The History of the Internet (Part 2)
Resources
Video Script
J. C. R. Licklider his idea inspired him to write a paper in 1962 titled Man Computer Symbiosis. And in that paper, he had this quote, that he foresaw a network of such computers connected to one another by wideband communication lines, which could provide the functions of present day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval, and other symbiotic functions. And while there’s a lot of words here, he’s really thinking about building computer connections where computers can store libraries worth of information that we can access at our fingertips.
And so a few years later, he started talking with his colleagues. And he came up with this idea of what he called the intergalactic computer network, which I really admit I wish we called the internet the intergalactic computer network, I think is a really catchy idea. But he envisioned this idea of a global network of computers all interconnected and accessible to each other. And so you can easily ask access data from data and programs from any of those computers on any other computer. And he actually even submitted a memorandum called a memorandum for members and affiliates of the intergalactic computer network to encourage people to participate in this new idea. And while this never really came to be, this idea of forms the basis of a lot of the internet and cloud computing resources that we use today in our daily lives.
Another major figure in the history of the internet is Leonard Kleinrock. Leonard Kleinrock was a major figure in the history of the internet and was a researcher at UCLA. And he helped develop the technology behind packet switched networking, which we will take a look at in the next lecture. And it was really developed and proposed to the government as a way to build computer systems that were very fault tolerant in case of an attack or an emergency. His work was really revolutionary. And there’s actually a great video of Leonard Kleinrock himself discussing the importance of his work at UCLA in the early days of these computer networks. So let’s take a look at that video.