The Internet is a living thing

To appreciate where the Internet is going, you have to understand where it's been. The Internet that exists today began in 1969 as an experiment of an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. The agency hooked various defense department computers, defense contractors, and universities doing defense research into a classified network that accomplished two things. First, it enabled users to share expensive computing resources, which saved money, and second, it gave the defense department a network upon which to test various methods for keeping military networks operational in times of war.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, that network grew, and portions of it were declassified. During the same period, other, separate networks were established to hook together university researchers and scientists.

In 1986, the National Science Foundation established its network, NFSnet, to allow researchers across the country to share access to a few expensive supercomputers (the fastest and most powerful type of computer for scientific applications). Quickly thereafter, the various, separate research networks began hooking to NFSnet, and therefore, in effect, to each other. In 1990, the original defense department network was retired, its work having been taken over by NFSnet. Eventually, the resulting internetwork got hooked into the various internetworks abroad, and Voila! The global Internet we know today had congealed from a lot of separate parts.

So, although you may hear much praise for the value and potential of the Internet, you must remember that the whole thing is an unplanned, disorganized, rattletrap contraption—an information-age afterthought, a mutant strain, a casserole made from leftovers. It has no real purpose or mission, except perhaps the somewhat fuzzy goal of enabling communication. It's really more a patchwork of links between lots of separate networks and organizations that—despite their participation in the Internet—still have their own way of doing things and don't feel particularly pressured to conform what anybody else on the Internet is doing. "Wanna use our computer?" they say. "Fine, go ahead. Just do it our way."

As the Internet has grown like crazy, that hasn't changed. As of this writing, estimates say that the Internet picks up millions new users a day, and it is nearly doubling the number of users every year. Nobody really knows for sure; in fact, nobody even knows exactly how many people are on the Internet. Recent guesses say about 2.4 billion and counting.

The Internet is a living thing, growing its own way, at its own pace, perhaps according to a divine design, but not according to any earthly plan. Anything that big, involving that many people, and behaving that unpredictably is very threatening to some folks. In the coming years, you'll hear increasing concern over the global economic, political, and cultural implications of the Internet.

So Now You Know. . .