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.
