WEBVTT

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[woosh]

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[ding]

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[buildup sound]

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[music]

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What is the internet?

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The internet is like a popular thing.

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Some satellites up there.

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I picture it in my head with like waves of
internet going to the phone.

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Somebody told me a cloud once.

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The internet is a lot like plumbing it's always moving.

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Most people don't have any idea where
the internet came from and

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doesn't matter, they don't need to. It's
sort of like asking who invented the

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ballpoint pen,

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or the flush toilet

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or the zipper.

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These are all things we just use every
day we don't even think about the fact

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that one day somebody invented them.

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So the internet is just like that. Many,
many years ago in the early 1970s

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my partner Bob Kahn and I began working on the design of what we now call the internet.

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It was a result of another experiment called the ARPANET

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which stood for Advanced Research Project Agency Network. It was a Defense

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Department research project.

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Paul Baran was trying to figure out how to build a

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communication system that might actually survive a nuclear attack.

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So he had this idea of breaking messages
up into blocks and sending them as fast

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as possible in every possible direction
through the mesh network.

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[whoosh]

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So we built what eventually became a nationwide
experimental packet network,

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and it worked.

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[electronic music with heavy beats]

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Is anybody in charge of the internet?

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The government controls it.

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Elves, obviously elves!

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The people to control the Wi-Fi
because then no Wi-Fi, no internet.

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T-mobile, um, Xfinity,

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Bill Gates

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[pause]

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Right?!

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The honest answer is well nobody and maybe another answer is everybody.

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The real answer is that the internet is
made up of an incredibly large number of

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independently operated networks.

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What's interesting about the system is
that it's fully distributed. There's no

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central control that is deciding how packets are routed or where pieces of the network are built

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or even who interconnects with whom.

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These are all business decisions that
are made independently by the operators.

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They are all motivated to assure that
there is end-to-end connectivity of

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every part of the network because the
utility of the net is that any device

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can communicate with any other device;
just like you want to be able to make

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phone calls to any other telephone in
the world.

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There's nothing like this that has ever
been built before.

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The idea that what you know might be useful to somebody else

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or vice versa is a very powerful motivator

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for sharing information.

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By the way that's how science gets done,
people share information.

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So this is an opportunity for people to
think up new applications,

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maybe program them as apps on a mobile phone,

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maybe become part of the continued
growth of the infrastructure of the

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network to bring it to people who don't
have access to it yet; or just make use

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of it on a day-to-day basis.

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You can't escape from contact with the
internet so why not get to know it and

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use it.

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[swirling sound effect]

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[ding]