Internet hits 35th birthday mark
By Harold Lee
Jan. 26, 2004 9:00 p.m.
The Internet, the small network of computers that became a World
Wide Web, celebrates its 35th birthday this year.
UCLA, in conjunction with Stanford University, UC Santa Barbara
and the University of Utah, began constructing the Internet’s
first incarnation for the Department of Defense’s Advanced
Research Projects Agency in 1969.
Computers, called Interface Message Processors, were distributed
to the four universities and connected by telephone lines.
Soon after, more computers at various universities were added to
the network, intended to facilitate academic research. What began
as a mere experiment to see if computers could talk to one another
started to grow.
“We were just having fun, actually,” said Charley
Kline, a UCLA graduate student who sent out the first Internet
message to Stanford in October of 1969.
“We didn’t realize this was going to be a gigantic,
big phenomenon.”
UCLA computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock, who is often
credited as being one of the founders of the Internet, developed
the idea of packet switching as a way to transfer files from one
computer to another.
Packet switching involves dividing files into packets before
transmission. When the packets arrive at their destination, the
receiving computer recompiles the file into its original form.
Now that the Internet is in its 35th year, Kleinrock notes the
concerns that threaten the Internet, as well as ways to encourage
its growth.
Some major problems plaguing the Internet, Kleinrock said,
include invasion of privacy and spam.
“One issue is to undo legislation that invades (user)
privacy, and the other is to enact legislation that provides
protection against privacy abuses,” Kleinrock said.
Spam, junk e-mail that floods mailboxes and Internet forums, is
one problem that legislation may find difficult to battle, he
said.
“(The solution to spam) has to be more proactive. If you
send a million e-mails, you’re going to get a hefty
fee,” Kleinrock said. “No normal person sends out a
million e-mails.”
In the beginning, it was generally assumed the Internet would be
used responsibly. For a long time, people played by the rules,
Kleinrock explained.
The spam phenomenon is a recent development.
In 1994, two Arizona lawyers flooded Usenet groups, a type of
Internet forum, with offers of easy access to green cards.
The Internet, though drastically changed from its first form,
maintains the founding principles that facilitate the traffic of
information.
“That (free exchange of ideas) resulted in a process of
developing things in an open manner, which has continued to this
day and has resulted in a better design for the network,”
Kline said.
In order to combat problems such as spam and hacker attacks, the
problems need to be sharply targeted without adversely affecting
the Internet’s growth, Kleinrock said.
“The thing that gives the Internet its power has been the
ability for people to communicate and interact,” he said.
“(In) no way would I want to inhibit that.”
The spread of the Internet has allowed even people with modest
resources to publish to the whole world, said UCLA communication
studies Professor Francis Steen.
“The big picture is a massive drop in the cost of
information,” Steen said.
“Now you can have your own Web page … a way of almost
instant self-publication.”
Through its broad expanse, the Internet has revolutionized the
way people communicate.
“Before, when people wrote letters, you would sit down and
make it a special occasion,” Steen said.
“The type of attention people gave to letters (is not
given) to e-mails, so we have a very informal genre.”
In order for the Internet to grow even further, limited
resources should be overcome to make it available to everyone,
Kleinrock said.
“Spreading to underdeveloped countries, the poor and the
underprivileged is important.”
Within the lifetime of its creators, a small band of computers
linked for academic research became a network that spread around
the world.
According to the Nua Internet Survey, 605.60 million people were
online as of September 2002.
