IP: Yet again -- Many Deserve Credit for Creating the Internet

[David Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:07:03 -0500
> To: chapman () lists cc utexas edu
> From: Gary Chapman <gary.chapman () mail utexas edu>
>
>
> Friends,
>
> Below is my Los Angeles Times column for yesterday, October 11, 
> 1999. As always, please feel free to pass this on, but please retain 
> the copyright notice.
>
> Not a whole lot of news to report here, but for those who are 
> interested or in the Washington, D.C., area, I will be the keynote 
> speaker at this year's conference of the National Telecommunications 
> and Information Administration, of the U.S. Department of Commerce, 
> a conference titled "Networks for People," scheduled for November 
> 1st in Arlington, Virginia. The agenda and registration info is at 
> http://www.ntia.doc.gov/otiahome/tiiap/index.html.
>
> Hope everyone is doing well and enjoying the fall season.
>
> Best,
>
> -- Gary
>
> gary.chapman () mail utexas edu
>
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>
> October 11, 1999
>
> DIGITAL NATION
>
> Many Deserve Credit for Creating the Internet
>
> By Gary Chapman
>
> Copyright 1999, The Los Angeles Times, All Rights Reserved
>
> UCLA celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Internet last month, in 
> observance of the first time that digital bits were passed between 
> machines using a computer called an Interface Messaging Processor, 
> or IMP, in the Boelter Hall laboratory of computer science professor 
> Leonard Kleinrock.
>
> UCLA Chancellor Albert Carnesale said at the Sept. 2 event, "The 
> Internet has many fathers who claim to be responsible for this 
> child," and photographs of several of these "fathers" were shown on 
> a large screen.
>
> After the celebration, however, a few of these "fathers" expressed 
> some annoyance over how the early history of the Internet is being 
> described these days.
>
> "The UCLA event furthered some controversy that has been stirred up 
> over the past six years," said Bob Taylor, a retired research 
> laboratory director who headed labs for both Xerox Corp. and Digital 
> Equipment Corp. Taylor led the effort that produced the ARPAnet, the 
> forerunner of the Internet and the project that funded and built the 
> IMP computers at UCLA and other institutions.
>
> "The team concept is not getting enough credit," said Taylor, who 
> cited the contributions of the team in Cambridge, Mass., at Bolt, 
> Beranek & Newman that built the first IMP computers in early 1969.
>
> Another early founder of the ARPAnet, who wishes to remain 
> anonymous, wrote recently: "As the staggering impact of the Internet 
> has become apparent, a number of individuals have been shamelessly 
> elbowing their way into the limelight, claiming far more than their 
> share of credit for helping to bring it all about. Many people 
> contributed to the experiment that blossomed into the Internet. 
> Although a very few prescient individuals actually had a vision, 
> albeit somewhat imprecise, of what the future might hold, most just 
> worked from day to day on their part of the effort.
>
> "Watching a few individuals and institutions now puffing themselves 
> up beyond all recognition and trying to bend history to the needs of 
> their personal ambition is both disheartening and irritating. In 
> part, such behavior is the product of a society in which notoriety 
> has become a sort of summum bonum. And the media, contributing to 
> this foolishness and craving oversimplification, tend to heed the 
> loudest voices."
>
> "In my opinion," said J. Strother Moore, a professor of computer 
> science at the University of Texas, "Bob Taylor is not getting 
> enough credit. I rarely see his name in the newspaper when the 
> history of the Internet is discussed. He, perhaps more than anyone, 
> deserves the credit for the vision that created the Internet."
>
> Severo Ornstein, one of the original Bolt, Beranek & Newman team 
> that built the first IMPs, concurred. "It was Taylor's vision, his 
> tenacity, and his perseverance that built the ARPAnet, the precursor 
> to the Internet," Ornstein said. "Without him, we probably would not 
> have developed the system."
>
> Taylor was named director of the Information Processing Technologies 
> Office of the Pentagon's Advanced Research Projects Agency in 1966. 
> He worked with ideas developed by his predecessors in that position, 
> J.C.R. Licklider and Ivan Sutherland, to promote a visionary project 
> based around the then-novel concept that computers are primarily 
> communications devices, not just number-crunching machines.
>
> Taylor and Licklider wrote a famous and landmark white paper, "The 
> Computer as a Communications Device," 
> (http://memex.org/licklider.pdf) in April 1968. When Taylor took 
> over the office in 1966, he convinced ARPA Director Charles Herzfeld 
> that the agency should fund a project in computer communications, 
> and that project became the ARPAnet.
>
> "The ARPAnet began in 1966, not 1969," Taylor told me last week. 
> "There's some revisionism going on today."
>
> To be sure, most of the "fathers" of the Internet are generous in 
> their praise and acknowledgment of all the numerous people who 
> contributed to its development. But institutional public relations 
> departments have tended to promote their own affiliated individuals 
> as the key contributors, fostering a "celebrity model" of 
> technological history instead of the team effort it was.
>
> Many people feel Taylor is not getting enough credit, however. He 
> doesn't have a public relations machine working for him.
>
> "I'm doing fine," he said with a chuckle. "Not enough other people 
> are getting their share of credit."
>
> In the 1970s, Taylor went on to lead the famous Computer Systems 
> Laboratory of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), the most 
> renowned and prestigious lab in the history of computer science. 
> There he assembled the all-star team that created computer 
> networking, desktop publishing, laser printers, the graphical-user 
> interface and modern word processing, among other innovations.
>
> "Taylor has a sixth sense about what needs to be done and how to do 
> it," Ornstein said.
>
> Moore said that when he reflects on who should get credit for the 
> Internet, he thinks first not only of Taylor at ARPA but of Taylor's 
> lab at Xerox PARC. "Bob Taylor is the finest research laboratory 
> manager this country has ever produced," he said.
>
> What does Taylor think of the Internet today? "I'm surprised it's 
> taken so long to get to where we are," he says. The industry made 
> many mistakes in the past that slowed development of the Internet, 
> such as the fact that it's only been recently that networking has 
> come to personal computers, he said.
>
> "Everything the Internet is being used for today was anticipated," 
> he said. "Except for its pornographic implications -- I didn't 
> anticipate that."
>
> Taylor believes that the biggest challenge ahead is to make using 
> the Internet "a right and not a privilege."
>
> "We sometimes refer to the Internet as the 'information 
> superhighway,' " he said. "But using the highway is a right, not a 
> privilege. Now, using the Internet is a privilege, and that should 
> change."
>
> Taylor thinks the government has a role in helping change this, 
> perhaps by making the Internet part of universal service for all 
> citizens.
>
> UCLA has every reason to be proud of its early contributions to the 
> Internet. But all Americans should be grateful for the vision of Bob 
> Taylor and many other technology innovators who deserve to be 
> household names.
>
> Gary Chapman is director of The 21st Century Project at the 
> University of Texas at Austin. He can be reached at 
> > gary.chapman () mail utexas edu.