Hi, I'm Dr Charles Harry and

this is cyber security for everyone. Today we're going to talk about
the origins of the internet and specifically the inspiration for
world changing idea and so the fundamental question
that we want to talk about over the next couple of
videos is how do we get here? So when you think about the world
in which we live today, we have billions of connected devices,
we have laptops, we have phones, we have tablets, we stream a lot of
our video now and our ability to communicate with our loved ones over
video chat is just taken for granted. But how do we actually get there? And so when
you think about
the billions of connected devices and the trillions of messages
sent from individuals and devices all over the world,
it's really the question of how did we actually develop
the infrastructure and capability to produce such
amazing applications, video, audio text,
enabling faster communications allow for more tightly knit communications
all over the world. So how did we get here? So there's some key concepts that I
want to drive home to emphasize why this is such an important development
in human history so, the first concept that we need to
think about is that the development, the internet was an evolutionary
process it didn't just happen overnight someone didn't just wake up and
say, hey, I got a great idea. They put it on paper and the very next
year we have the internet, it evolved and that evolutionary process was
the function of multiple individuals, hundreds of individuals and different
stakeholders that worked together over many, many decades in order to develop
what we know today as the internet. So academic inspiration
was a part of this process someone had to conceive of
this idea of the internet so, oftentimes we find that professors and
researchers, instructors alike are involved in coming
up with new ideas, new concepts so, academia certainly played a role but
they weren't alone. The government also played a key role
in the development of the technologies related to the internet so, we're going
to talk about that in a different video. And finally, the private sector is
involved the private sector and it's incredible ability to
innovate was an essential player in the development of the internet so,
an evolutionary process, multiple individuals and
stakeholders involved, but also the interplay between academia,
government and the private sector we're all fundamentally important
to the development of the internet. So let's talk about some basic
questions that actually need to be answered when we think about some of
the origins of this central idea. First of all, how do you create and expand the
technology in terms
of scale performance and higher order functionality to actually
develop something like the internet? So how do you actually do that? It's, one
thing to just invented in your
garage and maybe build a prototype but how do you scale that? So it becomes
geographically dispersed and used by billions of
people around the world? This is actually a really,
really hard thing to do. Second, how do you communicate and share ideas about the
internet before
the internet is actually built? In today's world we come
up with a great idea and maybe a posted online on your blog or
you get some some piece of information that is broadcast by a media
company that's streamed online. But if you're talking 40, 50, 60 years ago
before the internet actually existed and your chief means of communicating ideas
are through periodicals or through journal articles it's actually much, much more
difficult things move a lot slower. Third how do different groups of people,
geographically distributed,
communicate with one another, how do they work together to
develop this type of technology? And remember we're talking about people
who live or who work in academia, who work in the private sector as well as
the government so, how do they actually work and communicate together when
they're scattered all over the earth? So these are really practical
questions we have to address. And finally, how do you convert theory, what is a
good idea into what becomes
the underlying fabric of our society? Because when you look at things like
power and water systems and other smart city infrastructure, our ability to
monitor these modern systems is all laid on top of this key networking technology
that we're now discussing the origins of. So the questions that have to be
answered are pretty fundamental and how we get there isn't always clear so,
it's important oftentimes to look at the history, the origins and the
development of this evolutionary process. So let's start at the beginning a vision
of the future there are thousands of individuals that were involved in
the development of the internet but I just want to talk about a couple
of key concepts early on. So the first is a vision
of an interconnected world, a series of interconnected devices that
can transmit large volumes of data, the second is a new theory of breaking
up data into what we call packets and the idea is that these packets
then can be moved around from one computer to the next. And finally, the third idea
is
a prototype network that is developed to connect to particular devices, one
in California and one in Massachusetts. So combining this broader vision
of a worldwide global network with packet ties data in a digital format,
finally actually showing a lab prototype of
a connection between two devices, geographically distributed
are three core concepts that emerge from the late 1950s and
in the early 1960s. And so folks at MIT and other academic
institutions around the world are involved in the development
of some of these key ideas so, we bring these three concepts in
the 1950s and 60s, where we have a vision of an integrated set of modern
digital networks that are working together utilizing packet ties,
traffic and geographically dispersed. But why is this not the end of the story? Why
is it that we don't just talk about
these brilliant academics who actually put together had this world changing idea,
and that's the end of the story? Well, the reason is that it often
times can be difficult to bring good ideas into the real world and
at scale and so once you have a future that's envisioned,
you probably need to start off with building a small model
you don't initially go from, hey, I've got a great idea to multibillion
dollar networks being developed worldwide, you've got to start off in
a much more measured way. So we want to start off with
building a small model and building that model certainly if
you're in academia requires money, most academics are not
independently wealthy, they're not willing to write
that million dollar check or $2 million check to self fund
development of a good idea. So we need access to money to
build out a small model and so the question becomes,
where is the best place to find that? So there are maybe a couple of options
you might seek to go to the government, you might seek to go to the private sector
both of them have different incentive structures if there isn't
a profit to be made, maybe the private sector isn't
interested in taking that risk. Said another way, if you go and talk to
a CEO of a large fortune 500 company and say, you know, hey, Mr CEO or Mrs CEO,
I want you to write me a check for $3 billion so
I can build out a global network and they have no concept of how they would
actually monetize that development. After they stopped laughing at you they
would politely ask you to leave so, if there is no private sector incentive, you
may want to go to the government to
see if they can fund a particular study. So in this video, we've talked about
the fundamental questions that have to be answered in order to achieve this
early vision of a globally dispersed network that deals with packet ties data
and we started to bring up a fundamental question of once you have a good idea,
how do you actually start to move that forward into something that's more
practical specifically, a small model. In our next video, we're going to talk
about how we move from a good idea to a small model and the role that government
played in the development of the internet. I hope to see you next time.