Looking Backward and Forward at the Internet

This article reviews accounts of the origins and growth of the global Internet with an interest in their implications for the future. Many accounts take overly restricted views of technical development. For instance, the Internet is often seen as simply the outgrowth of US Defense Department work and popular enthusiasm. Recent interdisciplinary studies of technology present a more complex picture of how innovations are developed. They highlight technical alternatives, contributions of diverse groups, variety in meanings of technologies, and overall the surprising character of technology development. They suggest that the Internet has multiple origins and numerous particular reasons for its spread. Current discussions of the entry of Internet technologies into consumers' homes and the convergence among computing, media and telecommunications enterprises represent examples of more complex accounts of technology development. Such accounts will likely provide more powerful bases for policy, management and design. forecasting In "Internet time", like "dog years", eons have passed since the first messages were sent between computers. The Internet now has its own history, though most of the events took place just years ago and portentous changes are taking place today. In this article, I want to suggest that the way we understand this history is important to our understanding of future social choices. Looking behind us more intelligently will make it easier to see paths ahead. Today's Internet is often linked in a direct line of descent to plans among engineers and managers working in the 1960s and 1970s with the US Defense Department. The driving force behind the Internet's growth is supposed to be popular enthusiasm. Recent interdisciplinary studies of technology present a more complex picture of how innovations are developed and distributed. They highlight the existence of technical alternatives, including less-than-optimal technical solutions; the contributions of many different (and often conflicting) groups; the possibility of a variety of meanings associated with technologies, and in general the contingent and often surprising character of technology development. The value of these perspectives is to more accurately portray the complexity of technical development. There may also be implications for policy debate, technology design and management strategy. A case in point is the convergence of media, computers and telecom, of which the Internet is (and I would argue, always has been) an important aspect. This historical process, 3 which is widely recognized as at once technical, industrial and political, has been and will continue to be fiercely multi-party …