

The Day the Infant Internet Uttered its First Words - Flopsy
http://www.cs.ucla.edu/about/history/the-day-the-infant-internet-uttered-its-first-words

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cperciva
The Internet has obviously had many "beginnings" at different points in time,
but to me this seems like the most natural one: To me, the most essential
characteristic of the Internet is that it involves computers talking to each
other electronically, rather than merely computers talking to people (e.g.,
terminals) or reading and writing to physical media (punched cards, magnetic
tape, etc).

In that light: Can we do anything later this year to celebrate the Internet's
45th birthday? I'd love to get some media attention on the _45th_ part there
-- I think the popular media often treats the Internet without adequate
gravitas out of a mistaken belief that it only came to exist in the mid-90s,
while in fact the Internet is very much middle-aged.

I don't have anything particular in mind, I'm just throwing this out to the HN
community for brainstorming. :-)

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rootbear
I guess I'm too much of a pedant, but I don't consider the ARPAnet to have
been the Internet in any significant way. The whole point of the "inter-" in
Internet is that it's a network of networks. It also uses a different protocol
from the ARPAnet. And there were computer networks before the ARPAnet. The
real innovation of the ARPAnet was packet switching. In that sense, it is the
precursor of the Internet, the proof of concept.

Perhaps a better argument in favor of the ARPAnet as baby Internet is that the
early Internet culture was largely carried over from the ARPAnet.

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pcunite
"... lo, I am with you always ..." Matthew 28:20

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rockydoc
looks like they were actually trying to type 'lolz'

