The Internet 40 Years On: The Clock's Ticking

It was 40 years ago today, that someone from UCLA sent the first Internet message. Well, actually it was October 29, 1969, and back then it was known as Arpanet. But these are mere details, for which check Cathy Davidson's article here. Just about that time my wife and I were inventing something similar, but without government backing, we didn't get very far. Still, when the Internet came along, we jumped on pretty quickly. Although J wasn't much interested in those early text-based days, she made up for lost time as soon as the World Wide Web came along with its graphical interface and the Mosaic browser.

There will be a lot of reminiscing about how things have changed in these last 40 years, although it's really been only in the last fifteen or twenty that there's been a noticeable cultural shift. I could recount dozens of stories relating how things are different now, but the one thread that I'd like to follow a bit is the one that says information wants to be free, with an emphasis on free.

First, one brief digression. I remember when someone invented spam. It was back in 1994. A couple of lawyers (wouldn't you know it) got someone to write a Perl script that sent out automated Usenet messages advertising their services. The Wikipedia article is here. Up to then, the Internet had been commerce free, and most of us using services like Netcom back then hoped to keep it that way. Well, Usenet spam was just the first example of much more to come. Soon the entire Internet was one huge commercial opportunity, a grand new way to print money, another American get rich quick scheme.

Except that many early adopters never really accepted that you should pay for stuff online. They wanted free operating systems, free software applications, free music, free texts, free everything digital. And if it wasn't completely free, it should at least be open: open access, open source code, open all hours. Despite the fact that everyone seemed to be searching for ways to turn the Internet into digital gold, much of what was transpiring was doing so along unofficial channels, bits and bytes were being replicated and distributed across the entire Internet at the speed of light with very little actual cash exchanging hands, not even on PayPal.

Now we all know that some people have become very rich finding ways to monetize the Net. Think Ebay, Amazon, Google, etc. But at the same time, there is a great deal of pressure to keep Internet access relatively cheap, and to fill the Web with lots of free stuff: free books, free music, free videos, etc. Think Blogs, Twitter, or YouTube. In fact, there is a rather incredible amount of free stuff out there, which creates an expectation for even more free stuff to come. Chris Anderson has tried to explain this with his concept of abundance. Digital stuff is so abundant, so easy to create and distribute and store, that the cost keeps falling. When all this stuff is free what should we pay for?

Well, that's the rub, isn't it. Think newspapers and encyclopedias, which are rapidly going the way of the dinosaurs. Some have even suggested that colleges and universities will be next to suffer the fate of digital obsolescence. With so much information online, with so many online courses and institutions available, who will want to pay for education, or who will want to pay premium prices to attend classes at some expensive brick and mortar institution, when they can get a valid credential cheaper and faster online. Then the only thing those enormous campuses will have to offer is football. Well, let me know when online universities begin recruiting football teams; only then will American higher education crumble. Go Phoenix U. Can't you see their mascot now, rising from the ashes of the Ivy League, the Big Ten and Big 12, etc.

And so we have the last hurdle to a free Internet: IP, intellectual property. Not only the creative types, but all of the lawyers and institutions that have grown up to hoard and protect this ephemeral stuff with copyrights and trademarks are threatened by the growing notion that stuff can and should be distributed for free online. And what will happen to books? What will happen to art? What will happen to music? How will anyone be able to make any money? What about bookstores? What about record stores? Oh wait, they're already gone.

Now, wouldn't that just be the real revolution? Maybe Star Trek really is a map to our future. First the communicator, then the tricorder, the replicator, the transporter. But perhaps the greatest gift to the future will be the abandonment of money. I know, I know. It's not going to happen. We're probably already in the twilight days of the Internet's golden age. Soon the ISPs and the Telecoms and the FCC will clamp down on access and money will rule, as it always must. But for a while hasn't it been nice to dream about a world where information wants to be free, and to get just a little glimpse of how it might really have been?