Web History

The Birth of the Internet from the fallout shelter

"The Internet we make so much of today -- the global Internet which has helped scholars so much, where free speech is flourishing as never before in history -- the Internet was a Cold War military project. It was designed for purposes of military communication in a United States devastated by a Soviet nuclear strike. Originally, the Internet was a post-apocalypse command grid.

And look at it now. No one really planned it this way. Its users made the Internet that way, because they had the courage to use the network to support their own values, to bend the technology to their own purposes. To serve their own liberty. Their own convenience, their own amusement, even their own idle pleasure. When I look at the Internet -- that paragon of cyberspace today -- I see something astounding and delightful. It's as if some grim fallout shelter had burst open and a full-scale Mardi Gras parade had come out."
Bruce Sterling & William Gibson [1993] Literary Freeware -- Not for Commercial Use. Speeches to National Academy of Sciences Convocation on Technology and Education, May 10, 1993, Washington, D.C.: Computer Underground Digest 5.54.

Historical Resources

1. A Brief History of the Internet written by people who made it.

2. The History of the Net by: Henry Edward Hardy (Univ. Michigan)

3. Naughton, John [2000]
   A Brief History of the Future: Origins of the Internet.
   Overlook Press.

4. Netizens - On the history and impact of Usenet and the Internet by: Michael Hauben & Ronda Hauben.

5. Noble, David F. [1999]
   The Religion of Technology: The Divinity of Man and the Spirit of Invention.
   New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

6. In the SocioSite you'll find more knowledge resources on the History of the Internet.

dr. Albert Benschop Social & Behavioral Sciences Sociology & Anthropology University of Amsterdam Published: October, 1997 Last modified: 25th December, 2005