Who invented the Internet; or the origins of the Internet

I always thought the Internet was the evolution of the Arpanet.
It was a new vision of communication, as a decentralized Network in opposition to the common architecture of a centralized service (telecoms' like)

In this sense I see VoIP as the natural child of the Internet for its singular decentralized structure.

This new architecture is much more than a mere technical change.
It is the different structure of intercommunication that makes the Internet first and VoIP later and all the services on Ip that will come in the near future, a real revolution, the revolution of our century.

That is why, in my opinion, limiting VoIP to a service which allows to save on telephone calls is misunderstanding the present and the future.

What most VoIP providers offer is nothing else than a cheaper copy of the Telecoms' business structure.
You pay the Ins and the Outs and you pay for minutes.
You still pay for using an infrastructure, but in this case it is already yours.(because you lease it)

You still use the PSTN for the ins and the outs.
And I understand that in every process there is a transitional phase.

But if you use proprietary codecs and hardware, if you have to belong to a proprietary Network, if every network is an island, then where is the disruptive technology that is causing significant change in the way voice communication services are delivered?
It is not anymore a transitional phase, but a service that begins and ends at the same point, not the evolution of a new technology.

VoIP is only the beginning of a more significant move to convergence. As the world moves to a common IP-based data network as backbone, VoIP is only one of the realtime services offered on such networks, along with many data services. The same network will also support video services from videoconferencing to entertainment video.
Networks will become multiservice platforms.
The only open question is:

Who will provide the services?


The Internet, new cheap hardware made it possible to dismantle the big corporation.
It is not only a decentralized Network, it is a decentralized world of opportunities.

The Internet offers all the opportunities to change the players of the Market.
Decentralized Network, decentralized corporations.

No more a central unity, but many independent endpoints and end workers.

Will we be finally able to foresee the natural evolution of the dinosaurs into smaller birds?

The Internet world doesn't need or like a central brain.
It needs many decentralized, interconnected brains.


"From the History of Science, we know that big ideas never spring from just one source (story line). Mr. Peter's work acknowledges this by commenting on an interesting juxtaposition of several origin stories.

However, there is a fundamental missing piece, reflected as a misapprehension in some of the comments he cites, which is fundamental to The Internet as we know it.

The critical point missed is that in all of the "internet progenitors"
that actually contributed substantial "DNA" to Today's Internet all fostered an environment where the creativity was at the *edge* of the network, not *inside* the network, per se."

It would be very difficult to find creativity in a piece of wire or in a wireless link.
The new point is not in where is the creativity, but in the existence of many creativities in the place of one.




"This trait remains the central driving force in The Internet - the "sustainable rate of innovation" - and that is maximized, generally speaking, by not requiring "permission" to attempt innovation."

There is no need of permission if there is no authority.
Every ring in the chain is a part of it, a contribution to the global innovation.

I was particularly taken by the comments about how it might still be "the internet" if done with X.25 or ATM.

"those "telco" technologies were created specifically to provide for central planning and control of innovation (aka "new services").
the power of that control can be seen in how successfully ISDN was crushed in the US. In that world, "new services" (not necessarily
innovative) are doled out by the network operators, in concert with their handmaiden equipment providers, on geologic time scales.

No, any comprehensive theory for "how the Internet came to be" must take into account this very fundamental decentralization and the innovative forces it unleashes.

It is the unrivalled "sustainable rate of innovation" which makes The Internet what it is.

Moreover, any alternative "Mark 2" notion of "The Internet" which does not maintain and leverage this force will be unable to compete with another model which is in league with it.

At large scale, Biological Diversity beats Centralized Planning.

The rise of The Internet as innovation platform was the transition of communications and comm infrastructure from the world of Centralized Planning to a world where Biological Diversity drives the sustainable rate of innovation."

Discussion and exchange of ideas. Ideas generate new ideas and new ideas make a new world, while a monologue is very often sterile especially when driven just by profit.

"Intentional economic gerrymandering not withstanding, this is a hugely powerful force. That fundamental model transition marks the real birth of The Internet as she is known today. All else was prelude.

?cheers,
?-mo"

What I like best is the "she".

Patrizia