A Middle Moment: Taking the Internet into our own hands

I walked into Boelter Hall on Monday with a cake and with three pieces of string tied around my waist. I was representing the Internet.

On Oct. 29, 1969, the first packet switch between two computers occurred between Stanford Research Institute and ARPANET at UCLA. The computer at UCLA was the first computer to connect to another computer ““ in other words, UCLA is the birthplace of the Internet.

This first node was in the lab of UCLA computer science Professor Leonard Kleinrock, whose research was based on the idea that “sooner or later computers are going to have to talk to one another.”

He said that the social aspects of the Internet were unanticipated.

“The part that I didn’t see was that my 99-year-old mother would be on the Internet,” Kleinrock said. “I didn’t see that you would probably be buying clothes, and I would be buying electronics and making travel arrangements, and we’d be interacting on MySpace and Flickr and YouTube. I didn’t see that until 1972, when e-mail was first introduced on the Internet.”

The first message across the Internet consisted of the first two letters of “login,” or as Kleinrock put it, “The very first message was “˜lo,’ as in “˜lo and behold’: totally prophetic of what was going to happen.”

And happen the Internet did.

In the spirit of appreciation for the Internet, school pride and North Campus creativity, a group of Design | Media Arts students held a celebration for the Internet’s 38th birthday Monday. I happily accepted my invitation to the event on Facebook and showed up ready to celebrate the phenomenon that made that action possible.

We tromped around campus, tied together in a network of RGB (red, green and blue) string calling out “lo!” and singing “Happy Birthday” to the Internet. I felt connected with my peers. If we moved, we moved collectively and made decisions democratically. If we wanted to go somewhere, we had to move all as a group.

Student onlookers, used to the traditional school spirit of the 8-clap, were a bit confused. I was starting to get a taste of how Kleinrock himself must have felt. In response to calls to “join the Internet” and “connect with us,” onlookers got confused and walked away, considering our RGB yarn network futile and unimportant.

“Nobody cared,” said Kleinrock, referring to the reception when he proposed his ideas. He made many presentations about the idea of packet switching and computer networking to communications networks and companies that were already in place.

Packet switching works by sharing network space, turning any unused node into a node that can traffic information. The information is split up into “packets” ““ hence the name “packet switching” ““ and these packets get sent out to bounce around on any free communication node.

“The physical realization of the network is just as powerful as land networking,” said Jono Brandel, a fourth-year Design | Media Arts student and one of the many organizers of this event. This feeling we have of connectivity, through yarn, closely mimics the connectivity we feel when connected to the Internet.

“Somebody that’s on the other side of the network that moves ““ I can feel it, tied around my neck and my waist. It’s a tingly feeling.”

As we tried to walk in a group, we abruptly realized the implications of collective knowledge and action.

“There’s no one to blame!” cried out Brandel.

We discovered a sense of community through waving at the webcam outside of Powell Library, trying to coerce individuals on Bruin Walk to increase our network capacity, and “packet switching” collective objects like cameras and a birthday card for the Internet.

I truly did feel connected and close to the individuals I was networked to, even though our literal connection was only string. I enjoyed their silence, their presence and their words and learned to work with the group to move towards a collective focal point ““ finding Leonard Kleinrock himself and singing “Happy Birthday” to the first node computer, pushed aside in a storeroom next to his office. We roped in Elizabeth Rojas, a fifth-year American literature and culture student.

“I was walking to check my e-mail, but now I’m connected to the “˜Internet'” said Rojas, tied in green string. “I didn’t think I’d stay on this long, but the Internet is quite addictive.”

The growth of the Internet is the predecessor and the formula for open-source communities today. It was collaborative, collective and organically creative ““ and free.

Kleinrock said that packet switching, was based on a distributive system without centralized control, shared among devices, people and applications, which continues in the even more complex and shared structures of the Internet today.

The interesting part is to “watch the way it adjusts itself and controls itself,” Kleinrock said.

Open source has its “roots in that early sense of sharing and cooperation and distributed creation” he explained.

Though it’s no open source code, I signed a collective birthday card for the Internet. “Dear Internet, I love you, whatever you are, anyway.”

E-mail Rood at drood@media.ucla.edu.

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