Nick G.’s Reviews > Where Wizards Stay Up Late : The Origins of the Internet > Status Update

Turns out that 267 to 304 is all chapter notes, the bibliography, and an index of terms. The epilogue of the book, though, was great; it showcased the party that the pioneers of the ARPANET and the Internet had to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the first ARPANET IMP. It sounded like a great way to put BBN back in the spotlight as well as a great experience for everybody involved.

It's interesting how even in the age of the Internet, for as long as the ARPANET was still active, it was the center of the networked world. Your network wasn't worth anything if it wasn't connected to the ARPANET. I wonder what it was like when the ARPANET was shut down in 1990?

Around this point in the book, it's been revealed that nobody really invented the Internet. The Internet Protocol was created and various networks began to adopt it so that they could communicate with each other, and so the Internet was born. There wasn't really a turning point where it came to be, it just gradually happened. I guess that "turning point" would be the invention of the World Wide Web in the 90s.

DARPA eventually gave up ARPANET, handing over control to the Defense Communications Agency, who filled it with bureaucracy and restrictions, so that's fun. It's fine, though, because TCP was just split into TCP/IP and in the next section, Ethernet is apparently invented, so we're getting really close to the modern Internet.

The beginning of chapter eight basically glossed over new DARPA (ARPA renamed) network projects-- the packet radio network (PRNET) and the satellite network (SATNET)-- which I found really cool, as they basically translated ARPANET to different means of data transmission than telephone lines. The reason these were glossed over, though, is because the chapter is really about the Concatenated Network (CATENET)...

It's interesting to read about the advent of free speech advocation on the ARPANET. While it was government property, its users (especially the members of its official mailing list, the MsgGroup) valued being able to communicate freely and keeping any sensible topics open to discussion.

It's funny how the only official ARPANET mailing list (basically a chatroom but with email), the MsgGroup, was the place where some of the first computer games where you're not against the computer were distributed and developed. Imagine being on a mailing list with the entire modern Internet, or even just your school, and developing Minecraft together.

It's a good thing that the original IBM PC sparked an entire market of clones, because things as trivial as email addresses were topics of contention on the ARPANET.

The first ever conversation between two chatbots was at a 1972 convention designed to show off the capabilities of ARPANET. It featured a doctor chatbot and a paranoid psychotic one. While it was obviously robotic, it was (and still is) incredible and funny to see them talk to each other, especially for the technology of the late 60s to early 70s.

I feel like every day I read, ARPANET gets a little closer to the modern Internet. Today, I read about the first Terminal IMPs, which connected directly to the IMP instead of communicating through a host computer. Imagine if every device connected to your home WiFi had to connect through a computer in the living room; that's essentially what it was like before 1970. Wild.