Starting out as a small military experiment some 35 years ago, the Internet is quickly
becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. With a present population of about
40 million users world wide, it seems to have a very promising future. Uncensored and almost
impossible to monitor, it's a breeding ground for all sorts of offensive and derogatory information.
On the other hand, it is probably the biggest single source of data in the world brought home into
your personal computer. Will this form of communication survive in the future, or will it simply
die out like many others have in the past?
The first nodes of the Internet were built 36 years ago by the RAND corporation. They
faced the problem of keeping communication between U.S. authorities active in the aftermath of a
nuclear war. The country needed a command-and-control network. The biggest problem was
protecting the main server, which could be knocked out by a single atomic warhead. RAND came
up with the solution in 1964. The new network would have no central authority, and secondly, it
would be designed to operate in shambles.
" During the 60s, this intriguing concept of a decentralized, blastproof, packet-switching network was
kicked around by RAND, MIT and UCLA. The National Physical Laboratory in Great Britain set up the
first test network on these principles in 1968. Shortly afterward, the Pentagon's Advanced Research
Projects Agency decided to fund a larger, more ambitious project in the USA. The nodes of the network
were to be high-speed supercomputers (or what passed for supercomputers at the time). These were rare
and valuable machines which were in real need of good solid networking, for the sake of national research-
and-development projects." (Sterling 1-2)
The first was put in place during the fall of 1969. By December of the same year four nodes were
installed. They were connected by...