The Heart of the Internet, United States
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THE HEART - OF THE - INTERNET TECHNOLOGY I $22.95 Jacques Vallee was among the engineers and visionaries who set up the Internet, hoping to connect people-not control them--through information. For a few years, it seemed that this dream was being realized. But after the dot com crash of 2001, much of the Web's information flowed into the media giants and corporate conglomerates, leaving millions of Net denizens without true freedom of choice. And then there is the threat of gov ernment snooping... In his role as a general partner with a All is not lost, but it is time for Silicon Valley-based venture capital public and private actions to rebuild group, Dr. Jacques Vallee invests in the dream and win back our free young enterprises in Europe and the dom. In The Heart of the Internet, United States. An early participant in Vallee: the development of the Internet, he • reconstructs the history of has authored twenty books and more computer technology and destroys a than fifty articles in fields ranging few myths (Eniac was not the first from astrophysics to database man computer; Apple did not invent the agement, communications, and mouse, and neither did Xerox.); finance. Although he spearheaded his group's investment in a dozen com • uses first-person recollec panies now traded on NASDAQ, tions and notes to describe the Jacques is not a financial executive series of breakthroughs that trans recently converted to the wonders of formed computers from calculating technology. Educated in France, machines to universal platforms for where he received a master's degree new media; in astrophysics, he specialized in computer science in the United • describes the Internet in States, obtained his doctorate in arti today's marketplace, pressured on ficial intelligence at Northwestern the one hand by commercial inter University, and led the team that ests seeking to influence not merely developed pioneering network soft our purchases but our thoughts, and ware on ARPANET, the ancestor of on the other by governmental Internet. obsession to harness the whole sys definitions tem to its own narrow A passionate observer of Silicon of security~acrificing our privacy Valley, he founded an information and possibly our freedom in the technology company there before process; becoming a venture capitalist. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, • states a set of principles for children. network citizens and suggests how Janine. They have two we can create new standards for Jacques Vallee can be reached at: Internet usage. [email protected]. THE HEART -OF THE- INTERNET Also by This Author The Network Revolution. Berkeley: Penguin, 1982; London: Penguin, 1983. Computer Message Systems. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984. Electronic Meetings (with Robert Johansen and Kathleen Spangler). New York: Addison-Wesley, 1979. Dimensions. Chicago: Contemporary, 1988. Confrontations. New York: Ballantine, 1990. Revelations. New York: Ballantine, 1991 . Forbidden Science. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 1992. FastWalker (a novel). Berkeley: Frog Ltd., 1996. Les En;eux du Mill{maire (in French). Paris: Hochette, 1998. The Four Elements of Financial Alchemy. Berkeley: TenSpeed, 2000. THE HEART --OF THE-- INTERNET An Insider,s View ofthe Origin and Promise ofthe On-Line Revolution JACQUES VALLEE, PH. D . .. ~~.HAMPTON ROADS "-~~ PUBLISHINC COMPANV,INC. Copyright © 2003 by Jacques Vallee All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages in connection with a review. Cover design by Marjoram Production Cover art © 2003 Colin Anderson/Brand X Pictures/Picturequest Hampton Roads Publishing Company, Inc. 1125 Stoney Ridge Road Charlottesville, VA 22902 434-296-2772 fax: 434-296-5096 e-mail: [email protected] www.hrpub.com If you are unable to order this book from your local bookseller, you may order directly from the publisher. Call 1-800-766-8009, toll-free. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Vallee, Jacques. The heart of the Internet : an insider's view of the origin and promise of the on-line revolution I Jacques Vallee. p. em. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1-57174-369-3 (6 x 9, Hardcover w/Dust jacket) 1. Internet--Access control. 2. Information society. 3. Information technology--Social aspects. 4. Electronic commerce. I. Title. TK5105.875.157V355 2003 004.67'8--dc21 2003004568 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed on acid-free paper in the United States Acknowledgments In the course of my career, I have been privileged to work with sev eral of the seminal thinkers and builders of the Internet, men like Doug Engelhart, Larry Roberts, and Paul Baran. Any book about the network is homage to their creativity and perseverance. I also have been guided by numerous computer entrepreneurs and by venture capitalists who financed their projects: Dan Lynch of Interop fame, Stephens Millard at Telebit, Metricom and Com21, Fred Adler at Euro-America Ventures, Brian Pinkerton at Excite, Peter Banks at the University of Michigan and XR Ventures, and my son Olivier have contributed to this book in many ways. Their advice was indispensable. Several close associates have urged me to document my own expe riences with the early days of networking, a subject that gets increasingly blurred as journalistic reconstructions and marketing hype keep rewrit ing its history. Indeed a reviewer of Internet books on Amazon.com offered this apt remark: Considering that the history of the Internet is perhaps better documented internally than any other technological construct, it is remarkable how shad, owy its origins have been to most people, including die-hard Net-denizens! I am grateful to my friend and colleague Graham Burnette and to Russell Targ, Robert Chartrand, Peter Beren, Paul Saffo, Robert Johansen, Rich Miller, and especially to Frank DeMarco and Richard Leviton at Hampton Roads Publishing for providing input, clarity, and encouragement. Vint Cerf provided a wealth of detail and helped me correct historical and technical inaccuracies throughout my early man uscript. Connie McLindon and Bob Kahn were generous with their time when I interviewed them in Washington. Most of all, my wife janine, herself a computer professional who has lived these challenges and adventures by my side, has been my con stant source of inspiration and support. Contents Prologue ....................................... .ix Part One: The Rrst Explorers I . Getting Out of Our Sphere . 3 2. The Digital Society: Solid State or Grapevine? .............26 3. Arpanet Genesis . 4 3 Part Two: Making the Planet a Better Place 4. The Birth of a New Culture . 7 3 5. Growing the Grapevines . 90 6. An Unfinished Revolution . .I 12 Part Three: The Betrayal of the Internet 7. The End of Innocence . 12 5 8. Building the Future Mesh ......................... 139 9. They Want Well-Trained Humans . I 5 I Part Four: How We Can Save the Dream I0. Four Essential Principles ......................... 165 I I. Your Personal Countermeasures . I 7 7 12. To Create a System ............................ 187 Endnotes . 192 Index of Individuals Gted ........................... 195 Index of Topics .................................. 197 About the Author ................................20 I Illustrations Chart I : The Early History of Computers . I 5 Chart 2: History of the Arpanet . 75 Chart 3: History of the Internet ....................... I 03 Chart 4: History of the Web . I 16 Ag. I : The Z3 Computer in 1941 ...................... 16 Ag. 2: Alan Turing ................................ 17 Fig. 3: The Mark I Computer in 1949 ...................20 Fig. 4: Programming the ENIAC .......................22 Fig. 5: The SRI Console in 1968 .......................50 Fig. 6: Early Version of Engelbart's System ................51 Ag. 7: Paul Baran ................................53 Fig. 8: The Author at the SRI-ARC Computer Lab, 1971 .......62 Fig. 9: The ALGuMh lh.lg Ef¥1at ;nt ElzcUth "Jake" FeDer. 2CXX) .63 Ag.l 0: Four Pioneers of Computer Networking .............77 Fig. II: Members of the Forum Team, IFTF. 1972 ............85 Ag.l2: The lnfoMedia Startup Team in 1980 ...............86 Prologue A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or tragedy or perhaps both. -James Madison Important developments in human history may be motivated by greed or fleeting visions of glory, but those that succeed have a vast spiritual dimension that defines them forever in the mind of the world. Aviation, before it became a multibillion-dollar business, was the dream of private inventors like the Wright Brothers and pilots like Lindbergh. We fly on Boeing 747s, but our imagination relates best to the Spirit of St. Louis and to the poetry of Saint Exupery's Little Prince. We are not simply pawns in a technological world or helpless actors in an economic game. Long-term human actions are dictated by spiritual imperatives. We are inspired by the heroism of pioneers and by visions that take us beyond our human condition. So it is with the Internet. Most Americans discovered networking about 1995 and were imme diately inspired by its seemingly magical ability to link people all over the world, irrespective of space and time. In a few short years, the technol ogy has transformed business practices and personal lives with mythical power. But in this unprecedented expansion, something has gotten lost: the dreams and visions of the people who built the network. With