I’m surprised how little the histories of the web include the contribution of the French tech sector for DSL, the technology that made computer networks easy to expand to every house, and the general idea that the Internet could be a domestic technology. Until the late 80s, the Internet was a military and gradually academic tool, but even until the mid-90s, having an internet connection at home was quaint outside of France where accessing your official records, buying certain things online was a convenient reality. TCP/IP and Tier 1 networks were only one half of the story, and the far smaller, easier half: connecting every country is a matter of a few big projects; connecting everyone is something, that to this day, many still struggle with.

There’s an occasional mention of Cepremades as an inspiration for the Internet Protocol, some technicality about Alohanet, but never a history of why that should be in everyone’s living room, except a mysterious prescient and unhelpful AOL, their omnipresent CD, and nothing about the government-sponsored, centralised project to make cheap modulator-demodulator use long copper wires — something that proved both incredibly difficult and relevant.