[kictanet] Yes, Government Researchers Really Did Invent the Internet

[Ali Hussein]

Alice

Thanks for sharing. Interesting article. In my view this bolsters my conviction that a Multi-Stakeholder approach when not dysfunctional can work wonders. The essence of this article where private sector players with Government funding set the foundation of what we today take for granted (the internet) is indisputable. 

Barrack, in an earlier posting you alluded to the issues of whether this Multi-Stakeholder approach is broken. I say better this approach than a lone wolf type approach. The way forward is to look and study how teams work effectively. Michael A West's book 'Effective Teamwork, Practical Lessons from Organisational Research' may point the way to how to make this Multi-Stakeholder approach work better. 

These are interesting times all round. We have examples of how a Multi-Stakeholder approach has worked and where it has not. In my opinion the current IGF process is a good example of how this process has worked well. 

Fortunately or unfortunately, sometimes (scratch that! All the time!) personalities  are what make up organizations. Where personalities have the interest of the whole at heart you invariably find that this approach works. Where personalities clash you find that the Multi-Stakeholder approach takes on a Schizophrenic Personality. 

Take KeNIC for example. For as long as the different stakeholders that make up KeNIC were in tune it worked. The troubles at KeNIC can be traced to the Kenya ICT Act. Some stakeholders (Read Board Members) wanted a more Government approach to how KeNIC was managed to the point that it is alleged that one of us at the Board Level ( I served on the Board of KeNIC up-to April this year) was behind the clause that required KeNIC to be licensed by CCK. Some, like TESPOK wanted a more hands off Government approach. You can imagine then how that penned out. Needless to say we now have an organization that doesn't seem to know whether it is a Parastatal, an NGO or a For Profit Organisation! 

In my humble opinion it doesn't matter whether you fly in a top notch CEO or a Mediocre one. For as long as we do not resolve the fundamental issues KeNIC will continue to languish in the doldrums. 

It is incumbent upon the community at large to resolve these issues and put Personalities aside. 

At this juncture I must disclose that the Board of KeNIC then did acknowledge that an institutional assessment needed to be done because it became clear that the board had become dysfunctional. I must acknowledge too that as a Board (at least from my opinion) we had failed the community. This report MUST be made public so that we can move forward. After all if we do not accept that we are sick how can we be cured?  

I understand that today Alice resigned as the Chairperson. I can only speculate as to the reasons for her resignation.

Ali Hussein

+254 773/713 601113

Sent from my iPhone®

On Jul 25, 2012, at 5:50 PM, Alice Munyua <alice at apc.org> wrote:

> 
> 
> Yes, Government         Researchers Really Did Invent the Internet
> 
> http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/23/yes-government-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/?print=true
> 
> By Michael Moyer | July 23, 2012
> 
> 
> “It’s an urban legend that the government launched the Internet,” writes Gordon Crovitz in an opinion piece in today’s Wall Street Journal. Most histories cite the Pentagon-backed ARPANet as the Internet’s immediate predecessor, but that view         undersells the importance of research conducted at Xerox PARC labs in the 1970s, claims Crovitz. In fact, Crovitz implies that, if anything, government intervention gummed up the natural process of laissez faire innovation. “The Internet was fully privatized in 1995,” says Crovitz, “just as the commercial Web began to boom.” The implication is clear: the Internet could only become the world-changing force it is today once big government got out of the way.
> 
> But Crovitz’s story is based on a profound misunderstanding of not only history, but technology. Most egregiously, Crovitz seems to confuse the Internet—at heart, a set of protocols designed to allow far-flung computer networks to communicate with one another—with Ethernet, a protocol for connecting nearby computers into a local network. (Robert Metcalfe, a researcher at Xerox PARC who co-invented the Ethernet protocol, today tweeted tongue-in-cheek “Is it possible I invented the whole damn Internet?”)
> 
> The most important part of what we now know of as the Internet is the TCP/IP protocol, which was invented by Vincent Cerf and Robert Kahn. Crovitz mentions TCP/IP, but only in passing, calling it (correctly) “the Internet’s backbone.” He fails to mention that Cerf and Kahn developed TCP/IP while working on a government grant.
> 
> Other commenters, including Timothy           B. Lee at Ars Technica and veteran technology reporter Steve Wildstrom, have noted that Crovitz’s misunderstandings run deep. He also manages to confuse the World Wide Web (incidentally, invented by Tim Berners Lee while working at CERN, a government-funded research laboratory) with hyperlinks, and an internet—a link between two computers—with THE Internet.
> 
> But perhaps the most damning rebuttal comes from Michael Hiltzik, the author “Dealers of Lightning,” a history of Xerox PARC that Crovitz uses as his main source for material. “While I’m gratified in a sense that he cites my book,” writes Hiltzik, “it’s my duty to point out that he’s wrong. My book bolsters, not contradicts, the argument that the Internet had its roots in the ARPANet, a government project.”
> 
> In truth, no private company would have been capable of developing a project like the Internet, which required years of R&D efforts spread out over scores of far-flung agencies, and which began to take off only after decades of investment. Visionary infrastructure projects such as this are part of what has allowed our economy to grow so much in the past century. Today’s op-ed is just one sad indicator of how we seem to be losing our appetite for this kind of ambition.
> 
> About the Author: Michael Moyer is the editor in charge of technology coverage at Scientific American. Follow on Twitter @mmoyr.
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