┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
BOOTING ARCHIVE
1969 ─── 2026
▓ TRANSMISSION 01 ▓
Charley Kline tries to log in to a remote computer for the first time in history.
[UCLA]━━━━━━━━━━━━━━[SRI]
│ │
│ │
[UCSB]━━━━━━━━━━━[UTAH] ── 4 NODES ──
▓ TRANSMISSION 02 ▓
At BBN in Cambridge, Ray Tomlinson sends the first networked email between two PDP-10s sitting next to each other.
He needs a symbol to separate user from host. He looks at his keyboard. He picks @ — a key that wasn't used for anything else.
┌──────────────────────────────────┐ │ tomlinson @ bbn-tenexa │ │ ────────────────────────── │ │ > QWERTYUIOP │ │ │ │ "I sent a number of test │ │ messages to myself from │ │ one machine to the other." │ └──────────────────────────────────┘
─── ONE CHARACTER, FOREVER ───
▓ TRANSMISSION 03 ▓
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn design a protocol for networks of networks — packet-switched, decentralized, layered.
JAN 1, 1983 — "FLAG DAY". ARPANET cuts over from NCP to TCP/IP overnight. The internet, technically, begins.
─── A NETWORK OF NETWORKS ───
▓ TRANSMISSION 04 ▓
Tim Berners-Lee writes a memo titled "Information Management: A Proposal." His boss writes on it: "vague, but exciting."
┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ ┌─────────────┐ │ HTML │ │ HTTP │ │ URL │ │ ───────── │ ── │ ───────── │ ── │ ───────── │ │ documents │ │ transport │ │ addresses │ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘ └─────────────┘
The first website goes live in December 1990. It is about itself: a page explaining what the World Wide Web is.
▓ TRANSMISSION 05 ▓
Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina release Mosaic at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.
It puts images inline with text. It runs on Windows, Mac, X. The web becomes visible to civilians.
▓ TRANSMISSION 06 ▓
A company with $17M in revenue is suddenly worth $2.9 billion. Wall Street has discovered the web.
$$$ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ↑↑↑
▓ TRANSMISSION 07 ▓
Pets.com. Webvan. Boo.com. Kozmo. The graveyard fills.
The NASDAQ falls 78% from peak by October 2002. $5 trillion in market value evaporates.
The infrastructure remains. Dark fiber is laid. The survivors learn.
▓ TRANSMISSION 08 ▓
The user becomes the product. The page becomes the feed. The browser becomes a runtime.
─── READ → WRITE → SCROLL ───
▓ TRANSMISSION 09 ▓
The decade of consolidation. Five companies — Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Meta — capture the bulk of attention, infrastructure, and value.
┌──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┐ │ AAPL │ AMZN │ GOOG │ MSFT │ META │ │ ▓▓▓▓▓▓ │ ▓▓▓▓▓ │ ▓▓▓▓▓▓ │ ▓▓▓▓▓ │ ▓▓▓▓ │ └──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┘
Snowden, 2013. Cambridge Analytica, 2018. The cost of "free" comes due. The open web shrinks. Apps replace pages.
▓ TRANSMISSION 10 ▓
A model trained on the open web — Wikipedia, Common Crawl, Reddit, GitHub, books, papers — speaks back in fluent English.
The web becomes both training data and competitor. Search begins to dissolve. Every interface becomes a chat box.
> THE WEB ───────► THE CORPUS ───────► THE MODEL ───────► ?
▓ TRANSMISSION 11 ▓
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐ │ │ │ THE PROTOCOLS SURVIVED. │ │ │ │ THE PLATFORMS CONSUMED. │ │ │ └──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
TCP/IP, DNS, HTTP, SMTP — built by committee, owned by no one — are still doing their jobs sixty years later.
The applications layered on top — walled, captured, monetized — change every decade. The pipes underneath do not.
─── ROUGH CONSENSUS & RUNNING CODE ───
▓ END OF TRANSMISSION ▓
╭─────────────╮
╭──╯ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ╰──╮
╭─╯ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒▒▒ ╰─╮
│ ▒▒▒ ╲____╱ ▒▒▒ │
│ ▒▒ __╱ ╲__ ▒▒ │
│ ▒▒ ╱ ARPA ╲ ▒▒ │
│ ▒▒ ╲ 1969 ╱ ▒▒ │
│ ▒▒ ╲________╱ ▒▒ │
╰─╮ ▒▒▒▒ ▒▒▒▒ ╭─╯
╰──╮ ▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ ╭──╯
╰─────────────╯
╲ ╲ │ ╱ ╱
╲ ╲ │ ╱ ╱
╲──────╲──┴──╱──────╱
━━━━━━━
YOUTUBE // ARPANET HISTORY
YOUTUBE // TIM BERNERS-LEE & THE WEB
CONNECTION TERMINATED