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Comment by headmelted | Hacker News Reader

The reason the Internet has become so successful is in large part due to optional anonymity.

Clearly NPR and myself have very different views on what makes the Internet what it is.

Also, I love me some Vint Cerf - and his contributions have unquestionably been massive - but no one person invented the Internet. Please let's leave the cult of personality for the "unwashed masses" as NPR calls them.

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I have an argument that the 1874 Treaty of Bern is the start of the Internet. [ The Treaty of Bern creates what is now the Universal Postal Union, the mechanism by which it is possible to send letters anywhere in the world, something so fundamental that we don't realise it needs a mechanism at all yet two hundred years ago it was impossible. ]

Sure, a letter takes longer to arrive than a TCP/IP packet but you have the same basic understanding that sovereignty of individual signatory states must not interfere with the Network's ability to move data between peers. Dumb network, smart endpoints. The local user pays and everything works out in the end. And so on.

>no one person invented the Internet

And if you had to pick someone, it would probably be someone like Licklider, [1] given that the ARPANET pre-dated TCP/IP. But, as you say, singling out any one person is pretty silly in any case.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._C._R._Licklider

I've noticed that American articles cite Vint Cerf as the "father/inventor of the internet", while British press give the same titles to Tim Berners-Lee. Of course both were instrumental, but as you say, many people and teams were involved in the creation of what we know as the Internet today.

Being in the UK I don't see a valid claim to TBL's involvement in the creation of the Internet.

I see it more as Vint Cerf being instrumental in the creation of the Internet, and Tim-Berners Lee of the world-wide web.

Now, if any one person were to be credited for the creation of the Internet as a whole, that honour would undoubtedly go to Al Gore.

Exhibit A: https://goo.gl/X8D3yb

It is funny in a sense because TBL really invented the 'internet' as people know it, Vint Cerf just created that pesky TCP/IP thing nerds talk about.

It's such a great piece of political rhetoric that pushed the false idea of Al Gore claiming to have "invented the Internet". If you accept that Vint Cerf was a key person in the creation of the Internet as we know it, you'll probably be interested in his opinion of Al Gore's actual role.

https://web.eecs.umich.edu/~fessler/misc/funny/gore,net.txt

Here's an excerpt from the first paragraphs:

Al Gore and the Internet

By Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf

Al Gore was the first political leader to recognize the importance of the Internet and to promote and support its development.

No one person or even small group of persons exclusively "invented" the Internet. It is the result of many years of ongoing collaboration among people in government and the university community. But as the two people who designed the basic architecture and the core protocols that make the Internet work, we would like to acknowledge VP Gore's contributions as a Congressman, Senator and as Vice President. No other elected official, to our knowledge, has made a greater contribution over a longer period of time.

Agreed, it's one of the few "popular comments" that irks me enough to force someone into an argument when it's quipped in ignorance.

Specifically because Gore has been a supporter of science in general as a politician.

Makes me sad to think that if a Supreme Court decision had gone another way, or Florida had had a different ballot, then the US would have ended up with a technocrat in office and probably not invading Iraq. Missed opportunities...

I should maybe mention that I meant this in jest - I think very highly of Al Gore and the joke was intended to allude to Cerf's high opinion of his role in the early days.

I don't think Al Gore claimed to have literally invented the Internet, and believed that was the gag this whole time.

Have people been walking around thinking he actually believed that this whole time?

I'm not sure this needs to be relitigated here.

In terms of inventions, Tim Berners Lee is associated with the World Wide Web while Vint Cerf is associated with Internet. Is this different in the USA and British?

Most people don't realize that there is a difference between the World Wide Web and the Internet.

Back in the olden days, before http, before URL's, before html, before all these kids were on my lawn, you could actually use (pun intended) the net, without using the world wide web.

Was there shitposting then?

Oh yes. Shitposting galore.

And then September came and never left.

I can feel the age getting at my bones.

As an American who grew up in the US, I've only ever heard TBL cited as the inventor/father of the web (or sometimes internet), and have never heard of Vint Cerf before as best I can recall. Anecdata, for what it's worth.

In Belgium, it's sometimes said that Robert Cailliau is the father of the internet :)

I like to think that a bunch of people worked on a bunch of technologies which together became "The Internet".

Other notable people are Robert Metcalfe, David Boggs, Robert Taylor, Charles Herzfeld, Douglas Engelbart, ...

What's actually upsetting is that outside of a few niche communities, the world hasn't heard of any of these people, and doesn't care.

As an American, I've never heard of Vint Cerf until today, but have known of Tim Berners-Lee for years

Sadly neither of those men are named Jon Postel.

The Internet and the World Wide Web are two different things.

I think this "Vint Cerf invented the internet" thing is probably coming from Google press releases.

I had a Google recruiter use the exact same phrase to me (and like you I flinched).

I actually wouldn't discount that. As someone fairly familiar with the storyline behind the initial DARPA-funded work, I would never have been tempted to single out Cerf as the singular Internet inventor. Not to minimize his work but there were clearly other important figures, including earlier ones. Yet, as you suggest "Vint Cerf invented the internet" seems to have become a popular factoid.

He has long been considered the (quote) Father of the Internet (unquote). But to say he "INVENTED" the internet would be inaccurate, and I'm pretty sure he would not actually be cool with that, given what I've read about him.

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