Tech Talk / By Martha Knight

We keep hearing about Net Neutrality. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is going to eliminate it, the FCC has relented, our cable company is in favor of it, it’s the only fair way to go, etc. What is it all about?

Of course the “Net” in NN stands for Internet. Or internet, for it is so elemental that it has come into the language like, say, sneeze, another mode of transmission—in that case, of packets of body fluids, some containing microbes.

Net neutrality is the stance that government and internet service providers should not regulate or classify data that is transmitted on the internet. This is a basic component of an open internet. Another is “open standards,” which allow internet users to develop and apply standards that are available to all users, and changeable by all users with the requisite ability.

A “closed internet” would be one in which certain entities would have more access than others, and some would be able to control or to ration access and vend it to others, and some kinds of data would be treated differently from others, and some entities would set standards that others would have to accept, instead of innovating freely.

The latest news I heard on this topic made me think Tom Wheeler, FCC chairman, is leaning away from ending or limiting net neutrality.

Is the internet a common carrier? Are parts of it common carriers? Is the net like a telephone company or a utility, or at least those kinds of carriers and services as those used to be? Those are questions for another time. But I thought it would be interesting to think about where the internet came from. Elemental as it may seem, there was a time when there was no internet; and some of us can even remember back that far.

It has something to do with Sputnik. If you don’t exactly remember that event, you heard about it in history class. Back then Russia had satellites that were other nations it dominated and controlled, and together they were the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). And then, suddenly, on October 4, 1957, the USSR had another kind of satellite: a little sphere that orbited the earth. We could detect it as it made its rounds up there, sending out radio signals. The Russkies had won an important lap in the space race.

What of our vaunted superiority in science, technology, education, inventiveness, military might? What might our Cold War enemy do with Sputnik and its ilk? What if the Soviets attacked our phone system?

J.C.R. Licklider, an M.I.T. scientist also part of the Advanced Projects Research Agency (ARPA), proposed creation of a “galactic network” of computers. Like people using a telephone network, computers would be able to talk to each other. Computer users would be in touch with other computer users through their networked computers, across great distances and in considerable numbers. Government leaders would find this useful in case enemy nations or terrorists messed up the phone system. (Not that we talked about terrorists back then…)

A few years later packet switching was devised—a way of sending blocks of data between computers. Data was prepared for shipment by being broken into packets with identifiers enabling it all to be put back together at the destination. Otherwise, ARPA’s computer network, ARPAnet, could be attacked and rendered useless by interrupting data flow.

ARPAnet sent its first message in 1969, from a UCLA lab to one at Stanford. The computers that sent and received that node-to-node package were big enough to live in if you took the electronics out. The message was “LOGIN.” How admirably concise! Unfortunately, only the LO got through before the network crashed.

Later that year ARPA got four computers connected to ARPAnet, and then it added computers at universities in Hawaii, Norway and London. The network kept expanding, but it became more difficult to regulate packet traffic.

Then along came Vinton Cerf, as the 1980s neared. Computers were networking with each other locally, sharing their data packets around. But how could those little local networks share with each other? Cerf thought there should be a protocol to control transmissions—call it a transmission control protocol! TCP! Then there should be a protocol for use between or among networks. An internet protocol, or IP. Combined, a TCP/IP. Yes! Or, a handshake, such as Masons and Boy Scouts might use to identify each other as members of the order and decide to share information or admit one another to special rites.

Elite computer users at universities and research centers used TCP/IP to good effect for years. Then Tim Berners-Lee, a programmer in Switzerland, came up with the concept of a web of information, all sorts of data, that would exist as a resource, and would be accessible by anyone on the internet. That was in 1991. The world-wide web, WWW, became “a thing.” The internet was how computer users could tap into it.

Tapping into it became more practical in 1992 when a team at the University of Illinois (students, instructors, researchers) developed Mosaic (it morphed into Netscape), for “browsing” the great data smorgasbord on the web. Remember Netscape’s nautical navigation wheel logo? Mixed metaphors, browsing and navigating, but so are windows and desktops, aren’t they?

Also in 1992 Congress enacted measures allowing commercial use of the web. E-commerce began. Before long there were social networks.

What, limit our social networking? That would be like—um—not letting us text. Or letting some people or businesses talk on their cells an hour a day and not send photos, and others talk five hours and send 20 photos and video, and others talk all they wanted to and send anything they liked, based on what they would pay. Tiered service.

Wait, doesn’t cell service work something like that now? Well, okay, there must be a better analogy. I’ll think of one, while the FCC is pondering whether to neuter, or neutralize, the net.