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Yes, an effort of the whole world's public institutions. Tim Berners-Lee didn't work for the CERN Corporation when he set up the Web.
by Apocryphon 3y ago
Yes, an effort of the whole world's public institutions. Tim Berners-Lee didn't work for the CERN Corporation when he set up the Web.
- moralestapia 3y agoSome effort from everybody in the world, even us, its users. I'd estimate the "GDP" and traffic related to public institutions as a single-digit percentage of the whole web.
- Apocryphon 3y agoPrivate interest created the use cases and further innovation but public investment, as they say, took the initiative in creating the Internet.
- kortilla 3y agoPrivate interest created the internet you use today. It’s like saying Pythagoras created all of modern math, including calculus.
- Apocryphon 3y agoNo one here is claiming the Internet was created by one single party or another. Taking the initiative in creating something is a different thing from creating all of it.
- kortilla 3y agoTim Berners-Lee’s contribution was not novel. Hyperlinking things had many parallel competing implementations. Had he waited a couple of months we would have essentially the exact same thing with a different name. TCP/IP and lower level protocols that connected everything together is really the boon. The protocols for how we exchange data on top were inevitable.
- Apocryphon 3y agoTCP/IP and protocols which originated from ARPANET?
- kortilla 3y agoYes, tcp/ip was a foundational protocol that came from DoD money. My point is that CERN’s contribution was negligible to the Internet, not that government investment is irrelevant.
- nickpp 3y agoThere is a looong way from a University Communication protocol to my ISP giving me gigabit connection for 50 bucks a month to connect to Pornhub. Private sector delivered the Internet. Academia researched and established standards. What the US government did was having the foresight to understand this need and grant research funds and contracts to the sectors able to deliver. It's not a negligible contribution by any means but it's pretty small in the grand scheme of things.