Happy Birthday ARPANet

Light a candle and open the bubbly as today is the 40th anniversary of Request For Comment 1 for the ARPA Network.  The date was April 7th, 1969.

Essentially this means it is the Birthday of the Internet (with the capital I), this collection of components that allows you to read what I’m posting.  Underlying all this technology was the original thinking of how do we get computers to send and receive messages from each other.  To be more accurate, RFC 1 is the beginning of talking about how to get computers talking in real time.

Forty years later, broadband connectivity is common enough in many countries, that it is taken for granted, like safe water, clean food and air that can actually be inhaled without too many undue effects.  Which also explains that ‘puter on your desk and you reading the posting of some wank in Mississauga, even though Mississauga is several thousand kilometres away for some of you.

In the Olde Days, pre-NCSA Mosaic, networks like FreeNet, GEnie, Compuserve and AOHell provided the platform for rudimentary communications between regular humans.  BBS’s flourished, offering almost-real-time communications and an array of boards for every possible subject you could imagine.  There were also some boards you didn’t want to imagine. 

With those first rudimentary connections, you could talk with someone on the other side of the world, from a different culture and mindset, albeit using text, but communicating just the same.  Conceptually, we would know the Other Folks better, because we’ve sat down and had a virtual coffee with them, knowing that their fears, worries and joys are very much the same as our fears, worries and joys. 

Conceptually, we would become closer as a species, able to navigate the wisdom of the best and the brightest, posted online, for all to see.  Libraries of the collected knowledge would flourish, providing the reference works and links to other sources that would speed the development of such wonders that we wouldn’t be able to recognize ourselves in a decades’ time.

And we could swap recipes, of course, as that was always the real reason you spent a several thousand dollars to get one of the earliest Personal Computers.  You are finally going to organize those recipes, aren’t you?   

So, with this magical pipe, what have we managed to create that would make the initial commentators to RFC 1 proud of us?

Well, there’s porn.  409/Nigerian Bank scams.  Live stock market feeds.  Google as a noun and verb. (nous googleons, ils googlent)  ASCII Art.  LOLCats.  Goatse.  Ebaums soundboards.  Online poker.  Facebook.  Hulu’ing America’s Funniest Home Videos.  EagleCams.  iPods.  Smiles.  iPhone.  Crackberry.  ILoveYou viruses. More porn.  Work from home scams.  Amazon rankings.  Ebay rankings.  Alexa rankings.  Technorati rankings.  craigslist.  LLBean.  Online support groups for Everything.  TwoGirlsOneCup. Celebrity info up the rear portcullis.  Ananova.  Astrology for your pets.  Babelfish. Twitter.  Wikipedia and its tremulous grip on facts.  DrudgeReport.  Elf Bowling.  Java Choplifter.  Flash movies.  More porn.  Printed newspapers falling like leaves.  Webisodes.  Fanboy groups.  The collected wit of David Hobbs.  Massive Multiplayer Online Games/Groups/Societies/Civilizations.  Solitaire.  Avatars. Bejewelled.  And porn.

How did we do?