The Internet And Beyond
Thirty years after the first primitive Internet connection, the scientists who pioneered the technology and the entrepreneurs profiting from it tried to predict what's next for the global computer network.
Their conclusion? It could become invisible.
"The Internet will become transparent to us," said Len Kleinrock, a University of California, Los Angeles computer science professor. "It will be everywhere, always available and not in our face - just like electricity."
Kleinrock spoke Thursday at a conference marking the anniversary of the first Internet connection, which took place in his lab Sept. 2, 1969. Then, few people cared when bits of data first flowed between two bulky machines linked by a 15-foot cable.
The network has since expanded into a force that is changing the way people work, learn, play and shop. New technologies are emerging that could allow fast access over the airwaves, and not just through computers.
"Most people don't want to be connected to their desktops," said Robert Kahn, president of the Corporation for National Research Initiatives and a computer language creator. "They want to be able to move around and have access to all that information."
Several executives agreed, suggesting the Internet should become a force that works behind the scenes to carry information to people.
"A user does not understand what is happening behind the computer screen," said George Vradenburg III, senior vice president of America Online. "The future is in the art of making it disappear."
But future advances will likely remain based on the same technology that was first tested in Kleinrock's lab in 1969.
The project grew from the needs of the Defense Department's Advance Research Projects Agency, which was formed after the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth.
Officials wanted a fast, efficient, decentralized way of sharing information between research centers. And the computers needed to speak a common language
Kleinrock pioneered the technology as a graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, writing the first paper on the subject in 1961. He became a professor at UCLA in 1963.
His lab was chosen for the first test communication, and by the end of 1969, four sites were connected: UCLA; the Stanford Research Institute; University of California, Santa Barbara; and the University of Utah. The number increased to 10 within seven months.
Soon, there were applications like e-mail and file transfer utilities. But it wasn't until the late 1980s, when the World Wide Web appeared, that the network became a force not only in research but also in commerce and culture.
Outside the conference, the refrigerator-size Interface Message Processor, a translator between the early computers, made a rare public appearance. Its rows of lights were dark and its bttleship gray case was opened, exposing wires, fans and other components.
It was used in the first test, and decommissioned in the 1980s.