The deep and dark history of the INTERNET

The Guardian lays down the history of the web

So, this week I want to share something I found on the Guardian that’s a little off topic, but mutli-platform,  informative and relevant to journalists nonetheless.  Last Friday, the Guardian posted A People’s History of the Internet: from Arpanet in 1969 to today.

Yesterday marked the 40th anniversary of the first connection between two host computers when Bill Duvall, from Stanford, and Charlie Kline, of UCLA, attempted a remote login.  They had to connect by typing each letter of “login” …and they only got to the letter “o” before the system crashed!  Luckily it only took them another hour or so to work out the kinks, or else you might not be reading this today.

Ironically, some progressive thinker thought it would make good science fiction to take a glimpse into the future, with a movie depicting how shopping and bills would be paid on screens much like the monitors you’re reading off now. The Guardian notes, and I LOL’d when I saw it, the 60’s misogynistic gender roles were also part of this man’s idea of the future. “What the wife selects on her console, will be paid for on his counterpart console…”  It’s too bad the flip hair-do and egg chairs didn’t make it past 1982…

By 1971, people had already begun compiling and sharing important files with Project Gutenberg –ironically, the first file shared was also the first replicating computer virus. What was it you might ask?  The one and only Declaration of Independence.  So let me get this straight –we can copy, cut, stitch, paint, stretch and skew our nation’s founding document legally, but we can’t get a free song by great deceased musicians like Hendrix, Bob Marley and Michael Jackson??  >:-&    …yeah emoticon history started in 1982 :-)

“Imagine, if you will, sitting down to your morning coffee,and turning on your home computer to read today’s newspaper.”

All journalists today should cry after they laugh at this video from 1981, highlighting the prototype for what would become the deathly infection we call online journalism today. If only there was a way to go back in time and tell this woman to turn the terror alert level up or break into a swine flu story….anything but publicity for online… just kidding (sort of).

Oh, but how smug she sounds when hacking down the $10 online paper for the 20 cent street edition…

Even the first-ever blog is recognized, though I’d bet this guy would have been a little less crass if he knew he’d become well-known for it (he uses “s***” in the headlines of his first three posts). Justin is still typing away too, only his subject matter is a bit more flattering, and his layout is a little (but not much) more up to date.

Of course, we see Al Gore and Tim Berners-Lee’s contributions (by the way he officially apologized for all the slashes in URLs recently) are noted, as well as the rapid rise of facebook, YouTube and I Can Has Cheez Burger (link there for the depraved).

I highly recommend you take a look at this Guardian link. It helped demystify some of my thoughts about the origin and purpose of the web, and if you’re a slightly paranoid but technologically-dependent loon like myself, you will find the history of this vastly expanding digital universe as neat as I do.