Internet’s Big Four-O

The Internet is a late-bloom gift from the 60s — the decade that gave us so many things in the way of technology innovations and social advances. It now feels as Kleinrock & C. were prescient of the 60s legacy and wanted to squeeze their pioneering proof of concept in, not too long past the moon shot and shortly before that wonder decade was over.

It took quite a long incubation before the Internet grew out of ARPA’s sugar daddy support (today, we got no patience for anything…). Back in the days, one could hardly think of the Internet as a global innovation engine. OK, you will end up with a better/cheaper version of SNA LU6.2, what else. It would have stayed within geekdom longer if it wasn’t for Sir TBL and the Mosaic browser. The Web was a sumptuous killer app and the wheel of innovation began spinning ‘round and ‘round to benefit just about every cause:

1. New infrastructure build-outs
2. Leading to faster/broader connectivity
3. Making it a breeding ground for new applications
4. Some of them reaching viral spread, network effect, etc. resulting in larger addressable markets
5. Thus creating demand for more/different infrastructure

[ loop back to 1 ... ka-ching at every step ]

To celebrate Internet’s 40th in style, the latest spin of this virtuous wheel has brought us the unbundled wireless handheld. Take, for instance, community video applications running on top of open-source Android hosted on one of several smartphone hardware platforms, with choice between GSM cell and Wi-Fi connectivity. This was unthinkable just a few years ago. There’s no slowing down of the innovation wheel. Thank you, Internet.