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Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet - Part 1 - Networking the Nerds | Multimedia HyperGuide | YouTubeToText
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funding for this program has been
provided by the annual financial support
of viewers like you
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music] [Applause]
hi I'm Bob crinkly and this is 3com Park
home of the San Francisco Giants it's
the last game of the regular season
and the Giants have already clinched the
National League West championship
pleased to call this Candlestick Park
and now it's named for three calm the
company that made its millions by
plumbing the Internet now thanks to the
growth of cyberspace their bits and
bytes have bought them the best bats and
balls this series is all about the
internet and the wired world and about
the geeks and nerds largely by accident
invented it making billions and billions
of dollars along the way and that's all
it takes to put your name on a ballpark [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
wiring the world has launched an
information revolution it's changing the
way we live and work and the pace is awesome
awesome
four years ago three million people use
the Internet today it's a hundred
million by the year two thousand five it
could be a billion even if you don't own
a PC have never gone online and thing a
website has something to do with spiders
the Internet is transforming your world
if you don't believe it what's already
happening well you've heard about the
Information Age it's here it's the
internet it's the web it's happening
right in front of us it's a privilege to
be here watching it happen because I've
been worrying about it for decades the
Internet boom hasn't even started I mean
people are all you know geeked up about
it but we're just beginning to scratch I
think we're in the roaring 20s for the
true believers the Internet is much more
than an electronic novelty they have
adopted a web lifestyle the cheerleaders
of this new revolution are staking their
companies on all of us following their
lead you're living a web lifestyle when
you just take it for granted that any
purchase you make any new thing you want
to plan like a trip you turn to the web
as part of that process people today
live a foam lifestyle in a car lifestyle
and they almost laugh when you say that
to them because it's just so taken for granted
granted [Music]
[Music]
a web lifestyle means living in the fast
lane where time seems as compressed as
the data in the wires and change is the
only constant take this building South
of Market Street in San Francisco five
years ago it was mostly derelict now
it's been colonized by young internet
[Music]
by the time this show airs the San
Francisco neighborhood will no longer be
the hippest and hottest place in the
digital world that's because in the
wired world products and fashions change
at warp speed time time is measured in
dog years I'm physically 35 and my last
year was a full net year which is about
seven regular years about it's about a
dog year right so that means that you
know 35 plus 7 so I'm virtually 42 right
so basically since I kind of filled 42
since I lived so hard
I'm a little bit midlife crisis and get
it all over with right buying a
motorcycle right date a young guy
internet time there are no secrets
there's no time for delay there are
plenty of competitors are gonna eat you
alive you need to not take a breath and
start over and do it again as soon as
you get done the you know with one and
you need to juggle three or four of
these all the time that's how you
compete and survive if you're in a
software business on the internet in the
web universe the person with two years
experience has gotten more experience in
web years than someone who's got 20
years of the previous generation of
programming it's a bit of overstatement
but web years you know are a wonderful
curiosities general public and the
actual health threat to those who work
in the industry well I've been in the
net for three years and three years ago
I was 41
so 41 and 21 makes me 62 your senior citizen
citizen [Laughter]
today's kids are growing up wire the
information revolution is just part of
everyday life 70% of American schools
now have access to the Internet
take Edwin Chu I first met him in 1995
even then he knew exactly where he was headed
headed
what are your friends think of you boy
he's a nerd but I don't mind I'm used to
being called a nerd
can't have other people to stop your
dreams hey Edwin hi hey see you again
good to see you
Edwin is an inventor he's made a laser
pointer from a dental floss box and he's
designed the dope head it's a
combination of a go-kart and a moped
because moped is two wheels and a
go-karts got four and this one's got
three guns right in the middle that have
access go pit go fed the front end of
this looks like some sort of that was
those my sister's old tricycle she never
used it I made it into something
actually useful [Music]
Edwyn was born in 1985 in the PC
generation his talent for technology may
make him a future entrepreneur but
otherwise he's a typical American
teenager his world is being shaped by
the internet and the web at a pace you
have to experience to believe
yep this thing is fully charged and
ready to go [Music]
[Music]
it's God [Applause]
[Applause]
nothing illustrates the incredible rate
of change in the internet better than
the story of six young guys I first met
with four years ago in that garage
straight out of Stanford University they
started a company then called architects
tanned I've been coming back every year
to watch them grow and have they grown
the company now called excite is worth
more than a billion dollars let's flash
back to that first meeting in 1994 it's
hard to look beyond we need a demo and
we need it now usually at the core
there's there's there's one guy with you
know minimal social skills but just
amazing how is it like working with
these semi incompetence they're they're
all quite competent how much so far has
this all cost $2,000 maybe I'll return
to the architects boys to see how they
get on but already they were smart
enough to see that information
technology was going to be a big
business the PC was the largest single
legal creation wealth we've ever seen on
the planet so I figured right now we're
into year three of the web and by my
calculation the new companies not the
existing ones but the new web companies
are worth more than 40 billion dollars
in that saw four times what the PC
companies were worth at this point in
the decade of the PC this is not a loop
it's not a fad
hey aren't the experts saying that very
few internet businesses are profitable
well that's true right now but in cyberspace
cyberspace
these are pioneer days and the land rush
has just begun still there are a few
early stakeholders who have already hit
maybe it was inevitable that the first
moneymaker on the internet would be sex
after all that's what got movies and
welcome to the Peep Show for the
Information Age a new take on an old
trick nowadays thanks to the interactive
assets of the Internet you can see
exactly what you want or more accurately
what you pay $5.99 a minute food so cat
you're part of the the adult internet
industry do you feel like a pioneer uh
yes actually I like this new venue I'm I
feel like I'm getting a fresh start like
right at the beginning of it and there's
a lot of open doors on the web you can't
handle the merchandise but that hasn't
prevented the greatest of all American
invention shopping from entering
cyberspace no surprise to find that the
world wide web has become a virtual mall
one of the first virtual stores to build
a real business is a virtual bookstore [Applause]
[Applause] [Music]
this is amazon.com the brainchild of
Jeff Bezos he figured out that books for
the ideal internet product because you
don't need to touch before you buy so
Jeff rented a giant warehouse in Seattle
hired a bunch of Generation X
bibliophiles and ships the books which
customers border from Amazon's website
so far Amazon hasn't made a profit but
it's valued at more than a billion
dollars clearly a lot of investors think
Jeff's an Internet idea there's a sort
of a fundamental irony that we're using
bits to sell atoms and yeah it's a
little wacky but it works and it's
extremely efficient and people recognize
the value a year after we visited the
architects boys in their grungy garage
they've gone through the VC experience
and moved into a real office the boys
were a year older and five years wiser
working a hundred hours a week can do
that to you the venture capitalists who
backed the architects dream was Vinod
Khosla now what made me spend five or
ten thousand dollars on 15 minutes on
five guys or really two guys Joe Kraus
and Graham Spencer who I was meeting for
the first time who had never had a job
never had any success had completely
crazy notions of what applications they
wanted to pursue there was something
about them that said to me they are good
entrepreneurs they were good listeners
they were good debaters they were
thoughtful about my comments they didn't
give in to everything I said they didn't
disagree with everything I said and I
really liked the vibrations the wipes
they're really good wipes these are the
five sentences that are statistically
most relevant to the document a moat it
let's leave Graham for the moment
summarizing Shakespeare has excuses but
the web has a lot more to offer like
replacing the post office and the
telephone the web is incredibly exciting
because it is the the fulfillment of a
lot of our dreams that the computer would
would
ultimately not be primarily a device for
computation but metamorphosize into a
device for communication and the with
the web that's finally happening and
secondly it's exciting because Microsoft
doesn't own it and therefore there's a
tremendous amount of innovation
happening and the tool for communication
is baby that's number one
I must yet you know I probably get 100
pieces of email a day but at least 30 of
them nowadays come from outside they
come from hey I haven't seen you since
you and I were in school together in
fifth grade and Belgium do you remember me
dear Steve lifes of each wish you were
here I'm sending an email to Steve
Ballmer who obviously likes receiving
them this will be one of the 100 million
email messages that go out over the
Internet today email is the information
revolution up close and personal for
more and more people it's the way to
communicate you can send everything that
you will put in a telephone conversation
or a letter and usually do it faster
cheaper and its global there that saves
a postcard
thanks to email and computer bulletin
boards the Internet has created virtual
communities far-flung groups of people
with a shared interest [Music]
Boston writer fawn fitter joined the
well one of the oldest electronic
meeting places but she has met talked
and argued with kindred souls and even
fallen in love
I had this computer and I went out and
bought this modem and I got online and I
was just blown away absolutely because I
realized that here was this literally
community of you know at the time
probably about 5,000 people who were not
just talking about sex or trying to pick
each other up or whatever that they were
having actual conversations about actual
things that I was interested in I will
confess that when I first got online I
had a little cyber fling and the thing
about online romances is that because
you aren't actually with the person you
can project anything you want onto them
and then when reality slaps you in the
face it can either be a real wake-up
call or it can work out wonderfully I
was just blown away by the style and
fluency of this person's written
communications and then when we met in
person it just became apparent that he
wasn't quite as fluent with emotional
interchange I'm not slamming him he's a
good guy it's he's just not the one for
me and I don't think of having met him
online as being all that very different
from having met him at a party or in a
bar through a personals ad or
rollerblading down the sidewalk back to
those architects guys when I caught up
with him again in 1997 what a
transformation they changed the name of
the company to excite move to a bigger
office and it even done some cool TV advertising
advertising [Music]
[Music]
they used their venture funding to
recruit a real CEO what in the valley we
call adult supervision that's very odd
situation when you come into into a deal
where you're interviewing with a 24 year
older a 23 year old guy at the time and
trying to sort of puff your chest out
about all the things you've accomplished
and all you've done and here's the 23
old guy who's sort of well on his way to
being a millionaire or a multiple
millionaire and who's got a very good
view of business already at the age of
23 and he was not alone among other
founders they also were very
sophisticated in other ways most
important of all the company had gone
public after just three years each of
these 20-somethings was worth about 10
and I bought my new toy which is just
small take pictures try to take one
picture a day in my life and record it
um a phone a camera that's it didn't you
buy like a car I bought a card I heard
just yesterday
that's right what a big step that's a
huge step that's a very grown-up I had a
hard time making a decision because I
want to get I wasn't going for a luxury
movi I wasn't going for a Porsche or
anything like that
but I wanted a pretty nice car and I
wanted lots of gadgets I like gadgets in
my cars but the problem was that I'm
also vegetarian so I didn't want leather
seats in my car
and so what I discovered is I was
shopping for cars was that there are
almost no car manufacturers who put all
the gadgets in a version of their car
without leather seats so you can either
have leather seats and gadgets or no
other sheets and no gadgets and so it
was a big dilemma for me to try to pick
the right vehicle that had the features
I wanted and the seats that one so you
get rich and you get a white Volkswagen
right isn't this nice I figured it's
sort of the retro thing round headlights
trunk in front good four cylinders I'm
really sort of jealous of this car
though yeah friend of mine bought this
one yeah Knight give me that nice BMW
give me red this is yours isn't it
tree sap it is it is it's a fun little car
car
cars phones houses just some of the
rewards for the young geek smart enough
to exploit the world's latest revolution
that months ago the revolution being
created by the Internet is different
from all previous ones its abolishing
distance this is my garage a few years
ago I'd get in my car here and drive to
the office but today thanks to the
Internet it is my office
in fact it's the headquarters for my
intergalactic business empire with my
computer plugged into the internet I run
two software companies write my column
for PBS and attempt to manage my life
it's a revolution all right and you know
what we owe it all to the Russians the
race to the new frontier outer space was
the news sensation of 1957 but through
the past fitting atmosphere the climb
into the space boy from the desolate
began with Sputnik the satellite
launched by the USSR in 1957 Sputnik
caused a worldwide sensation and sent
shockwaves through the US administration
it forced two presidents into action
their separate initiatives both paid off
President Eisenhower created an agency
called ARPA to fund high-powered
scientific and Space Research being an
army man he made the Pentagon
responsible so obscure academics
suddenly found themselves on the Cold
War's frontline is five billion two
hundred be enough he created this
considerable stir it was clear that the
area that we had chosen to work in was
going to get more attention in science
for a long time before that had not had
a particularly good name it had not been
a big deal and I think there was a some
realization that it maybe was important
after all President Kennedy's challenge
to the Russians was to commit America to
putting a man on the moon he gave that
project to NASA the civilian agency by
now it had taken over from the Pentagon
responsibility for Space Research
Godspeed god man
I believe that this nation should commit
itself to achieving the goal before this
decade is out of landing a man on the
moon and returning him safely to the earth
earth [Music]
[Music]
as NASA launched America's first
astronauts Pentagon scientists decided
computers had the right stuff compared
with a high profile moon missions
computer research was something of a
Cinderella throughout the 1960s it was
the space race which got all the media's attention
attention [Music]
[Music]
the computers of the 60s were the size
of small apartments their use was
strictly rationed and only a few people
got anywhere near them still a visionary
psychologist at MIT JCR Licklider known
to all as lick saw their growing
potential the computer technology has
been moving in a way that nothing else
people have ever known as news here's
the field that gets a thousand times as
good in 20 years
look had this concept of the
intergalactic network which he believed
was everybody could use computers
anywhere and get out data anywhere in
the world specialized hardware
facilities tend to be expensive but very
efficient on the other hand if they can
be distributed then specialized hardware
facilities can be very effective and can
let us do things that we couldn't
otherwise do lick was thinking big about
the future of networking at a time when
there was only a handful of computers
anywhere in the world and decades before
the personal computer would arrive the
vision was really Lux in there and
originally I mean any none of us can
really claim to have seen that before
him nor anybody in the world look saw
this vision in the early 60s he didn't
have a clue as how to build it you know
you'd have any idea what to make this
happen by the mid-60s the Gemini program
was regularly sending American
astronauts into orbit on earth ARPA was
funding mainframe computers for research
at major universities [Music]
[Music]
mainframes were too big and expensive
for personal use but in keeping with a
communal spirit of the times a system
was devised to provide more people with
computer access it had a science-fiction
name timeshare many users were connected
to the same computer and the user had
the illusion in any other every
individual user had the illusion that
the computer was just serving that user
the computer was fast enough so it could
serve you and move to the next person
and the next person the next person and
come back to you and you didn't ever you
were never aware of the fact that it
left you the Internet and the World Wide
Web were really born right here at the
u.s. Pentagon headquarters for the
world's most powerful fighting force and
home of the squares jaws on the planet a
sack full of money was set aside to fund
far out scientific research as part of
the so called space race
like most Pentagon projects that had a
strange acronym DARPA Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency
but DARPA had very little to do with
defense and a great deal to do with the
research interests of the people who
control the money as NASA achieved the
first docking in space Bob Taylor took
over offers responsibilities for
spending the Pentagon's budget for
computer research in most government
funding their committees that decide who
gets what and who does what and in ARPA
we that was not the way it worked the
person who was responsible for the
office that was concerned with that
particular technology in my case
computer technology was a person who
made the decision about what to fund and
what to do and what not to do so the
decision to start the ARPANET was mine
you know with very little or no red tape
it's more than 30 years since Taylor
worked in the endless nondescript halls
of the Pentagon and do you know they
have a speed limit in these corridors
a long way from Silicon Valley
light-years from the Silicon Valley way
of doing business the campaign to build
a national computer network began here
we're going to what was Bob Taylor's
office where the word went out start
wiring the world hello hi hi Bob crinkly
Jim McKeen okay Jim do you know that the
internet was invented was founded right
in this room no I did not
well you haven't redecorated either as I
can see so do you use the Internet in
your work certainly do is it doesn't
look like much but here Bob Taylor had a brainwave
brainwave
how about networking all of our pistou
gether so he asked his boss Charlie
Hertzfeld for a million dollars yes and
he got it can I get a job here I was
sitting in my office in the Pentagon and
to communicate with people at Santa
Monica I had to move to sit down at this
terminal here and if I wanted to talk
with the people and/or the computer in
Berkeley I had to get up from this
terminal and go over and sit at another
terminal go through a different protocol
a different command language the same
for MIT so it's the obvious question is
wait a minute why don't we have one
terminal and have all of these places
interconnected it might not be an
intergalactic Network but even
interstate would be a huge step the
universities aren't per funded weren't
enthusiastic about the so called ARPANET
but many of the people in charge of the
computing facilities at these ARPA
supported places saw the ARPANET as a
threat in the sense that it meant that
someone from another part of the country
would be using some of your precious
computer time typical response was why I
said well look you you know you'll be
part of a network and you can use other
people's networks and they can use your
other people's computers you can and
they can use yours say no nobody can use
mine it's
100% right now don't touch me initially
some of the universities that have these
host sites weren't incredibly
enthusiastic I mean they would say why
do I wanna like don't use my computer
I'm busy enough right here well I don't
want to share anything of that only guy
fight anyway we've got our own you know
uh fish to fry people with totally
unwilling to do it however each of these
sites was being supported you know
hundreds of thousands millions dollars a
year by up and opposite you're gonna
join his network and sure enough I did
in 1968 the Apollo program succeeded
Gemini and lunar missions began
meanwhile Bob Taylor was pushing his
plan to link ARPA funded mainframes at
UCLA UC Santa Barbara and Stanford in
California at the University of Utah so
are but issued a request for quotations
to 140 technology companies the brief
was to invent the first ever digital
computer network time for the cringe Lee
crash course in geek that's modern geek
not ancient every revolution brings its
own specialist vocabulary
I bet Alexander Graham Bell spent entire
dinner parties explaining dial-a-joke
well the information revolution is no
exception it's brought whole new meaning
to words like digital packet protocol
and browser the key word is digital and
computer is just a box of switches and
switches are either off or on
represented by the numbers 0 and 1 any
information no matter how long or
complicated coming from a computer can
be represented by a string of those 2
digits 0 and 1
that's why we call the process digital
it's not very original but then
computers aren't known for their
imagination Larry Roberts was chosen to
draw up the request for quotations he
was an MIT computer scientist who became
the chief architect of the ARPANET [Music]
[Music]
let's pause to consider the social
habits of 1960s geeks like Larry and his
friend and colleague Len Kleinrock these
guys are applied mathematicians and for
fun and profit they applied their
mathematics to gambling you're a gambler
aye I do when I can win when I know how
to win and do you know how to win well
at gambling yes I know how to count
Larry and I always like puzzles and we
like challenges and of course Las Vegas
presented a wonderful challenge we were
going after roulette so you let us a
wonderful game it's a game where you
lose a nickel on every dollar you bet by
and large if it's fair so we develop the
system to just measure where the ball in
the wheel wah calculate when it's going
to fall in and just you just have to
predict half the wheel and you've got
two-to-one odds in your favor but we
needed some data and so I wanted to
record the sound of the wheel and use
the sound of the wheel and the Doppler
shift of there's no other wheel to find
out when and I went to the nether casino
and tried to record it so Larry put a
microphone in his hand a wire to a
record of inside his jacket and wrapped
his arm as if he had a broken arm and
he's put his arm next to the wheel and I
was a decoy I was there gambling and
Jordan drawing attention to me
and Kleinrock said they're betting on
the side well he started winning and the
pit boss came by as he started sawing
him winning and me my vanished hand near
the wheel and he said now what's wrong
with your hand and I said well I burned it
it
and now the croupier started noticing me
and he saw Larry and me walking together
so I'm winning I'm a buddy with Larry
and Larry's hand is right next to the
wheel wrapped up like a mummy
so this croupier takes Larry's broken
arm and a Yanks him he said we'd like it
would you like it broken off and so at
Georgia can I Drive it oh sure we let
all our passengers drive the dock down
the overwater shore [Music]
let's get back to New England true
birthplace of the Information Age not
only is this the home of captain bubble
head and his amphibious assault craft
but in the 60s it was the hub of
advanced computer research Massachusetts
is famous for much more than just the
Boston Tea Party which happened over
there in Boston Harbor it's also
renowned for Boston's twin city across
the river
Cambridge home of two of the most
high-powered scientific institutions in
the world
but beyond Harvard and MIT the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
there's another outfit often called the
third University on the Charles it's a
high-tech engineering company called BBN
for its founders bolt Beranek and Newman
in 1968 BBN was ready to take its place
in networking history so let's meet some
of the team who would unexpectedly
change the world [Music]
[Music]
Californian dave walden made juggling
the hobby of choice around the arpanet
community frank heart was a systems
engineer from Yonkers with a reputation
as a tough manager several Ornstein
musician and rock climber later founded
computer scientists for social
responsibility this outfit was ready for
the challenge issued from the Pentagon
BBN was aware for some time before that
that a bid was a request for Proposal
was coming Bob Kahn in particular who
was one of our team was aware of that
BBN put together a team of people to get
ready to bid so in fact we were working
on the bid before the request for
proposal came out planning thinking
doing designs so when the actual request
for proposal came out in some sense it
was like doing the design a second time
it seemed we could build it and I went
in and told Frank in words which I guess
have become somewhat immortalized that
sure we could build it but I had no idea
Christmas 1968 Apollo 8 astronauts
[Music]
and BBN dot their own Christmas message
from Harpo they've won the bid they
would have the chance to start wiring
the planet first they had to turn a
Len Kleinrock at UCLA was the guy with a theory
theory
my PhD dissertation basically uncovered
the underlying principles of packet
switching of message switching of burst
communications of data networking here's
another word from the cringe lis
glossary of geek packet and since this
is the very foundation stone of the
internet please pay attention we have
two computers and they are connected to
each other by a digital network we want
to send a message from one computer to
the other do we send it as one big chunk
or lots of little chunks well it's much
easier to put sand out of pipe than
boulders so I say little chunks these
chunks are called packets and the first
thing we do is we number them so we know
their order in case they get out of
sequence going over the network and we
add some extra information to them that
says where they came from and where
they're going so that if for example
there's a traffic jam along here the
network can redirect them through
another computer that's called packet
switching this is how the internet works
of course there's no guarantee that the
person on this end is actually going to
read it the packet switching Network
planned by ARPA used phone lines but in
a way they've never been used before
when you make a phone call to your to
your mother-in-law and then talk to on
that phone line whether you talk fastest
slow or halt in the middle you tie up
the phone line the whole time computers
tend to talk in little bursts when they
talk to each other so there was a lot of
technology that had never been done in
trying to break up messages into packets
and send them over the phone
Vint Cerf was at UCLA Bob Kahn was at
BBN two more pioneers who helped design
the ARPANET
they're not exactly household names but
they should be as we'll be hearing later
there is an electrical linkage like a
pneumatic linkage between your telephone
and the other one which stays up fully
connected until the conversation is over
a morning hangs out
would be the equivalent of in order to
drive from let's say Washington DC to
Los Angeles having to reserve the whole
road you know free to make the trip and
it's not a very efficient use of the
road space to build a network linking
mainframe computers over telephone lines
in the 1960s there were two monster
companies you'd expect to be involved
but both AT&T and IBM declined to bid
when I asked AT&T to participate in the
ARPANET they assured me that packet
switching wouldn't work so so that
didn't go very far the telephony attitude
attitude
my phone doesn't get cut off the
telephony attitude is not very
compatible with packet switching
what is the telephony annex well the
telephony attitude is we're going to
guarantee certain capacities it's it's
it's about guaranteed levels of service
it's about investments that that you
make that you get back over decades and
the world is simply moving much faster
than that the difference between a
person talking on a phone line and a
computer sending bursts of data is
simple computers do it quickly and more
efficiently sorry mom
packets are just like postcards they've
got to and from addresses and they'll
have a finite amount of content on them
and like a postcard you put it into the
post box if you put two in you don't
know what order they're gonna come out
they might not even come out on the same
day some of them get lost that's true of
packets they don't they don't
necessarily follow the same path to get
to the destination that's also true of
electronic packets the only difference
is no electronic packet goes about 100
million times
because on a postcard so while NASA was
sending man into space the team at BBN
was shipping packets down phone lines
basically I knew nothing I would also
say that most of us on the team didn't
know anything about packet switching
because in fact we were inventing packet
switching there were a lot of very
difficult detailed technical problems
but I don't break through would not be
how I would describe any of that you
know I tend to think of breakthroughs
inventing DNA or something else and
there was none of that really yeah I
think actually God invented you I think
none of us had any doubt that we could
do it in in nine months it was a
engineering task it was a fun one yes
sir we're gonna have to work day and
night weekend's but not so hard by an
odd coincidence the ARPA funded
scientists designed the blueprint wrote
the software and built the computers for
the world's first digital network just
as NASA's Apollo program reached its
lunar climax two visions of science and technology
technology
we'll be done in 1958 and the other in
1961 would both deliver the goods within
a few weeks kind of neat isn't it I
come here I want to show you something
it's right over here this is a historic
machine it's the first imp on the
ARPANET imp stands for interface message
processor today we'd call it a router
back then it was a mini computer that
was connected to one or several
mainframes here at UCLA and made
possible packet switching the packets
would come in the input sort them out
error correct them and either send them
to those local machines or later when
there were more imps send them across
the ARPANET you can tell this thing was
built for the military it's built like a tank
tank
and for the first seven thousand seven
hundred and ninety two hours of the
ARPANET it made sure that we got a
message instead of a mess after just
nine months work the moment of truth the
first imp was ready to be blitzed with
bits on budget on time this was a
government project my laboratory was the
place where the internet came to life it
was then called the ARPANET we were the
first we had the first switch which is
called an imp and interface message
processor he was wheeled into my
laboratory over the Labor Day weekend in
1969 and on Tuesday of that next week we
had bits moving back and forth between
that switch and my host computer
Len Kleinrock was so moved by his
historic role that 30 years later he
wrote a poem to recall the romance of
imps nodes and technical specifications
that only geeks could love or rhyme it
was back in 67 that the clan agreed to
meet the gangsta's and the plan is were
breed damned hard to beat the goal we
set was honest and the need was clear to
all connect those big old mainframes and
the minis lest they fall the vnm
delivered a product on time first of
September actually a little earlier than
the guys at UCLA hoped our software
wasn't quite ready when the hardware
showed up and we it was Labor Day
weekend and we were sort of hoping that
it might be delayed a airship then BBN
had promised that the IMP was running
late we welcomed any slippage in the
deadly scheduled date but one day after
Labor Day
it was plopped down at our gate those
dirty rotten scoundrels sent the damn
thing out air freight battleship gray
cabinet with eye hooks in the top to the
helicopter could lift it and it was a
refrigerator sized object with a
computer enter the Honeywell 516 and
with special interfaces that had been
designed by owen stein and built by
honeywell in that cabinet so it would
then connect to host computers at each
site and inside was a program which had
been written at BBN
so so the machine shows up they get it
on a forklift and it goes into the UCLA
facility and they turned it on and it
picks up where it left off you see the
government sometimes picks dates for the
hell of it I mean there was no reason if
to be truth known it was an artificial
date picked by the government and picked
by Larry Roberts [Music]
[Music]
as I recall that Tuesday it makes me
want to cry
everybody's brother came to blame the
other guy folks who they're from ARPA
BBN and honey well UCLA and ATT and all
was scared as hell we cautiously
connected and the bits began to flow the
pieces really function just why I still
don't know messages were moving pretty
well by Wednesday morning as history
packet-switching had been born seven
weeks before the ARPANET spark to life
Neil Armstrong became the first man to
walk on the moon time will tell whether
Apollo or ARPANET meant more for mankind
but there's no argument who had the
better soundbite a month later a second
IMP was ready at Stanford what memorable
message was sent well we tried to do is
log on from our host to their house you
know remember we're engineers okay so I
had one of my guys set this up and we
also had a voice line in parallel with
the data line so he had a pair of
headphones and a speaker and so did
their the guy at the other end and so we
typed in L and we said did you get the L
he said I got the L so you want to type
in l OG and then the rest would be L ogi
it would span out the word login you got
the L hit the O you get the O got the
all you get the G crash the system
failed on the G in a couple of hours
later we successfully logged in did some
minimal things and logged off that was
the first message on the internet log in crashed
the ARPANET was born at a tumultuous
time on campus you were more likely to
meet hippies than hackers some hippies
were hackers - and thought computers
could be used to change society Stewart
Brand was one he founded the Whole Earth
Catalog Bible of the 70s alternative
lifestyle it had a great impact on the
first generation to use the Internet [Music]
same group of people the same length of
hair only instead of drugs of his
computers main difference there is that
drugs never got any better and computers
just getting better and better and
better and the kind of money you can
make the drugs was problematic and the
kind of money you can make food
computers fabulous Ted Nelson was
another visionary who grasped the
potential of computer networking in his
book computer lib long before it was
technically feasible it's not that I
claimed to be smarter than other people
it's just that most technical people
don't understand the creative process
don't understand the problems of ideas
and of evolving ideas and of the
representation of ideas and the
represent the evolving representation of
evolving ideas and the intercomparison
of the evolving representation of
evolving ideas and that's the issue in
that nothing less will do Howard
Rheingold a Whole Earth Catalog writer
and career high tech hipster believed
computers could become tools of
liberation it's not so much
anti-establishment as empowerment of the
individual the belief that if you can
give people tools they can do things
they can make the new better society and
that joining some crusade to create some
great cause has has failed in 1908 72 I
wrote an article for Rolling Stone called
called
fanatic life and symbolic death among
the computer bombs and the opening line
was ready or not computers are coming to
the people and it was pretty much for
telling what came to pass which was that
Computers had been liberated from the
IBM mainframe approach to life the idea
that computers could really be used for
extending our intellects and
communicating with each other but
something that didn't emerge for a while
that's how it started is turning a
mainframe into a personal computer and
then they just found various ways first
with time sharing and then with actually
making these things to make personal
computers the idea was power to the people
people
straight out of the streets 60s doctrine [Music]
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advances in computer networking work
limited to the mainland scientific
experiments in Hawaii couldn't be easily
connected by phone lines the solution
was to use radio [Applause]
so was it the engineering challenge that
we norm Abramson to Hawaii actually it
was the surf I was teaching out here
actually at Stanford when I first saw
Hawaii about 30 years ago and the 29
years ago I decided to move there it
took me about a year to find a
university position there and moved to
Hawaii to go surfing I don't know much
about the University of Hawaii but it
doesn't just jump to mind as a hotbed of
computer research it isn't but the surf
is a hell of a lot better than it is
here we convinced Larry in particular
that we could do something that had
never been done before technically and
this was what the Aloha net was the
Aloha net it was the first network that
decided that it was sensible to transmit
data into a computer by means of radio
waves rather than telephone lines or or
conventional wires and we put a radio
channel together connected it in a in a
new way to a computer a very primitive
computer at that time and demonstrated
wireless data for the first time in and
out of a computer and and you were doing
wireless data in Hawaii because of their
Islands is that it frankly I was doing
by 1970 packet switching networks were
running on phone lines radio and
satellite over long distances on land
and across the oceans it was
by 1972 the ARPANET had grown to include
20 locations including MIT the pioneers
from BBN settled down to managing and
extending the network but still hardly
anyone knew about it so Larry Roberts at
the Pentagon decided it was time to let
the world know that ARPA had invented
the future of computing organize this
huge show for us of the network where we
had dozens of network terminals and we
had an imp on-site in the hotel in
Washington and everybody brought in all
their stuff and got their computers
online basically set up a note on the
ARPANET right on the wall right in the
floor of one of the ballrooms and with
the false floor we wired it up and we
actually got donations of some 40 or 50
computer terminals from different
manufacturers and then we orchestrated
with a variety of different research
places to put applications up on their
system and make them work in Washington
he was log on to a machine at MIT there
call up a program from UCLA whose job
was to execute and run and send the data
to a printer right next to him in
Washington he can imagine you know MIT
UCLA Washington you know at those times
moving things around the country was
really hot
what was the public reaction I think it
varied from the light that we had so
many people in one place doing all the
stuff and it all worked to astonishment
that it was even possible
I'm part of people who just did not know
more than exposed to this before it was
a real real event it was a kind of a
happening once in your lifetime
throughout the 70s the ARPANET grew
other networks were created too but
there was a problem each network was
different with its own rules you
couldn't send packets from one network
to another let alone through another to
a third there was no common language no
common way to communicate no way to get
a program from one of the other so we
basically had a serious problem and
transporting anything and in terms of
knowledge so we had no way to
essentially like language for a
civilization to grow and we were stuck
back like the man before he had language
in terms of being able to exchange and
build on the past as far as usage of the
network goes for a while it was very
very very underused III think it was a
little bit like having a you know a very
good highway system and no cars because
there weren't very many programs set up
to use it the individual universities
did not have protocols rules
it was wait when you call somebody in
France you could have a perfect
connection but if they don't speak
English you don't speak French
you're still gonna talk much so so even
though this network was put in the host
couldn't talk to each other in many
cases about very much tcp/ip these are
probably the five most important letters
of the information revolution they stand
for transmission control protocol
Internet Protocol what a mouthful in the
glossary of geek protocol is the rules
that control how different computers
talk to each other the tcp/ip protocol
was invented by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn
it determines how computer networks talk
to each other without tcp/ip there would
be no internet what an achievement and
yet such a name they could have named it
Bob and Vint decided to work together to
crack the problem on one of his visits
to the Bay Area Bob stopped in to see me
at Stanford and was describing for me
these other packet switching networks
that he was developing and pointed out
that he knew that he needed to find a
way of inter connecting them if bebe and
then had one network and let's say AT&T
had another it would have been possible
just plug the two together with the Box
in the middle and bebe and then in
eighteenth he wouldn't have had to do
anything to make that work other than
agree to look their networks people
again and so we began to think about the
question of protocols that would allow
such an amalgam of networks doing her
work we did that work in the early 70s
and that was before the ethernet was on
the scene it was before the personal
computer and workstation so I mean what
we did anticipated all that and by
virtue of the niceness of the
architecture the modularity of the
architecture it allowed for any network
to fit in there in any computers
including the local area necessarily was
published in May 1974 they called it a
protocol for packet network
intercommunication it's a real
page-turner every new information
technology needs something that makes
people just have to buy it it's called
the killer application or killer app for
the IBM PC it was a spreadsheet for the
Macintosh it was desktop publishing and
the internet is no exception this is a
communication network so guess what the
killer app is a way of communicating
email and that's how the lowly @ sign
jumped from the keyboard into a place of
[Music]
electronic mail was also invented at BBN
back in 1972 a program for sending files
was adapted to carry a mail message
between too many computers ray Tomlinson
is modest about his invention and the
the next step was to get other people to
try using it because so far I'd only
send mail to myself first and then to
the other people in my group Ray's hack
has driven networking for a generation
one of the first applications we put on
the system was from Ray Tomlinson's
Network email as soon as email can on it
took over the network
but it was hard to believe that that was
going to be a major use of the network
it really was that was not what had been
touted in the first place that sending
messages back and forth from people from
person to person was going to be a large
use of the network it was hard to
believe for a long time people to people
communications was what excited people
you know machine to machine or human to
machine was not all that exciting and
where did that I kind of the internet
the little @ sign come from credit rate
for that one to I looked at my keyboard
on a model 33 teletype the one that was
most obvious was the @ sign because this
this person was at this other computer
some sense he was at it he was in the
same room with it anyway
and so I seemed fairly obvious and I
just chose it but with email you know
you could communicate with a lot of
people very very quickly sometimes in
the middle of the night it made it
possible to start to move things around
that you wouldn't have thought about
dealing with people in different time
zones and so it really caught on quite a
pretty bit so you're the guy who
invented the use of the @ sign in an
email addresses so I'm Bob at cringe
lucam so I can thank you well thanks a
lot a lot of people have said that
especially the one especially with the
advent of junk mail and and of course
you you you now have infinite wealth no
no no and how does it feel to have
changed the world oh it feels wonderful
I think I think it's incredibly exciting
I think
it's it's the kind of thing where now
you go down the street to your neighbors
who never knew what a computer was in
the days you were doing this and there
all of a sudden experts that using the
web and think that's a lot of fun so no
it's it's it's quite nice
technologically speaking the 60s hit two
home runs man on the moon at the first
computer network but the funny thing is
that none of those pioneers got rich
though at least the astronauts made it
on prime-time television as for the
geeks who invented the ARPANET who laid
the foundations for the Information Age
zilch neither Fame nor fortune it took
the invention of the PC before someone
hit the jackpot
and what a jackpot it was but that's for
the next part of our story [Music]
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