[Air-L] 'MEN Invented the Internet'?

[Andrew Russell]

FWIW - 

The Chicago Law Review published a long (~20,000 words!) and quite critical review of Wu's "Master Switch" last fall. A free download is available at the bottom of http://lawreview.uchicago.edu/page/vol-78-issue-4-fall-2011.

Book Review: Are Those Who Ignore History Doomed to Repeat It?
Peter Decherney, Nathan Ensmenger, & Christopher S. Yoo
A Review of "The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires," by Tim Wu

Andy


On Jun 5, 2012, at 3:14 PM, Thomas Jones wrote:

> I agree - sort of.
> 
> Yes, the invention of the Internet involved many parties. But we must understand that the underlying infrastructure was mostly built by the US Army and AT&T (with latecomer Verizon). Tim Wu dives into this in his book "The Master Switch". 
> 
> The closest singular person I can think of who "invented" the Internet would be J. C. R. Licklider. And lets not confuse the Internet with the World Wide Web. The Internet isnt composed entirely of web servers - it is here that Universities contributed heavily with the Department of Defense.
> 
> 
> Thomas Jones | Graduate Student | School of Information Studies
> http://about.me/othertomjones
> 
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> ________________________________________
> From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] on behalf of Jeremy hunsinger [jeremy at tmttlt.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, June 05, 2012 2:56 PM
> To: air-l at listserv.aoir.org
> Subject: Re: [Air-L] 'MEN Invented the Internet'?
> 
> other than the gender bias issue... which i agree is just distasteful
> and untrue.
> 
> the other real problem with the title is the term invented.
> 
> no one invented the internet.  a great number of people contributed to
> early networking technologies, and eventually someone named a protocol
> inter-networking protocol.  so at best we have someone who named one
> operational parameter of the internet, but no one invented it, no one
> as best as i can tell from my readings aimed for anything like it is
> today until around 1996 when it became an object of commercial policy
> and by then... it really was an assemblage of operating protocols and
> networks that were quite old.  it isn't like ethernet, where we have a
> possible inventor at all.  for instance, who can name the famous
> actress who worked on on operational protocol for radio switching that
> we now use in 801.11 radio based internets?  you all know her... she
> didn't invent the internet, but she patented something very important
> to today's internet.
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