For all intents and purposes the Internet was created by and for US military not for public utility, and one of the main reasons for its creation, if not the sole reason, is to be able to withstand large scale nuclear attack. It's not created for remote feeding the cats with the IoT at home while you are away. It's easily the top ten invention of 20th century.
It's not only Internet, FFT also was created to detect illegal nuclear testing and it's included the top ten algorithms of 20th century [1],[2]. There's no shame of admitting the facts.
If not for military purpose Internet will probably never ever see the light of day. The Internet packet switching end to end network precursor and predecessor in France proposed and implemented by Louis Pouzin, famously called the 4th man of the Internet, who coined the word "datagram" the very fundamental concept in packet switching, lost his proposal to other communication technology for France nation wide networks implementation [3].
The original inventors of the Internet proposed the idea to AT&T, the US communication behemoth and monopoly at the time laughed at the packet switching idea saying that it will not work and does not make any economic sense. The only reason Internet created and survived is because of the military applications and as any military application the main objective is to maintain and sustain command and control where Internet is more than capable of. I've once read someone simulated 99% infrastructure demolition (as in nuclear attack) and Internet communication managed to survive intact. Cannot recalled the article now, perhaps this is where ChatGPT becomes handy. The fact that the US military maintained a separate military network (similar to Internet) from the public Internet after the Internet gone public and its popularity increased, provided the hints why it's so important for the US military.
[1] Great algorithms are the poetry of computation:
> For all intents and purposes the Internet was created by and for US military not for public utility, and one of the main reasons for its creation, if not the sole reason, is to be able to withstand large scale nuclear attack.
And yet Charles M. Herzfeld (who was ARPA director at the time) and Robert Taylor (who was in charge of getting ARPAnet going) say otherwise: it was to link computing centres across the country so that resources could be shared and collaboration would be easier.
If Herzfeld and Taylor didn't know why ARPA created ARPAnet then who else would?
The entire linked to article is about tracing the source of the "able to withstand large scale nuclear attack" original story myth:
> However, the documentation is voluminous and the people who were in the room have all given a consistent story about how it was to build a network for time-sharing of expensive computers and better collaboration.
Interestingly Charles M. Herzfeld once chaired the Nuclear Weapons Council and the Intelligence R&D Council.
According to Wikipedia, apparently "Taylor had convinced ARPA director Charles M. Herzfeld to fund a network project earlier in February 1966, and Herzfeld transferred a million dollars from a ballistic missile defense program to Taylor's budget". This budget probably equivalent to tens of millions USD in today's money. The narrative "to link computing centres across the country so that resources could be shared and collaboration would be easier" using a large chunk of budget from ballistic missile systems that could carry nuclear warheads that were distributed across the country does not make sense to me.
It's not only Internet, FFT also was created to detect illegal nuclear testing and it's included the top ten algorithms of 20th century [1],[2]. There's no shame of admitting the facts.
If not for military purpose Internet will probably never ever see the light of day. The Internet packet switching end to end network precursor and predecessor in France proposed and implemented by Louis Pouzin, famously called the 4th man of the Internet, who coined the word "datagram" the very fundamental concept in packet switching, lost his proposal to other communication technology for France nation wide networks implementation [3].
The original inventors of the Internet proposed the idea to AT&T, the US communication behemoth and monopoly at the time laughed at the packet switching idea saying that it will not work and does not make any economic sense. The only reason Internet created and survived is because of the military applications and as any military application the main objective is to maintain and sustain command and control where Internet is more than capable of. I've once read someone simulated 99% infrastructure demolition (as in nuclear attack) and Internet communication managed to survive intact. Cannot recalled the article now, perhaps this is where ChatGPT becomes handy. The fact that the US military maintained a separate military network (similar to Internet) from the public Internet after the Internet gone public and its popularity increased, provided the hints why it's so important for the US military.
[1] Great algorithms are the poetry of computation:
https://www.andrew.cmu.edu/course/15-355/misc/Top%20Ten%20Al...
[2] The Algorithm That Almost Stopped The Development of Nuclear Weapons:
https://www.iflscience.com/the-algorithm-that-almost-stopped...
[3]Louis Pouzin:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Pouzin