Internet faces new challenges in its 40 years

The videos were not fools, had in mind Len Kleinrock and his team at UCLA when they started working 40 years ago on a project that has resulted in the internet. Neither social networks or applications which attract over one billion users.

The hackers, spam and require network operators to build protective barriers. Authoritarian governments censor many websites and services within their countries. And that commercial considerations do impose policies that harm rivals, especially in portable devices like the iPhone.

Few paid attention on 2 September 1969, when two dozen people gathered at Kleinrock's lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, to observe the exchange of information between two rugged computers through a cable five gray meters (15 feet).


In the 1970s, were created emails and communication protocols TCP / IP, which facilitated the connection of multiple networks, giving birth to the Internet. In the 1980s he invented a system of addresses using suffixes like ". Com and. Org" in widespread use today.

The Internet became a commonly used instrument in the 1990s, when British physicist Tim Berners-Lee invented the Web, a subdivision of the internet that makes the resources link from diverse backgrounds. Service providers such as America Online, meanwhile, connected to millions of people first.

The Internet flourished, helped by the absence of regulations and commercial considerations which might be an obstacle.

"Throughout much of the history of the Internet, nobody had heard of it," said Zittrain. "That allowed him to demonstrate its functionality and take root."

The U.S. government itself, who paid the initial investigations as part of a military draft, did not get involved much with it and let the engineers promoted the idea of an open network.

When Berners-Lee invented the web in 1990, could offer the world without having to seek permission or deal with security systems firewall so fashionable today.

The same stream of pornography led to technological innovations such as online video and the use of credit cards to pay for services.

The initial idealism on a completely free network is fading a bit. A dispute between Google and Apple is one example.