Computer History Museum
Remember ARPANET?
In the recent speech Republicans are pretending to find offensive, President Obama told supporters in Virginia, "The Internet didn't get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet."
Like the other parts of the speech, this went by unchallenged for several days before the right decided to attack. Gordon Crovitz, for example, published a Wall Street Journal op-ed, insisting the government had no meaningful role whatsoever in creating the Internet.
Soon after, Alex Pareene predicted, "I am very confident that 'The Government Had Nothing To Do With Inventing The Internet That Is a Liberal Lie' will become one of those wonderful myths that all true-believer conservatives subscribe to, like 'FDR and the New Deal made the Depression worse' and 'Reagan Was a Good President.'" And sure enough, the right has seized on the meme, with Rush Limbaugh and others denying the government's role.
This is all pretty silly. No one on the left is denying -- or would even want to deny -- the role the private sector has played in the development of the Internet, but the fact remains that these new conservative arguments have no basis in reality. Farhad Manjoo set the record straight this week.
Everyone in the tech world knows that the Internet got its start in the 1960s, when a team of computing pioneers at the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency designed and deployed ARPANET, the first computer network that used "packet switching" -- a communications system that splits up data and sends it across multiple paths toward its destination, which is the basic design of today's Internet. [...]
If you spend time looking at the history of the Internet, you'll find the government there at every step. Researchers working directly for the government and at university labs funded by the government were some of the first people on the planet to think up a worldwide network, and, at the beginning, they were the only people working to build such an outlandish thing. That's not true just of the Internet. Pop open your smartphone and you'll find government research at the heart of just about every component, from the batteries to the GPS chip to the microprocessor to the multitouch interface.
This doesn't mean that the government deserves all credit for creating your phone. But it does mean that President Obama was right -- in tech, no one does anything on his own.
The right apparently finds this terribly inconvenient, but the historical record doesn't much care about ideological agendas.
Paul Waldman summarized the facts perfectly: "Government invested money and time at the outset, when the basic research was being done, to create something with enormous potential. That potential was fully realized when the system was opened up to commercial traffic. Once people could make money via the Internet, it exploded across the globe. That growth made possible not only staggering amounts of wealth creation, but also lots of nonprofit endeavors like Wikipedia. Everybody won, and it took both public investment and private enterprise to make it happen. The story is a tribute to both government and the free market. Liberals are happy to acknowledge this simple and obvious truth. Why can't conservatives do the same?"
That need not be a rhetorical question.
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More liberal lies! Next, you'll say the government won World War 2 (really: Captain America did, all alone!)
Except we mustn't repeat the lie that Captain America was created thorough a government run project. Everyone knows that that supersoldier serum was a purely private project funded by a few farsighted multimillionaires, not one of whom ever earned a penny from a government contract.
Of all of the bull sh*t that we are subject to from the conservative media, what needs to be slammed the hardest by the mainstream media is the conservatives relentless pursuit of rewriting history, whether it be the Internet or school books in Texas or Kansas. This simply cannot go unchallenged or under reported.
The teapubs own the media and therefore, we get from the media what the teapubs want us to get. Their talking points on everything.
When Rush or any other Republican says that the Government had nothing to do with the creation of the internet. It's like saying Henry Ford had nothing to do with the creation of the Ford Automotive Company. They just happen to share the name.
And who built the roads for all the Fords to run on, without which they would be useless???
You know that in the early 1900's Ford built F-150's and Escalades. Any wingnut will tell you that because they exist today.
I mean GWB was told in 2004 or 2005 there was no Al-Quida in Iraq before we invaded. His reply was "They are there now"
Wingnuts are temporally challenged.
why of course they say that cause they have no idea what the internet tubes are.
Republicans don't understand the Internet. They think we're talking about "inner-tubes," which are used to float all their bullsh*t to the top.
True story: Back in the day, I was a staffer for the congressman who represented Boulder, CO. We held a Town Meeting at the NIST (National Institute of Standards & Technology -- used to be called the Bureau of Standards) lab. One of the lab's scientists asked the congressman why he didn't have an internet e-mail address: "All of us here at the lab communicate with other labs & government agencies via the internet." My fellow staffers and I, who were stationed in the back of the room, looked at each other & said, "What's the internet?" This was 1994.
Republicans are counting on the fact that most people think of the Internet beginning when they became aware of it. When I first got on the Internet, the only way you could was by one of three entry points: military/government, a university, or very a large corporation. There was no commercial access. You either got online by being on a network with an Internet connection, or through a dial-up connection to a Unix shell account on an Internet-connected network. Those were the days. Everything was FTP or telnet (and nobody would every say what fraking terminal emulation they were using, so you had to guess and invariably guessed wrong). Archie for searching. Pine for email. And the awful torture of being able to download a big file to your shell account in an instant, but then having to wait forever to download it from the shell account to your computer. Fun times.
My Dad was first a data processing tech in the sisties that used punch cards for bits and bytes binary code. (that looks like him in the photo-kidding)
I took a class in it fresh out of high school, but I was too busy partying to keep my attention focused. It was pretty bland stuff, but my Dad was the guy that wrote down his odometer mileage when he filled the tank of the car and calculated actual mileage for a hobby.
Oh, he was a government contractor working on missiles and testing, perhaps he was one working on Reagan's star wars. That would really need a computer network with firewalls and security.
Did I really do that? Yes, I did. Oy.
My first encounter with the internet--arpanet back then--was in 81-82, when a computer geek at my college dragged me over to a terminal and said "Look at this! It's so cool!" And he shows me a very standard terminal. He sits down and types an "a". The "a" is echoed on the screen. And he turns to me beaming. "That 'a' just traveled to California and back!" He was remotely logged in to a machine at a university in CA.
All funded by ARPA and supported by government grants.
Very large corporation retiree here. Oy, indeed. The intranets were connected through a series of wires and special equipment, but analog. Frequencies were fewer and simpler. That was when we mostly used the telephone to communicate and someone was there to answer. But the data was sent through those old terminals and sent to the main frame or computer.
Not a government job per se, but the need to serve national communication security and privacy was/still is the very utmost priority. Think of the bat-phone
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6FTLD6idBjA&feature=related
or the phone in the war room so very long ago.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20008776-503544.html
And yet again we see that there is absolutely no way to keep up with the stupidity of the modern American wingnuttery. Just not possible.
You know what's going to happen next time you're in the company of a few wingnut idiots, don't you? They'll puff out their chests and bellow out how ridiculous it is that someone would think it would be possible for the incompetent government to do something like "invent the Internet." They'll slap each other on the back and just guffaw at the ludicrous notion. They will be loud about it. They will be certain.
History has been rewritten. Seriously, people, (re)read "1984." That's exactly what is going on, brought to you by Rupert Murdoch.
Or rent Idiocracy the Documentary
Brawndo! - It's got electrolytes!
Who needs facts when you have dogma.
The government, especially the military, funds and develops new technology, with the private sector, that is ultimately passed on to the private sector for commercial development, which historically comes out of armed conflict. Major business development supported by the government. There are also many laws that business uses to gain support from the government on a regular basis without which business advancement would not happen.
Just as an aside, some of the most advanced medical developments come out of wars, which, historically, are funded primarily by Big Government. Am I lying? Ask a conservative and s/he will tell you that I am. And, some of the most profitable corporations are healthcare related using government-financed technology for profit.
Study "economic history of the United States 101." The "market" is really good at coming up with things for which there is a market. If there isn't a market to insure profit once whartever-it-is is done, the market can't find investors to do so on its own.
That's why it took government initiative for every economic development, government creating the conditions for a market to operate within, for innovation to happen. Take a look at the Erie Canal (government supporting investors with tax policy), the transcontinental railroad (government surveyors finding the route, government providing the land and the commercial incentives for investors).
When you drive today on a concrete freeway built of pre-stressed concrete sections, do you ever worry about whether or not the pre-stressed concrete sections are really solid? How do the builders know it is solid and safe? How do you know without breaking it open, which defeats the purpose? They know because a government scientist (my father) was asked to come up with a way to make sure that pre-stressed concrete sections were solid, when the Bureau of Reclamation decided to use that in constructing dams (something where you really need to know it's solid). There was no "market" out there investigating the question because there was no market. But once he invented it (without getting into technical detail I don't understand that well myself, it involves sending a signal from one end to the other, and the laws of physics tell you what the elapsed time should be; the percentage difference between the actual result and the laws-of-physics expected result is the percentage of air between the two points), construction using pre-stressed concrete really took off. Had he done it privately, licensing it would have made him a very rich man. But as he said "I only did it because I worked for the government and they were the only ones asking the question." So all the little Romneys out there get to use that information for free, no licensing fee involved, since it was a government invention.
See, trolls? That's how it works, you bloody ignorant morons.
OK, Govt invented the internet. So what? It was worthless until someone had an idea for it, and the money to pursue it. You know, business.
Actually, TCP/IP wasn't worthless.
Read the above, moron. Nobody is going to come up with an idea to use something until there is something to use. Which they aren't going to come up with since there's nothing to use it on, until it exists.
Before the internet became open to the masses. It had a purpose and it wasn't 'worthless'. It just did not have any value to business or the average consumer. It had plenty of value to the Military and Universities that were using it at the time.
Having no value and having no value to a certain sect of people. Are two completely different things.
The people who had the idea and the money to pursue the idea that is now the internet. Was not Business, it was the government. Or did you not just read the article that you can't help but troll on?
It's just freaking amazing how stupid the wingnuttery is. Business will only pursue what it thinks is in its short-term interest and will reap profits, or it will pursue long-term interests in keeping itself in business which usually results in anti-competitive, anti-capitalistic machinations in making the market stay like it is or even more so. Business will almost never engage in the basic research that is required to advance human understanding and from which the true new ideas result. UPS, FedEx, etc., exists as it is today because of the germs of operations research in mathematics and long-forgotten mathematicians pondering curious seemingly worthless problems like the four-color map problem, etc. These things WILL never be taken up by businesses and yet without them society would be severely, severely diminished.
The stupidity, the myopia, the Know Nothing-ness, the ungratefullness of the modern American wingnut and liberertarian kooks are just nauseating.
Actually Shooter back in the day a lot of us hobbyists were messing around with something called FIDONET but we all abandoned it when we got access to the Internet. FIDONET went down overnight.
The Internet was never worthless. Before it became the backbone for political blogs and other porn, it was used by government employees and contractors to quickly communicate with each other. It was especially important for the defense department.
Shooter, do you know who practically invented the Electronic Health Record everybody takes for granted now days. The doctors, nurses, and IT people at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The Hardhats of the VistA system pioneered electronic medical record keeping at the enterprise level from the ground up.
There are lots of other things the government has pioneered that have enormous commerical application. Sometimes the government doesn't know what it has, but there are some pretty smart inventive people working for our government.
Calvin and Ron,
As I said, the Govt invented the internet. Using it as a digital form of smoke signals, for some 30 years, did nothing for the rest of us. You remember the rest of us out here in the flyover country, yes?
The point is that Govt sat on it's ass for decades... because it doesn't understand the internet's application potential for fun and profit. Who knows if the cure for cancer is sitting on shelf somewhere, worthless, because Govt. doesn't know it or doesn't care?
So what? How about so the claim that the government didn't invent the Internet is a lie?
And and how about the fact that the need to perpetuate that lie rather than acknowledge the underlying reality that government funded infrastructure is essential to the ability of the private sector to create wealth reveals the fundamental moral and intellectual of the right?
And, how about the fact that that moral and intellectual bankruptcy is a consequence of the real problem in our economy and our society, which is the transition of the top 1%'s wealth creation and accumulation model from one that is philosophically and in practical effect commensal to one that is entirely parasitic?
You're an non-self-reflecting, incurious, intellectually-challenged idiot. It doesn't have to show up in your daily life or on some market for you to have gained by it. What you don't know can help you, Mr. Mitty. And clearly you have a problem learning new concepts since you've already been informed that things have to be invented before they can be used.
No Shooter, the point is that without the research and investment done by the government, the Internet would not be what it is today, helping so many corporations make so much money with it.
And since private industry did not create the Internet and has not produced a cure for cancer, I assume you will acknowledge that it too is sitting on its ass, right?
So much fun to point out the shortcomings in your thought process.
Jeebus, which part of the declarative sentence "the Govt invented the internet." are you two not understanding? Do you all always act like a-holes when someone agrees with you?
That said, it was still business that made networks universal and commercial. So far as I know Govt has nothing to do with the internet, especially after the brou-ha-ha over the NSA listening in.
This is like comparing a wheel barrow to a Maybach. They both can carry people, but....
Ordinarily, the words "so what?" connote agreement with a fact but disagreement with a contention regarding the significance of the fact. At least, that's what they mean in the sane world. It's not clear to me that words have any fixed meaning to you guys in Fox Nation.
You're not agreeing with anybody, ahole, because then you would have to give the government its true due. And that would make your pathetic defense of the Fox/Romney/Republican manufactured lie about bootstrappy-economic-entrepreneur-islands-unto-themselves doing it ALL by themselves moot.
Or, hey, if you want to admit you and Fox/romney/Republicans are wrong about all that, that would be a personal achievement for you and we'll take that walkback as your admission of error.
"Before the internet became open to the masses. It had a purpose and it wasn't 'worthless'. It just did not have any value to business or the average consumer." Not true. The true internet was created out of the ashes of ARPAnet precisely because it had become too useful to business and consumers, and the DOD was tired of paying for it.
Since almost any company of size has either defense contracts or ties to universities, almost all companies were hooked up through what ARPAnet had become--and services like Compuserve and AOL connected the rest. When the DOD announced they were going to defund the network it was a huge crisis--lots of commerce depended on it and there was no obvious way to keep it going.
So Congress stepped in and created the modern internet by providing a funding system and organizational structure that would take over from the DOD. That's why Gore was correct when he said he had a part in "creating" the internet--though he lacked the balls to stand behind his assertion.
Shooter, I don't get it. How do you manage to be such a consistent troll? Anyway..
So, government involvement in the internet. Let's see here...The government pays most broadband providers subsidies - we're talking billions here. Usually with the intent of providing said broadband to communities that can't otherwise get it. Generally those conditions are ignored, but they do use the money for...something. Probably fancy hats.
What, investing billions in the infrastructure necessary for the internet isn't enough? Okay, how about paying for research into newer materials with which to build internet infrastructure? Some is being done privately, sure, but the government is in on it too. Nothing will ever be enough for you; You HAVE to be right, the free market HAS to be responsible for everything good in the world, or you have to face the fact that you're wrong. And nobody likes being wrong.
Cokehead, he is doing "his job", to keep people talking about whatever the Republicans want to talk about. He's been exposed by Rollo as encouraging people to go on "leftist" sites and talk nicely, because "they hate that". I mostly ignore it. There are quite a few that wish to talk about their framing of topics, or tell us tboth parties are equally awful. Opinions and disagreements are fine, but I try not to get derailed so much. Then they call you a coward or something. All so routine.
Let's not forget that "Military-Industrial Complex", where tax dollars fund the research, and corporations build the gizmos, which they then sell to the military. With the help of retired Generals, now lobbying for those corporations.
Not unlike the whore/pimp relationship. I'm not sure which is which, but I dang well know who the John is!
WOW! Who cares? Well, maybe Al Gore .
Well, apparently somebody cares enough to try to rewrite history. Who would that be and why? Clearly the Republicans are interested in trying to rewrite the history or their most significant mind-masters wouldn't be taking the time. Too bad they're just wrong.
Yes, Government Researchers Really Did Invent the Internet | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
Vint Cerf: Connecting with an Internet Pioneer, 40 Years Later: Scientific American
Yes, Government Researchers Really Did Invent the Internet | Observations, Scientific American Blog Network
So why do Republicans want to rewrite history? It's so difficult to figure out, isn't it? Because they want to convince others that it is business that provides the engine that drives the society. Ain't gonna work, wingnut. The creativity that drives the society is intellectual, and that is something rarely seen in business, and even more rarely is intellectual creativity found in business. Selfish interest is though.
If others took the words of President Obama out of context and it meant nothing. Why then, even now with Romney is England vowing to say nothing against the president, do you still try to justify the Roanoke Va speech?
Because you know Obama is wrong!
"You, you didn't build that" And this alone could cost him the election.
Let's see it again..........
There are a lot of wealthy, successful Americans who agree with me -- because
they want to give something back. They know they didn’t -- look, if you’ve been
successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your
own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just
so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I
worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something -- there are a
whole bunch of hardworking people out there. (Applause.)
If you were successful, somebody along the line gave you some help.
There was a great teacher somewhere in your life. Somebody helped to create
this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive.
Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business -- you didn’t
build that. Somebody else made that happen. The Internet didn’t get invented
on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies
could make money off the Internet.
The point is, is that when we succeed, we succeed because of our
individual initiative, but also because we do things together. There are some
things, just like fighting fires, we don’t do on our own. I mean, imagine if
everybody had their own fire service. That would be a hard way to organize
fighting fires.
So we say to ourselves, ever since the founding of this country, you know
what, there are some things we do better together. That’s how we funded the GI
Bill. That’s how we created the middle class. That’s how we built the Golden
Gate Bridge or the Hoover Dam. That’s how we invented the Internet. That’s how
we sent a man to the moon. We rise or fall together as one nation and as one
people, and that’s the reason I’m running for President -- because I still
believe in that idea. You’re not on your own, we’re in this together.
(Applause.)
msnbc & Obama are desperate dudes......... you gotta a crappy defense like the NE Patriots and Romney (like the NY Giants) have the ball with all their time outs and plenty of time to score!
Desperate!
Sorry Paddy? Pattie? Patty? Paddie? It just ain't gonna work. No matter how many lame sports analogies you use.
Desperate is a term that I would apply to you Patty. Word is seeping out that Romney and the Republicans simply took Obama's words out of context. What you are doing is the verbal equivalent of photoshopping a picture.
Bringing up FedEx is an interersting point, because it was developed out of operating procedures and technologies created by the government. The ability to track a parcel in the system was developed by Air Transport Command of the USAF during the Berlin Blockade (read Richard Reeves' "Daring Young Men," an excellent history of this event). Additionally, the ability to fly in all weather regardless was also the result of technology developed by the government during the Berlin Blockade. The whole business of overnight delivery was created by the government in developing a system of supply for the Vietnam War. FedEx and the others came along and put the systems to commercial use, but they would never have been developed on their own by commercial users.
All the logistics used by UPS, FedEx, the Post Office, etc., was created by mathematicians pondering optimization problems of either the curious game-like kind or even of a practical nature for defense purposes. These companies would be mere inefficient dinosaurs without that sort of intellectual achievement which was NOT the result of trying to build a company like UPS, FedEx, etc. This is something our buffoon trolls simply can't fathom because they have neither the intellect, the curiosity or the academic achievement to have seen it first hand.
It's simply sickening to have to read their doltish input or listen to it in its manifestation at the highest levels of the Republican party and conservative intelligentsia or what passes for it. The conservative movement is simply intellectually bankrupt from the Republican party to all the idiotic "think tanks" putting out their transparent propaganda. Just nauseating.
I'm perfectly content to let the Republicans make this their whole campaign. Because no matter how irresponsibly ignorant Americans are about their politics, they are NOT THIS stupid. As long as Democrats aggressively pursue the Warren/Obama message on this -- and you always have to fear Democratic cowardice -- Democrats are going to win this. Democrats should even spoil for a fight on it. Goad the Republicans to keep it up and just provide example after example to show the vacuity of everything they say.
So many inconvenient truths, so little time. The lie machine will be working 24/7. Perhaps they can try to burn all the history in the microwave oven NASA invented and try to erase all the video/ audio with an industrial magnet.
The historical record is not impervious to bias. Conservatives know that if they set the parameters of the debate and control the narrative, they win. We all know that Al Gore didn't invent the internet, but too many people actually believe that that is what he claimed. John Kerry was a legitimate war hero running for office against a chicken hawk Air Force deserter, but proper control of the narrative injected enough doubt into the debate to get by. Climate change is undeniable, and yet a substantial portion of the people in control of policy deny it and get re-elected. In the end history is always written by the winners. If the GOP can control the narrative today, their version of history will survive.
There is a way to beat that: go right back at them. Spoil for a fight on it. And if Democrats do that, they will win. But we always have to worry about Democratic fortitude and steadfastness.
Michael Hiltzik
Gordon Crovitz of the Wall Street Journal's editorial page reopens the ancient debate over who invented the Internet with a column Monday calling out the notion that it was the government as an "urban legend."
And while I'm gratified in a sense that he cites my book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning," to support his case, it's my duty to point out that he's wrong. My book bolsters, not contradicts, the argument that the Internet had its roots in the ARPANet, a government project.
http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-mo-who-invented-internet-20120723,0,5052169.story
Thanks. Most of here know that, but there are a few government-haters who are interested in re-writing this history.
All of this is why I am hopeful the Navy -- in spite of stiff Congressional objections -- will continue to push to develop a biofuel that will permit them to establish green-fleets. If the military can make it happen then private industry will follow suit. Perhaps, then, this nation will finally do something that might help with climate change. The government -- as always -- will have led the way. And the Repubs can claim ownership.......
After 30 years of Team Republican climate denial, it's too late for Republicans to claim ownership of any solutions. They need to lie prostrate at the feet of the future and beg for mercy on their legacies.
Holy Guacamole, I think the nutters are actually pissed that the Gubmint did invent the internet, even Al Gore had a small part to play in the use of the internet for classroom connectivity.
While this article corrects the revisionist Republican portrayal of the historical record it still does not give the government enough credit and overplays the participation of the private sector.
I was looking at a history of the computer. Windows and the mouse were also invented during the 60's...it's a space race thing. The people who make the big bucks finding consumer uses for these things are not the inventors. The money they make is reward enough. Give the creative credit where it is due, and to me, the creative end is a lot more interesting than those other guys.
Folks shouldn't get the "World Wide Web" (WWW) confused with the "Internet". The Internet was indeed invented by government. Private industry saw its potential and expanded it But it's doubtful the WWW as we know it today would not have come about without the Gov't invention of the Internet.
Likewise, the automobile wasn't invented by Henry Ford. He created a way to mass produce cars so average people like you and me could afford one. (and thus the beginnings of what we know today as "the middle class".) However, without Ford's ingenuity, only folks like Mitt Romney would own cars today.
It's also likely we'd be using steam-driven cars to get to work today (not a bad idea considering their lower pollution output.)
That's true. I think people often do confuse the web with the Internet. I and some others posting here don't because we go back far enough to know that by experience. I can even remember the utter confusion I first experienced when I realized that a new protocol, http, had been added on top of ftp, telnet and gopher, and that a new program called lynx had been added to work with it. I wasn't sure what the point of it was at first. In time I did, obviously, and the bookmark list I generated back then is in a way still with me now as it's been exported from system to system over the years. There's only one link that remains unaltered from that time, http://nitro9.earth.uni.edu/doctor/homepage.html, which regrettably has recently stopped working (but I think I'll keep it just so I can point at it and say, "See that, Jimmy? That hyperlink is older than you are!").