Path: csiph.com!v102.xanadu-bbs.net!xanadu-bbs.net!feeder.erje.net!eu.feeder.erje.net!weretis.net!feeder1.news.weretis.net!news.solani.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: RS Wood Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: Tox: A Free as in Freedom Skype replacement Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:14:05 +0000 (UTC) Organization: solani.org Lines: 31 Message-ID: References: Reply-To: randy@therandymon.com X-Trace: solani.org 1393078445 25991 eJwNxsERACEIA8CWBEmAcjid9F+Ct6/FpvFkEAwIcl+ss4I5Xyv8Vt3udAwrNGPI/mvaXbipBwT1EGY= (22 Feb 2014 14:14:05 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@news.solani.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 14:14:05 +0000 (UTC) User-Agent: slrn/1.0.1 (Linux) X-User-ID: eJwNyMEBwCAIA8CV0CZAx0Ew+4/Q3vP4+PIOOB0Uha095cHbiR6q5+RZWa+5hQxDzMTtqv+0Py5pEfc= Cancel-Lock: sha1:+0m1biO8MlMe5w62Nhpz5qjmB4U= X-NNTP-Posting-Host: eJwFwYERAEEEBLCWOKxRzmP1X8InYVBMOgIeF6f7ivAlL+u1rgiuSHlmEsAqOrU53o759AcelREn Xref: csiph.com comp.misc:702 On 2014-02-22, Lewis wrote: > In message > RS Wood wrote: > > Interesting. > >> Ignore the first sentence: "The internet was created for >> communication". Actually, no it wasn't. > > Yes, it most certainly was. Reading about the birth of ARPAnet and etc. it seems to me it was created to distribute computing loads across different systems, so you could write your code on one machine, compile it elsewhere, and install it on a third machine. You could make different computing systems available to scientists and technicians in different localities. I think the communicative nature arose as those scientists began to talk to each other, share data, etc. But my impression is that the real initial impetus was to allow scientists and programmers to access powerful systems to do their work. Twitter was an afterthought, then. And Facebook was an accident (or a travesty) :) I highly recommend the following two books as they cover this stuff as well as some other ancient history like gopher, eric, WAIS, BBS, Fidonet, and the like (the reason I bought them): Inventing the Internet, by Janet Abbate (2000) A Brief History of the Future, by John Naughton (2000)