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<h1 id="postTitle2" class="postTitle"><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/23/yes-government-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/"
rel="bookmark" title="Permanent Link to Yes, Government
Researchers Really Did Invent the Internet">Yes, Government
Researchers Really Did Invent the Internet</a></h1>
<p class="articleInfo2"> <span class="byline"> <a
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href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/23/yes-government-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/?print=true">http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2012/07/23/yes-government-researchers-really-did-invent-the-internet/?print=true</a></span></p>
<p class="articleInfo2"><span class="byline">By Michael Moyer | </span>
<span class="datestamp">July 23, 2012</span> </p>
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<p>“It’s an urban legend that the government launched the
Internet,” <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444464304577539063008406518.html">writes</a>
Gordon Crovitz in an opinion piece in today’s <em>Wall Street
Journal</em>. Most histories cite the Pentagon-backed <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=Internet-at-40">ARPANet</a>
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.</p>
<p>But Crovitz’s story is based on a profound misunderstanding of
not only <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=Internet-at-40">history</a>,
but technology. Most egregiously, Crovitz seems to confuse the <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=Internet-at-40">Internet</a>—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. (<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=using-the-internets-history-to-develop">Robert
Metcalfe</a>, a researcher at Xerox PARC who co-invented the
Ethernet protocol, today <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://twitter.com/BobMetcalfe/status/227426481901559808">tweeted</a>
tongue-in-cheek “Is it possible I invented the whole damn
Internet?”)</p>
<p>The most important part of what we now know of as the Internet
is the TCP/IP protocol, which was <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=internet-pioneer-cerf">invented
by Vincent Cerf</a> 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 <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=internet-pioneer-cerf">working
on a government grant</a>.</p>
<p>Other commenters, including <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/07/wsj-mangles-history-to-argue-government-didnt-launch-the-internet/">Timothy
B. Lee at Ars Technica</a> and veteran technology reporter <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://techpinions.com/wsjs-internet-history-is-way-off/8080">Steve
Wildstrom</a>, have noted that Crovitz’s misunderstandings run
deep. He also manages to confuse the <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=long-live-the-web">World
Wide Web</a> (incidentally, <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/report.cfm?id=web-20-anniversary">invented
by Tim Berners Lee</a> while working at CERN, a
government-funded research laboratory) with hyperlinks, and an
internet—a link between two computers—with THE Internet.</p>
<p>But perhaps the most <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.latimes.com/business/money/la-mo-who-invented-internet-20120723,0,5052169.story">damning
rebuttal</a> comes from Michael Hiltzik, the author “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895">Dealers
of Lightning</a>,” 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.”</p>
<p>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.</p>
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<span id="authorImage"> </span><strong>About the Author:</strong>
Michael Moyer is the editor in charge of technology coverage at
Scientific American. Follow on Twitter <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://twitter.com/mmoyr">@mmoyr</a>.
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