the digital revolution. Universities wanted to create a communications network for faculty and students who now had use of personal computers. Some universities began creating their own networks and then linking them with other universities. That led to the National Science Foundation creating NSFNET through a public-private partnership. It linked university networks to supercomputers which became the foundation of the modern internet.
What is next in the growth of the internet? Cale Guthrie Weissman with Business Insider reports that US control over the internet is switching to more international control. The National Telecommunications and Information Administration announced in March of 2014 that they support the “multistakeholder model of Internet governance” and are moving towards that.
It has Vint Cerf worried that it could break the internet into “warring fiefdoms” that will not work together well. Internet governing leaders who recently gathered for a conference at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs were supportive of the transition. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) will fully take over the Internet’s domain name system (DNS) from NTIA in September of this year. There has been much speculation about what the repercussions will be, good and bad.