40 years ago, Leonard Kleinrock was far from imagining that planetary social phenomena such as Facebook, Twitter or Youtube would be born from the invention he had just created with his team: internet.
"We are constantly surprised by the applications that come up," he told as he prepared to blow along with other colleagues the 40 candles on his "baby" at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).
"It's a teenager now," he concluded. "He's learned things, but still has a long way to go. It behaves unpredictably, but has given much satisfaction to his parents and his community."
On 29 October 1969, Professor Kleinrock headed the team that achieved for the first time to "talk" to a computer at UCLA with a research institute.
He was guided by the certainty that computers were designed to communicate with each other and that the network would emerge would be as simple to use as a phone.
"I thought it would from computer to computer, not from person to person," said Kleinrock, referring to social networks and sharing of content that is now the emblem of the Internet.
"I never would have imagined that 99 years my grandmother would spend his time on the Internet and did so until his death," he admitted.
One of the main keys for computers to exchange data is to divide the digitized information packets that can be transmitted on demand and without delay, according Kleinrock.
The teacher had written down his idea in 1962, in a college textbook published then.
But "nobody wanted to talk about it, particularly (the telephone operator) AT & T," he said. "I went to see them and say that does not work and that even if it worked would have nothing to do with that."
The operator provided anyway cables to connect computers to the ARPANET, a project funded by a branch of the U.S. military engaged in the research.
Engineers began typing "LOG" to enter another computer remotely but it broke down after the "O".
In the second attempt, the professor and his team managed to enter the other computer and send data over the ARPANET. Computers located at two other universities were built the same year and the network researchers tested endlessly as Kleinrock.
Funding was provided by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), a Defense Department organization established in 1958 in response to the launch of Sputnik by the USSR at that time the U.S. was mired in a technology race with its rival Cold War.
A series of "super computers" were added to the network in the late 1980s, opening the online community to other scientists.
"The Internet was there, but behind the common people," said Kleinrock, explaining that only when mail systems were installed in companies exploited the universe. "Com".
As for the "dark side" of the web, according Kleinrock dates back to 1988 with the first appearance of "worm" computer, followed in April 1994 by the first 'spam' (junk email).
Today 75, Kleinrock believes that much remains to be seen on the internet.
"The next step is to make it enter the real world," imagine. "Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and know I'm there. I speak".
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