Internet History

The origins of today's Internet are rooted in ARPAnet, a project of ARPA, the research arm of the US Department of Defense. The story of the ARPAnet and its later flowering into the Internet is told in the book where wizards stay up late, which is a good story, but a bit much for us. Instead, we will use these sources:

These sources provide a good cast of characters and a digest of technical ideas, some of which we will explore in more detail later. A few stand out:

Paul Baran and packet switching. Baran proposed a networking model in which information flows through the network as small packets of data that travel independently and are reassembled at the receiver. The idea was that packet switching would yield a more robust and resilient network than the telephone network, the dominant telecommunications paradigm at the time. See Perspectives on networks--past present and future [PDF].

JCR Licklider and the computer as a communications device. Licklider is widely viewed as the father of interactive computing. An excellent 2001 book called The Dream Machine tracks the entire history of modern computing in the arc of Licklider's life. Among other contributions, Licklider led the ARPA research programs that preceded the ARPAnet, and hired Bob Taylor to run the ARPAnet program itself. Licklider and Taylor were perhaps the first to recognize that networked computers could bring people together in radical new ways. See their 1968 paper The Computer as a Communications Device, which is included in this PDF.
More on JCR Licklider and D/ARPA.