Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
10
Licklider's Intergalactic
Computer Network
It seems reasonable to envision, for a time 10
or 15 years hence, a “thinking center” that will
incorporate the functions of present-day libraries
together with anticipated advances in information
storage and retrieval. . . . The picture readily enlarges
itself into a network of such centers, connected to
one another by wide-band communication lines
and to individual users by leased-wire services. In
such a system, the speed of the computers would
be balanced, and the cost of gigantic memories and
the sophisticated programs would be divided by the
number of users.
J. C. R. Licklider
1
The network is the computer
Today, with the Internet and World Wide Web, it seems very obvious that
computers become much more powerful in all sorts of ways if they are con-
nected together. In the 1970s this result was not so obvious. This chapter is about
how the Internet of today came about. As we can see from Licklider's (
B.10.1
)
quotation beginning this chapter, in addition to arguing for the importance of
interactive computing in his 1960 paper on “Man-Computer Symbiosis,” Lick
also envisaged linking computers together, a practice we now call
computer net-
working
. Larry Roberts, Bob Taylor's hand-picked successor at the Department of
Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), was the person respon-
sible for funding and overseeing the construction of the ARPANET, the first
North American
wide area network
(WAN). A WAN links together computers over
a large geographic area, such as a state or country, enabling the linked comput-
ers to share resources and exchange information. As Roberts said later:
Lick had this concept of the intergalactic network which he believed was
everybody could use computers anywhere and get at data anywhere in
the world. He didn't envision the number of computers we have today by
192
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