Written October 2009
by Cliff Feldwick
Happy anniversary to a remnant of the Cold War, ARPANET, which was short for Advanced Research Projects Agency Network. ARPA was a group in the Department of Defense that thought of new and different things. One of their researchers got huffed because he had to use three different terminals with three different signins to talk to the three different universities that were doing work for the agency. Hence came the idea, why not use one universal procedure for everyone? Meanwhile, researchers in the UK had come up with the idea of packet switching, which basically meant that one phone line could be used for a bunch of simultaneous conversations by cutting them up into packets, sending those and re-assembling them at the other end. Goodbye to the “one line, one conversation (or data stream)” limitation.
The original request for quotation for ARPANET was sent to over 140 vendors, but most of them considered the idea so far-fetched that only a dozen actually bid on the idea. Drawing from the UK and American research, one vendor created a concept that allowed them to create a new network, including ideas on how to direct and switch things, in about 9 months. It used small computers as “interface message processors” – what we now know as routers – yes, those tiny blue things that now cost $50 and let you wirelessly connect from anywhere in your house. Four units were set up using leased phone lines at four universities. On October 29, 1969, the first conversation was attempted – the word “login” was sent. Unfortunately, only the letters “lo” arrived before the system malfunctioned. Seems about right. Later that evening, the entire word actually made it.
You can see where this is going, of course. From there different protocols were established to allow reliable flow of data including acknowledgements that things had been received and the recipient was ready for another, etc. The bones of the Internet had been created. The first attempt at e-mail happened in 1971. By July of 1975, there were still only 57 network nodes, although two satellite links enabled communication to Hawaii and Norway and then on to London. Reliable voice transmission faced a number of snafu’s and didn’t take hold till decades later, but data worked well. Eventually the network was handed off to the Defense Communications Agency (it not being advanced or research any longer), which broke MILNET off from the civilian side. Ta-da, an Internet.
One of the myths of the early Internet was that it was set up to allow communications to survive a nuclear attack. Not so apparently – instead it arose from frustration that there were only a limited number of powerful research computers available, and many of the people who could have productively used them were physically distant. The redundancy that people believe was for survival was really a mechanism for dealing with the high failure rate of early hardware, so having multiple routes for transferring a message or data meant that the network could work around the broken pieces automatically.
So celebrate any way you feel appropriate: download a bad video from YouTube, send a pointless message on Twitter, look up the “hip-hop doc” on Flu.gov or even do something worthwhile.
Tweet We Must (Not)
Are we finished bashing Twitter yet … nah, apparently not. One thing that Twitter was supposed to do was allow communication with our elected officials, telling them (briefly) what we thought and soliciting their conversation back. A recent Washington Post story headline tells all: “Tweeting Their Own Horns – Study finds posts by lawmakers boastful or boring”. Yes, we’re shocked and amazed again – a service that draws on the narcissism of people is being abused by the most self-important of people, politicians. A study at University of Maryland (where were these things back when I was a student? Do people get paid for them? Is there beer?) plodded through more than 6000 Twitter posts and found that 80% consisted of links to press releases, “mostly self-serving and readily available elsewhere” or status updates telling you that they were visiting somewhere to meet the people. Oy. Occasionally someone slips up, such as the pol who tweeted “just landed in Baghdad”, thus exposing his congressional delegation to security risks. But usually they’re less fun. The biggest group of followers belongs to John McCain (who says that presidential thing didn’t pay off) with 1.3 million.