Hacker News Reader

Comment by fooblaster | Hacker News Reader

Happened anyway? You have any idea of the value that was created by having it happen many years earlier? Modern integrated computers let alone the Internet were brought into being because of defense investment by the government. These things rarely happen entirely organically in free markets. You think SpaceX would exist without heavy early investment by NASA, or later money from the commercial crew program? Unlikely.

View on HN

>Happened anyway?

Absolutely, zero doubt about it!

>You have any idea of the value that was created by having it happen many years earlier?

There's no early or late, it happened when it happened.

Also www means "world wide web" which, by definition, implies a collaborative effort of the whole ... world? Sure, props to the US for lighting the first spark, but after that everyone did their part, even us, its users.

Piracy is routinely found to be illegal when it meets the judicial system, and the distributors of porn profited greatly from the distribution system before the internet. Why would they be the drivers of this?

edit: replied to the wrong comment, but it's still relevant to the assertion that the internet would have been invented without public funding

Yes, an effort of the whole world's public institutions. Tim Berners-Lee didn't work for the CERN Corporation when he set up the Web.

Some effort from everybody in the world, even us, its users.

I'd estimate the "GDP" and traffic related to public institutions as a single-digit percentage of the whole web.

Private interest created the use cases and further innovation but public investment, as they say, took the initiative in creating the Internet.

Private interest created the internet you use today.

It’s like saying Pythagoras created all of modern math, including calculus.

No one here is claiming the Internet was created by one single party or another. Taking the initiative in creating something is a different thing from creating all of it.

Tim Berners-Lee’s contribution was not novel. Hyperlinking things had many parallel competing implementations.

Had he waited a couple of months we would have essentially the exact same thing with a different name.

TCP/IP and lower level protocols that connected everything together is really the boon. The protocols for how we exchange data on top were inevitable.

TCP/IP and protocols which originated from ARPANET?

There is a looong way from a University Communication protocol to my ISP giving me gigabit connection for 50 bucks a month to connect to Pornhub.

Private sector delivered the Internet. Academia researched and established standards. What the US government did was having the foresight to understand this need and grant research funds and contracts to the sectors able to deliver.

It's not a negligible contribution by any means but it's pretty small in the grand scheme of things.

Yes, tcp/ip was a foundational protocol that came from DoD money. My point is that CERN’s contribution was negligible to the Internet, not that government investment is irrelevant.

Funny how much these invisible hand types rely on unfalsifiable claims to make their point. “Would have happened anyway, 100% positive of this”. Oh for sure dude.

The burden of proof always seems to fall on people who live in reality.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com