Internet Studies

Ian Peter is trying to find an answer to who really invented the Internet but all he does is prove that the US didn’t invent the Internet. I think that he might have had a problem with his definition of what he was looking for; was it concepts and ideas of an Internet, the actual transmission of the first packets, the protocols that control the transmission, the hardware and infrastructure or the GUI applications?

One of the arguments in the article I truly agree with is its ending paragraph:

Multiple events, multiple players, and multiple points of origin need to be mentioned in any sensible understanding of the emergence of the Internet. Any claim by a nation, project, person, or team of individuals, or participants in any single event to “the beginnings of the Internet” is rubbish. Further, any claim that the validity or legitimacy of any structure or arrangement can be justified as Internet governance purely because it arose from one of these events is false.

How could we really define the start of the Internet? It is a process that multiple events contributed to its creation. Another example could be the creation of the first form of colour photographic reproduction. The Lumiere brothers developed the first properly viable colour photographic process in 1907 and it used on ideas a James Clark Maxwell had demonstrated more than 40 years earlier (1). Besides how does anything start? If you ask me it starts with an idea but an idea is not enough to turn into a reality.

Further more, the decision on what events were the most significant can be a relative opinion. One of the exercises in NET11 is to select what are the five most important steps in the history of the Internet. There was not one student that selected the same five events.

Another thing that seems sounds like sour grapes is the position taken against the US:
Quoting Kim Veltman (emphaisis is mine):

It seems false to claim that America invented the Internet and is simply misleading to argue that because America invented the Internet, it is their right to control its governance through organizations such as the Internet Assigned Names Authority (IANA) and more recently the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

I am not trying to argue against this claim but the reality is that the Internet has developed firstly in the USA before spreading to the rest of the world. How else will you explain the concentration of services available in the states? Or how come the international TLD, which every new business desires is the .com and not .com.us? On the other, why isn’t the governance authorities located in Switzerland, home of CERN?

In the end, though, it was another way to learn about the history of the Internet, by sharing some of the gossip with us, the readers.

1. Tom Fraser and Adam Banks, 2004, Designer’s Color Manual, Part 2 Chapter 4 Page 84

Link: Peter Ian (May 2005), So, who really did invent the Internet?
and a summary at Circle ID