Internet still reshaping history ala Columbia -- oh well

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

A fub statement is "In the 1990s, people regularly referred to the Web  
as the “information superhighway”" djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul Robichaux <paul () robichaux net>
Date: September 8, 2009 1:34:02 PM EDT
To: "dave () farber net" <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: Internet still reshaping history

For IP if you wish.

The Columbia Journalism Review posted a lengthy story about the
origins of the Internet this morning. It's at http://www.cjr.org/the_news_frontier/something_to_talk_about.php?page=all
. I lack the standing to argue what it says, but it's interesting to
compare what they claim (as a respected house organ of the
professional media) vs what I see being discussed here on IP.

Cheers,
-Paul

-----Original Message-----
From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Tuesday, September 08, 2009 7:58 AM
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: Internet still reshaping history



Begin forwarded message:

From: Gordon Peterson <gep2 () terabites com>
Date: September 8, 2009 10:03:55 AM EDT
To: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re: Internet still reshaping history

While we're talking about "Internet" (history, what was, and what
wasn't) I think that one of the more interesting pieces of computing
history I have is an inhouse memo dated November 1, 1977 in which
Datapoint Corporation was planning to announce (on December 1, 1977)
"INTERNET".  [That announcement, by the way, is what I refer to in my
sig file on all my outgoing e-mail messages!]

In the end, the company decided instead to call their product "The ARC
System", and to avoid calling it a network (although paradoxically
they DID call the hardware component "ARCnet"), with the explanation
that they felt the public perceived "networks" as something
complicated and hard to manage.

The ARC System, although it from the beginning was announced as having
the ability to support multiple "conjoint" networks, and used packet
network protocols at both the lowest and higher levels, wasn't really
intended to do what today's "Internet" has become.  What it actually
WAS was the world's first commercially available local area network
(and the first which mapped shared disk volumes hosted at servers into
virtually "online" disk "drives" at client machines, thus making the
remote hosting of the data transparent to applications), and which
went on to sell well over a billion dollars' worth of equipment for
Datapoint.

But I do think it's fascinating to consider how history might have
been different if Datapoint had kept the name "Internet" for their
product!  And it's still the first time that I personally recall
seeing the term "Internet" used for a multi-computer, packet-switched
data communications product/service.

--

Gordon Peterson II
http://personal.terabites.com
1977-2007:  Thirty year anniversary of local area networking




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