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View Full Version : If the government or Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, who did?




lx43
07-23-2012, 07:39 PM
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518.html


Vinton Cerf developed the TCP/IP protocol, the Internet's backbone, and Tim Berners-Lee gets credit for hyperlinks.

But full credit goes to the company where Mr. Taylor worked after leaving ARPA: Xerox. It was at the Xerox PARC labs in Silicon Valley in the 1970s that the Ethernet was developed to link different computer networks. Researchers there also developed the first personal computer (the Xerox Alto) and the graphical user interface that still drives computer usage today.

According to a book about Xerox PARC, "Dealers of Lightning" (by Michael Hiltzik), its top researchers realized they couldn't wait for the government to connect different networks, so would have to do it themselves. "We have a more immediate problem than they do," Robert Metcalfe told his colleague John Shoch in 1973. "We have more networks than they do." Mr. Shoch later recalled that ARPA staffers "were working under government funding and university contracts. They had contract administrators . . . and all that slow, lugubrious behavior to contend with."

As for the government's role, the Internet was fully privatized in 1995, when a remaining piece of the network run by the National Science Foundation was closed—just as the commercial Web began to boom. Blogger Brian Carnell wrote in 1999: "The Internet, in fact, reaffirms the basic free market critique of large government. Here for 30 years the government had an immensely useful protocol for transferring information, TCP/IP, but it languished. . . . In less than a decade, private concerns have taken that protocol and created one of the most important technological revolutions of the millennia."

It's important to understand the history of the Internet because it's too often wrongly cited to justify big government. It's also important to recognize that building great technology businesses requires both innovation and the skills to bring innovations to market. As the contrast between Xerox and Apple shows, few business leaders succeed in this challenge. Those who do—not the government—deserve the credit for making it happen.

Icymudpuppy
07-23-2012, 07:46 PM
I remember ordering books from my local library with my Q-link connection on my Commodore 64 as early as 1985...

Weston White
07-23-2012, 08:47 PM
http://www.txwclp.org/wordpress/wp-content/plugins/RSSPoster_PRO/cache/9985d_8080_10150917157615764_997359391_n.jpg

Xhin
07-24-2012, 01:06 AM
I'm pretty sure the RAND corporation came up with the original ideas for it.

Xhin
07-24-2012, 01:06 AM
The sooner we get their vactrains, the better.

lx43
07-24-2012, 09:33 PM
I'm pretty sure the RAND corporation came up with the original ideas for it.

Is the Rand Corp owned by the govt?

Bosco Warden
07-24-2012, 09:35 PM
http://i1080.photobucket.com/albums/j338/Americasforum/548234_443628345659159_1596259430_n.jpg

idiom
07-24-2012, 10:04 PM
It reminds me of the beautiful opening of Newsroom where the leftie on stage not only claims that an individual can't build an army or road, but that an individual canno build a school. As if private schools don't exist.

AGRP
07-25-2012, 12:26 PM
I heard Xerox also created DOS and Bill Gates bought the code which then of course launched Microsoft Windows.

specsaregood
07-25-2012, 12:32 PM
I heard Xerox also created DOS and Bill Gates bought the code which then of course launched Microsoft Windows.

I'm fairly certain you heard wrong then.

AGRP
07-25-2012, 12:37 PM
I'm fairly certain you heard wrong then.

Theres plenty of connections if you do a search.