What is the Internet?

[woosh]

[ding]

[buildup sound]

[music]

What is the internet?

The internet is like a popular thing.

Some satellites up there.

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

Somebody told me a cloud once.

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

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

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

ballpoint pen,

or the flush toilet

or the zipper.

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

that one day somebody invented them.

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

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

It was a result of another experiment called the ARPANET

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

Department research project.

Paul Baran was trying to figure out how to build a

communication system that might actually survive a nuclear attack.

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

as possible in every possible direction
through the mesh network.

[whoosh]

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

and it worked.

[electronic music with heavy beats]

Is anybody in charge of the internet?

The government controls it.

Elves, obviously elves!

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

T-mobile, um, Xfinity,

Bill Gates

[pause]

Right?!

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

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

independently operated networks.

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

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

or even who interconnects with whom.

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

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

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

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

phone calls to any other telephone in
the world.

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

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

or vice versa is a very powerful motivator

for sharing information.

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

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

maybe program them as apps on a mobile phone,

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

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

of it on a day-to-day basis.

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

use it.

[swirling sound effect]

[ding]