[e2e] Nature mag, DARPA, and the Internet

[David P. Reed]

At 04:19 PM 8/8/2003 -0700, Dave Crocker wrote:
>Hilarie,
>
>TPSHO> mentions "many credit the agency with developing the Internet" and an
>TPSHO> editorial "In Defence of DARPA", mentioning that among its payoffs are
>TPSHO> "a host of critical Internet technologies."  I assume the magazine
>TPSHO> means well, but this lukewarm referral to DARPA's role seems to show
>TPSHO> that those who do not know history are designated to rewrite it.
>
>
>Not that the press has a very good track-record of getting technical
>matters (or history) very accurate, there is a reasonable basis for
>giving Darpa less than 100% of the credit:
>
>NSFNet forced a multi-backbone core and created a set of pre-ISP
>organizations -- the real-world importance of both these enhancements
>was massive.
>
>Search engines and the Web came from non-Arpa work. In fact, after the
>initial burst of apps work in the early 70s, I believe there were no
>successful, new applications that came out of the Darpa community.
>
>So, Darpa did the packet-related work and one or two of the core
>applications. But taken on their own, they are not sufficient for the
>phenomenon most folks think of, when they say "Internet".
>
>
>
>d/
>--
>  Dave Crocker <mailto:dcrocker at brandenburg.com>
>  Brandenburg InternetWorking <http://www.brandenburg.com>
>  Sunnyvale, CA  USA <tel:+1.408.246.8253>, <fax:+1.866.358.5301>