Book Proposal
On the International Origins of the Internet: A Conceptual History
by Ronda Hauben
rh120@columbia.edu
Table of Contents
Introduction:
The development of the Internet offers a prototype of a multinational
collaborative research project which fosters communication across the
boundaries of diverse administrative structures, political entities,
and technical designs. The myth surrounding the origins of the Internet
is that it began as a military project in 1969 in the US. 1969 is the date
marking the origins of the ARPANET (a US packet switching network), but not
the birth of the Internet. The origins of the Internet date from 1973. The
goal of the researchers creating the Internet was to create a network of
networks, a means for networks from diverse countries to intercommunicate.
The development of tcp/ip, the protocol that makes the Internet a reality,
was international from its very beginnings.
This book will document the international origins of the internet
and the collaboration among early Internet researchers. The book will
also document the collaborative communication processes that preceeded
and informed the early development of the Internet. To understand the
conditions that nurtured the birth and early development of the Internet,
it is important to understand the creation and development of the Information
Processing Techniques Office created by J.C.R. Licklider in 1962.
The Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO) provided a protective
institutional form to nurture the earliest development of the Internet.
The introduction will discuss why it is helpful to understand the origins
of the IPTO and of its parent agency, the Advanced Research Projects Agency
(ARPA). ARPA/IPTO made it possible to support, nourish and give leadership to
the development of computer science. Such research has created a paradigm
change in the use of computers, from batch processing and stand alone computer
use to interactive computing and computer networking. This paradigm shift is
having a profound impact on the world. When such technological and scientific
changes have been created, it is important to understand the conditions that
nourished their birth and gestation. Yet very little is known about the
situation and people involved in early Internet development.
The purpose of this book is to explore how the Internet developed
and how the researchers who were part of the Internet's development were
supported in their work to accomplish such significant innovative
development.
Chapter 1 - The science of information, communication and control -
the early post World War II interdisciplinary circles of engineers and
scientists create a fertile ground.
This chapter will look back at the early post World War II
exploration of what at first was called "feedback", later information
and communication science, and then "cybernetics". The chapter will consider
the conferences in the U.S. and Great Britain of engineers and scientists
interested in the newly emerging science of information, communication and
control. J.C.R. Licklider was a participant in these circles in the US and
Great Britain. The 1954 conference on Information, Communication and Control
held at MIT continued the tradition of the five Macy conferences on Cybernetics
publications. A transcription of the 1954 conference by Licklider was in
the tradition of the 10 Macy conferences (1946-1953). This 1954 conference
is a link between the Macy conferences on Cybernetics and Licklider's
visionary administration of the IPTO.
Chapter 2 - The Information Processing Techniques Office
and the Birth of the Internet: A Study in Governance
In both "Man-Computer Symbiosis"(1960) by JCR Licklider, and "On-Line
Man-Computer Communication"(1962) by Licklider and Wenden E. Clark, there
is the notion of the capability of the human mind to do aspects of problem
solving and decision making that then were not within the capability of the
computer. In "Man-Computer Symbiosis", Licklider characterizes the human as
goal seeking. In his paper with Clark, they refer to the need for "a tight
on-line coupling between human brains and electronic computers." Their
objective is to "amalgamate the predominantly human capabilities and the
predominantly computer capabilities to create an integrated system for
goal-oriented on-line-inventive information processing." Understanding why
and how Licklider and then Licklider and Clark use terms like "goal seeking"
or "goal-oriented" is helpful to understand the nature of the computer
and networking developments that Licklider initiated during his leadership
of the Information Processing Techniques Office at ARPA.
In 1962 Licklider was invited to ARPA to create the Information
Processing Techniques Office (IPTO). In a recent study describing the (IPTO)
by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Science, the
authors of the study write:
The entire system displayed something of a self-organizing,
self-managing system.
Funding a Revolution, 1999
This chapter will explore the IPTO as a "self-organizing" and
"self-managing" system. It will examine the connection between this
description of IPTO and the concepts of "feedback" and "servo-mechanisms"
that were being studied in the early post WWII period by the research
communities that Licklider was connected with before he joined ARPA to
create the IPTO. By examining this connection, a basis will be set to
understand the context both of Licklider's early writing and of the
foundation he set for the creation and development of IPTO as the
institutional form that made possible the development of the Internet.
Chapter 3 - Creating ARPA as the Needed Interface
This chapter explores the question: How did an institution like IPTO
evolve within the U.S. government? A related question is why the U.S.
Department of Defense (DoD) could at times function as a home for important
scientific and technical innovation. Also, at times the interface broke down.
To understand the contradictory nature of the interface between the US Dept
of Defense and the scientific research community, it is helpful to explore
how and why the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was created within
the DoD. The experience of the Office of Scientific Research and Development
(OSRD) created by Vannevar Bush during WWII is summarized in Bush's report
to President Roosevelt "Science: The Endless Frontier" In this report, Bush
sets out a number of ground rules for the effective creation of an interface
between the U.S. government and the scientific community. How do these ground
rules help to clarify the environment needed to support basic research in
science and technology? What kind of environment was created for scientists
by the DoD in ARPA and then in the office created at ARPA for research in
information processing, i.e. the Information Processing Techniques Office?
This chapter describes efforts by the U.S. government to define the kind of
interface needed for certain kinds of scientific and technical research and
how such research was then supported by the U.S. Department of Defense.
Chapter 4 - Basic Research for the National Defense and the U.S.
Department of Defense: A Paradox?
After WWII the question was raised of the appropriate
form for a research organization to spearhead research for the
national defense. This involved support for basic research in
fields that might benefit the U.S. Department of Defense. An
early proposal was to put such research into a private
organization outside of the U.S. government. But there were
objections raised that it was not appropriate to put such
government functions outside of the U.S. government. The Office
of Naval Research (ONR) was created by the U.S. Congress to
support research of interest to the Navy. There were also efforts
within the Army and Air Force to support the creation of the
appropriate research organizations. This chapter describes these
efforts and the tension that developed between the need of the
armed services for basic research and the pressure for applied
research. The experience of ONR and the Air Force Office of
Science Research (AFOSR) with the tension of how to support
basic research given the pressure for applied research is
explored. A similar problem would eventually confront IPTO.
Chapter 5 - IPTO Centers of Excellence and Creating a Resource
Sharing Network
After coming to ARPA in 1962, Licklider sets out to create
centers of excellence for computer science research. He initiated
the creation of Project MAC at MIT as the first center of excellence.
He initiates a center at Carnegie Mellon University. Under his leadership
of IPTO, several other centers of excellence are created. Though it is
too early to begin computer networking research, Licklider promotes
a vision of an intergalactic network which inspires those who
later take over the leadership of the IPTO, like Larry
Roberts. Those who follow Licklider at IPTO take on the challenge
of creating the new technology of packet switching to create a
resource sharing network for ARPA researchers
Also Licklider establishes a tradition of the wide dissemination of
the research of the IPT community. This leads to collaboration among
researchers in Great Britain at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL)
under the leadership of Donald Davies with the information processing
technical community. This collaboration will contribute to the early
development of the ARPANET, a packet switching network sponsored by the IPTO.
Researchers who work on early ARPANET research recognize the significant
impact IPTO computer communication research will have on the world.
Chapter 6 - Developing the New Field of Computer Communications
A public demonstration of the ARPANET is planned for the first
International Computer Communications Conference (ICCC'72) in Washington,
D.C. Over a thousand researchers from around the world attend this
conference and personally experience the power of packet switching
technology. Researchers at the conference question who can take on the
challenge that the merger of computer and communications technological
advances will pose to the world. They anticipate the important changes
these new developments will bring. As researchers in different countries
begin to create packet switching networks to meet their local and national
needs, the question of how to link up dissimilar packet switching networks
becomes a research problem to be solved. This problem is identified by Robert
Kahn who organized the ICCC'72 demonstration as the Multiple Network
Problem.
Chapter 7 - The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural
Conception to Solve the Multiple Network Problem
Robert Kahn, a researcher at Bolt Beranek and Newman
(BBN) responsible for the system design of the ARPANET, goes to
work at IPTO in October 1972 after the successful ICCC'72
demonstration. He initiates a program to create a mobile ground
packet switching network based on radio broadcast technology.
Also he takes on responsibility for an existing initiative to
create a satellite based packet switching network. The challenge
of making it possible to link these two dissimilar networks with
the ARPANET is a technical and scientific challenge. Kahn
recognizes that this will require a new architecture and the
design of a new protocol to embody the new architecture. This
chapter describes how communication science presents a model that
is helpful in solving this problem. The conception of an open
architecture networking environment will make it possible to
solve the Multiple Network Problem.
Chapter 8 - Designing the Internetworking Protocol TCP/IP
Creating SATNET and PRNET and linking them with the
ARPANET
At the ICCC '72 demonstration researchers from around the
world formed the International Network Working Group (INWG)
to share their research efforts creating packet switching
networks. Steve Crocker at IPTO funded Vinton Cerf to head the
INWG. Cerf had just gotten his PhD at UCLA and joined the
Stanford University faculty. Kahn invited Cerf to collaborate
with him on the design for a protocol to embody the open
architecture conception. The chapter will describe the details
of creating the design for the protocol that has become known as
the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). And
it will describe the technical aspects of the design.
The details of the TCP protocol implementation were not to
be developed in the isolation of a laboratory. To the contrary,
they were born in collaborative research among IPTO researchers from
the US and researchers from Great Britain and Norway. Linking Europe
and the US via a packet communications network presented the challenge
of creating a packet satellite network (SATNET). SATNET was created
for the INTELSAT IV satellite, to link computer sites at the British
University College of London (UCL), Norwegian (NORSAR), and the US
ARPANET. Research creating TCP/IP also involved developing a mobile
packet radio network (PRNET). This chapter will describe the process of
creating SATNET and how it provided the research environment to
create the early specification and implementation for the TCP/IP
protocol. This chapter will describe how the technical collaboration
between IPTO and UCL researchers overcame the political barriers they faced.
Chapter 9 - IPTO as the Center of the IPT Community, the Pressures on
the IPTO, and their Efforts to Protect the IPT Community: Turning
Basic Research into Applied Research?
What was it like working in the IPT office? This chapter
will present observations and descriptions from the program
managers and directors of the office about how the office gave
them an important vantage point from which to support researchers
in the IPT community. Also the chapter will describe the
observations from those in the IPT community about their
interactions with the IPTO. The IPTO staff were able to support
researchers because of their government position. This experience
provides a case study to learn how an institutional form within
government, for a time, was able to support scientific and technological
research.
By 1974, changes initiated by the US Congress began to affect IPTO.
Most importantly, there was a change in the institutional placement of ARPA.
ARPA was originally created as part of the Office of the US Secretary of
Defense (OSD) and under its protection. Soon after it was created
there were some changes in its reporting status, but it retained
OSD protection. By the early 1970's, however, ARPA had an administrative
change and lost the protection of the Secretary of Defense. The Barber Report,
probably the only institutional history of ARPA, was written as ARPA was being
transferred to a different administrative form and placement. ARPA was ended
and many of its functions transferred to the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA). These changes in administrative form were accompanied
by changes in the kind of research that IPTO was pressured to do. There was
increased pressure for applied research in place of support for basic
research.
Continuing effort to support basic research required protective
camouflage similar to what had happened with ONR and AFOSR. Similarly, this
pressure had a serious effect on the IPT community just as it had with AFOSR
and ONR. The growing pressure to do research related to weapons development
at IPTO put the research organization into an increasingly vulnerable
situation as had happened with ONR. The political importance of
such developments on the armed services and their contractors was
reflected in the IPTO experience with the Strategic Computing
Initiative. This all left IPTO very vulnerable.
Chapter 10 - TCP digest: Creating the Cutover to TCP and the early
Internet - Even the DoD is not easily won to TCP/IP
The US Department of Defense was faced with a problem.
Western Union had won the contract for providing a network for
the DoD. They had installed Autodin II, a packet switching network
using problemmatic technology. It was becoming increasingly evident
at the DoD that there was a need for alternatives to Autodin II.
Steve Walker at the DoD was asked to propose an alternative. He
presented the case for the adoption of TCP/IP by the DoD. The
chapter will describe the case made for the adoption of TCP/IP
and how TCP was chosen to replace Autodin II. The contract for
Autodin II was ended and efforts initiated to adopt TCP/IP as the
DoD protocol. This chapter thus helps to explore the issue of why
basic research is important as a foundation for needed
applied research developments, and why basic research needs to be
protected if applied research developments are desired.
The decision to adopt TCP/IP by the US Department of Defense
in March 1982 meant that a schedule was set for the cutover from
the ARPANET protocol NCP to TCP/IP on ARPANET computers. A mailing list,
the TCP Digest, was created and helped to set the basis for the
cutover from NCP to TCP/IP. The deadline for the cutover meant that there
was a need to explore the problems that the cutover would entail. The cutover
to TCP/IP set the basis to split the ARPANET into the ARPANET for research
and MILNET for operational DoD traffic. Communication was possible
between these two different networks via TCP/IP.
Chapter 11 - Unix is spread thru the International Technical
Community, especially in Europe.
IPTO supported the creation of a version of UNIX that could
be freely distributed to the technical research community. This version
of UNIX was called the Berkeley Systems Distribution (BSD). In the early
1980's IPTO supported the creation of an implementation of the
TCP/IP protocol to be distributed as part of BSD. The version was
originally created by researchers at BBN and then modified by
Bill Joy at the University of California Berkeley for BSD. Also
IPTO supported the design and fabrication of computer chips as
part of a program called Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI), and
the creation of a workstation using chips designed as part of this
program. This led to the development of the SUN workstation. The
manufacture of SUN workstations was transitioned to the private sector
and the workstations were widely used by the research community.
TCP/IP was part of the BSD UNIX distribution. This helped to spread
TCP/IP among the academic and research community both within the U.S.
and abroad, as in Europe.
Chapter 12 - The Vision of Computer Networking Spreads in Europe,
even in Eastern Europe
This chapter will explore the role played by another institution,
the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), and
a technical association, the IFIP, TC 6.0 working group, in helping to
spread the vision of networking and the knowledge of Unix in Europe,
even in Eastern Europe.
Chapter 13 - Spreading the Net and networking and the Emergence
of the Netizen - the role of mailing lists and newsgroups in
building the Internet
In Europe, several national networks were developed in the 1980s.
By the early 1990s, the Internet spread in a number of countries around
the world. Also Usenet helped to spread computer networking in Europe.
Also by the early 1990s the concept of the netizen emerged online as
a new form of global citizenship. The chapter will provide some
examples of networks that developed in the 1980s and how these
linked up in the 1990s using TCP/IP. Also certain coordinating
structures that were more formal functioned and helped to
provide needed management forms. The chapter will explore
these formal and informal forms that helped make the Internet
the worldwide network that developed by the 1990s.
The chapter will also focus on the role that communication
among the researchers and among researchers and users played
in the development of the Internet. It will look at MsgGroup
Mailing List, and several other mailing lists and Usenet
newsgroups to consider how communication and feedback
made it possible to create the Internet and to focus on
the needs of the networks users in developing the Internet.
The chapter will also consider the problem of the future management
of the Internet's infrastructure.
Chapter 14 - The End of the IPTO and the Legacy - What are
the implications toward the future of the Internet?
In 1986, IPTO was ended. DARPA also made a decision to
curtail its involvement in networking research. Further
responsibility for the Internet in the US became split between
DARPA and the NSF.
This chapter will explore the contradictory experience of
the birth, development and problems experienced by the IPTO and
IPT community. What are the implications of the IPTO experience
to continued technological and scientific development of the
Internet and of computer science research? What lessons can be
learned for future science and technology policy from the IPTO
experience?
What does the IPTO experience suggest is a possible form of
research program that it is important to understand? What forms
of protection in such a program are needed for researchers? How
are the needs of such a scientific research program different
from the needs of normal procurement that the government does?
How are they different from a research program based on peer
review?
These questions will be raised and discussed. The question
of whether there are lessons from the IPTO experience that can be
useful for the future will be explored.
Are there lessons from the experience of IPTO, along with
the experience of ONR and AFOSR that can be useful in proposing a
future direction for some form of science technology policy in
general and for policy regarding the future development of the
Internet, in particular?
Is there a need to create an institutional entity that is
international in scope, to carry on long range planning and
administration for the Internet? If so what does the experience
of IPTO suggest are lessons that it would do well to learn from
in considering how to create such a government institutional
form? This chapter will propose that there are vital lessons that
need to be learned from the experience of IPTO and especially
from how IPTO made possible the early conceptual and development
research that gave birth to the Internet.
----------------
Title
On the International Origins of the Internet: A Conceptual History:
by Ronda Hauben
rh120@columbia.edu
Introduction
Chapter 1 - The science of information, communication and control -
the early post World War II interdisciplinary circles of engineers and
scientists create a fertile ground.
Chapter 2 - The Information Processing Techniques Office
and the Birth of the Internet: A Study in Governance
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/lick101.doc
(The Information Processing Techniques Office
and the Birth of the Internet
A Study in Governance)
Chapter 3 - Creating ARPA as the Needed Interface
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/arpa_ipto.txt
(Computer Science and the Role of Government in Creating the
Internet: ARPA/IPTO (1962-1986)
Creating the Needed Interface)
Chapter 4 - Basic Research for the National Defense and the U.S.
Department of Defense: A Paradox?
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/basicresearch.txt
Chapter 5 - IPTO Centers of Excellence and Creating a Resource
Sharing Network
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/centers-excellence.txt
Chapter 6 - Developing the New Field of Computer Communications
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/computer-communications.txt
Chapter 7 - The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural
Conception to Solve the Multiple Network Problem
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt
Chapter 8 - Designing the Internetworking Protocol TCP/IP
Creating SATNET and PRNET and linking them with the
ARPANET
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_tcp.txt
(The Internet: On its International Origins and Collaborative
Vision A Work In Progress)
Chapter 9 - IPTO as the Center of the IPT Community, the Pressures on
the IPTO, and their Efforts to Protect the IPT Community: Turning
Basic Research into Applied Research?
Chapter 10 - TCP digest: Creating the Cutover to TCP and the early
Internet - Even the DoD is not easily won to TCP/IP
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/tcpdraft.txt
(A Study of the ARPANET TCP/IP Digest
and of the Role of Online Communication
in the Transition from the ARPANET to the Internet )
Chapter 11 - Unix is spread thru the International Technical
Community, especially in Europe.
Chapter 12 - The Vision of Computer Networking Spreads in Europe,
even in Eastern Europe
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/chemnitzpap.doc
(The Vision of Computer Networking Communication
and its Influence on East-West Relations and the GDR)
Chapter 13 - Spreading the Net and networking and the Emergence
of the Netizen - the role of mailing lists and newsgroups in
building the Internet
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/misc/citizenpap.html
(The International Origins of the Internet and the Emergence
of the Netizen: Is the Early Vision Still Viable?)
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/usenet_early_days.txt
( Early Usenet(1981-2) Creating the Broadsides for Our Day)
http://umcc.ais.org/~ronda/new.papers/msghist.txt
(ARPANET Mailing Lists and Usenet Newsgroups
Creating an Open and Scientific Process
for Technology Development and Diffusion)
Chapter 14- The End of the IPTO and the Legacy - What are
the implications toward the future of the Internet?
last updated : September 14, 2005