When looking through the list of Freshman Seminars to apply to some weeks ago, the name “What is the Internet, and what will it become?” immediately struck my attention. As I paused to think after reading the title, I began to wonder: when I was born in 1997, the Internet was already a crucial part of human life, but the question that bothered me was, how was the Internet created and how did it get to this point?

My first reading assignment for the seminar was the first half of the book “Why wizards stay up late” by Hafner and Lyon. This reading really opened my eyes to the complexity behind the Internet and computers. When we open our computer devices nowadays, the interaction between the user and their device is very simple, illustrated and visual. Buttons, icons, keys, amongst many other features, color our screens and make it easy to navigate, communicate and find whatever we need. In the initial stages of constructing the Internet, however, things did not seem as simple as what we see (and use) today.

What intrigued me at first in the reading was the figure of Paul Baran. He was one of the first to have the desire to build a network of connectivity. The funny part for me was reading that his motive for creating this interconnected space was not to connect to one another, but because of fear that the soviets would attack – we would never even think about this nowadays, right?

Also due to defense reasons, came the creation of ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) by the US Department of Defense. This brought a dilemma between the military and the scientists, as the scientists did not want ARPA to be for military services – they ended up moving from the Pentagon to a much freer willing space, a space like today’s start ups are located in.

But the most interesting part for me was reading about the difficulty “Internet pioneers” had to communicate between their different machines. Thinking about our daily lives, once again, all our devices can be interconnected and speak the same language. This allows us to send a message to someone who’s physically at the other side of the world (and even video call them if we want!). The problem of building a network of connectivity was the main obstacle encountered at the time. Bob Taylor was one who looked at this situation and had the thought of connecting these several different machines, who all spoke different languages and had to be used individually. After some time, the solution they came up with was using IMPs – intermediate computers. These IMPs would all be the same and would be added to each station (at each university involved in the process). This meant that each station would just need to know how to communicate to the IMP, and each IMP would understand their station’s language. To me, this seemed like a very smart solution, but I can also imagine the amount work it took them to make it happen!!

Well, these were some of my thoughts and interests from the first seminar reading/discussion, and I’ll be back next week with more insights on what I learn next!