Arpanet is 50 years old! Its inventor Leonard Kleinrock returns to the evolution of the Internet

Arpanet is 50 years old! Its inventor Leonard Kleinrock returns to the evolution of the Internet

Fifty years ago, Professor Leonard Kleinrock and his Ucla colleagues established a connection between two computers on the Arpanet network, the precursor network of the current Internet. "I did not see the" social networking "aspect at all," says Kleinrock, who turned 85 this year.

On October 29, 1969, Professor Leonard Kleinrock and his colleagues at the famed UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) "talked" a computer with another machine, located in an area that would become Silicon Valley (south of San Francisco, United States). But the enthusiasm of the beginning was undermined by the unintended and unexpected consequences of this innovation - the ancestor of the Internet.

Social networks: an unexpected aspect

"I had not seen the" social networking "aspect at all. I thought of getting people to communicate with computers, or computers between them, but not people between them, "says Leonard Kleinrock, who turned 85 in June.

Professor Leonard Kleinrock headed the first team of researchers able to communicate two computers together. © UCLA

To mark the 50th anniversary of the event, the professor opens a new Internet-based lab, supposed to help combat the unforeseen problems that have arisen with the adoption of the large-scale network. Some 4 billion people around the world now use the network, which it was believed would bring equality and knowledge to the majority. "In a sense, it's a very democratic invention," he says. But it also conceals a perfect formula for the dark side of humanity. [...] There are so many things being shouted online that moderate voices are drowning and the extremes are amplified, spreading hatred, misinformation and abuse, "he says. "As engineers we did not think about malicious behavior. The new Connection Lab will focus on topics such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, social networking, the Internet of Things, and the blockchain, a decentralized database. secure, which allows traceability deemed inviolable.

The blockchain, a measure of confidence

Leonard Kleinrock is particularly interested in the possibility of using the blockchain as a measure of confidence. For example, if you read a review of a restaurant, you might know if the author has published articles considered reliable so far. "It would be like a network of reputations constantly updated, details the professor. The challenge is how to do it in an ethical and responsible way. Anonymity is a double-edged sword, of course. "

According to him, in the early days, the serenity of the network was thwarted only by solitary hackers (hackers). While now disruptive agents include nation-states, organized crime and powerful corporations that do "big and bad things" like making profits by violating privacy

Leonard Kleinrock regrets the lack of social fiber scientists of the time, who have not anticipated the need to integrate tools for authentication of people and data, from the foundation of the Internet. "We would not have avoided the dark side of the network, but we could have mitigated the impact that everyone feels today." It still keeps a part of optimism. "I still believe that in the end the positive aspects prevail. I would not turn off the Internet, even if I could. "

1969: the year of birth of Arpanet

Originally, the project was called "Arpanet", named after the research arm of the US military that financed it, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, founded in 1958. The engineers had found ways to transmit given by computers by breaking them into several "digital packets". On October 29, 1969, a UCLA student began typing the word "LOG" to establish the connection to the remote computer. The letter "L" passes, but the machine crashes just after the letter "O". "So the first message was" LO ", as in Lo and behold (an expression that means" And now "...), Leonard Kleinrock relates. We could not have dreamed better as the first succinct message.

The Arpanet was born. The creation of the Internet is still the subject of heated debate, as it is the result of several steps, such as data routing protocols or the creation of the World Wide Web with the online page system. "The $ 1 billion question is what kind of Internet monster has it become? "Asks Marc Weber, commissioner of the Computer History Museum of Silicon Valley. "It has become the default means of communication for humans, it's not nothing," he says. "Internet has done more good than bad," Olaf Kolkman of the Internet Society tempers, seeing the 50-year-old network as a "turbulent teenager"