

Who really invented the internet? - zader
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518.html

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_delirium
This is a strange and pretty sloppy article. For example:

 _If the government didn't invent the Internet, who did? Vinton Cerf developed
the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit
for hyperlinks._

How is that a counterexample? Those are two examples of the government
inventing key parts of the internet! Tim Berners-Lee worked for CERN, and
Vinton Cerf worked for DARPA (and during some of the time at UCLA and
Stanford... pursuant to DARPA grants).

Plenty of other problems, such as attempting to minimize the role of ARPANet,
which is just absurd. I'd nominate the following article as a better starting
point, and chalk the WSJ op-ed up to election-year silliness:
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet>

~~~
jeffool
It's weird how some seem to grasp "government" as some golem made of paper and
red tape, and not humans. Or as if anything not done by an elected official is
not government.

------
expaand
The only accurate statement in this article is that the government resisted
commercial use of the the internet for a long time.

The rest it total garbage, written by someone who denies _facts_ to promote an
agenda. This is what is really sad. I mean, come on, the government (primarily
DOD) _of course_ spearheaded ARPANET, NSFNET, etc. which morphed into the
internet we know of today. It's indisputable - _funding_ poured into
universities, and into private contractors (like BB&N) to work on this. Even
Silicon Valley itself, it can be argued, wouldn't be here if it weren't for
the government in the early days.

This is not to say that the government is wonderful, or that it is good, or
should be larger in our lives, or anything like that - but, a FACT is a FACT.
These birthers and creationists and other deniers just make up things to fit
their models. To me, that is incredibly dangerous.

And note that the guy who wrote this article has "impressive" credentials -
Yale, law school, Rhodes Scholar. But he doesn't _have a clue_ about how
modern technology works! (equating Xerox's Ethernet with the "internet", for
example). This is pathetic, and pathetic that the "venerated" Wall Street
Journal would publish this nonsense.

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hollerith
What a misinformed article! the passage easiest to shoot down is where the
author shows that he thinks "the Ethernet" was some sort of network of
networks:

>the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks.

Does anyone know what aspect of Ethernet the author might be misinterpreting
here?

------
Flemlord
The first paragraph explains the context of the article:

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."

This seems designed to discredit Obama's claim that the government performs
useful functions. The WSJ was acquired by Rupert Murdoch a few years ago (Fox
News). Since then, the editorial page has been politicized.

~~~
_delirium
> Since then, the editorial page has been politicized

The editorial page has been politicized for a long time; I'm not sure that
particular issue can be blamed on Murdoch. In the '80s it was a huge supply-
side economics and Reagan cheerleader.

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easp
Par for the course for the opinion/editorial pages of the WSJ. If they are
this sloppy and dishonest on subjects one knows about, how can they be trusted
on any subject.

