He never envisioned his 97-year-old mother using it, but 35
years later children and adults are connecting to it worldwide.
Professor Leonard Kleinrock of UCLA’s computer science
department is one of the founders of the Internet and, together
with the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied
Sciences, celebrated the Internet’s 35th birthday last week
with a symposium featuring leaders of the industry.
Members of the audience included over 200 UCLA faculty,
students, and computer industry and UCLA foundation members.
Throughout the day, many issues were addressed concerning the
Internet. Topics ranged from the role of the Internet in
today’s technologically advanced economy to the societal
implications of the Internet.
Kleinrock had a vision about the Internet, which he believed
would include five components, and its potential uses in the real
world.
“I imagined that the network would be everywhere, always
on, always available, and anyone would be able to get on any time
with any device and that it would be invisible (as wireless
connections are) and easy to use,” Kleinrock said.
On Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock led a team of engineers to launch
the first Internet message from one computer to another.
“There was no record of this event, and there wasn’t
even a good message prepared. When it happened we realized it was a
great experiment,” he said.
The first message was “lo” since they had been
trying to “log in” when the other computer at Stanford
University crashed.
UCLA was supposed to write “log” and the computer at
Stanford was supposed to write “in” for their first
communication.
After stumbling upon this communication, Kleinrock realized that
the Internet had a lot of potential.
He had never envisioned that it would become a mass form of
communication until 1972, when the major drive of the Internet
became e-mail. He said he thought that the Internet would be
limited in its scope.
“I imagined great things, but I never envisioned it as
people talking to each other, I only saw computers talking to each
other,” Kleinrock said.
According to Kleinrock, the Internet had gotten the first three
of his envisioned components right. Those three components are for
the Internet to always be on, everywhere, and available.
The other field that he is now working on is
“nomadicity,” or the ability to connect anywhere with
any device to bring cyberspace out into the physical world.
The second issue of cyberspace is the idea that its convenience
is locked behind the computer screen. Kleinrock hopes to bring the
services of the Internet to the real world where there is a highly
interactive system set up.
“For instance, if I walk into a room, the room will know
that I walked into it and the response will be customized to me and
accommodate me,” he said.
His final hope, which he termed ubiquity, concerns scenarios
where people would be able to access the Internet anywhere in the
world.
He envisions a vast network with large amounts of data being
sent over high speeds and great distances. Since individuals cannot
comprehend this, he said there will be intelligent software agents
that operate autonomously within the infrastructure.
Kleinrock still sees the Internet in its infancy and believes
that current services can be further developed. “It’s
very young and many things can still happen, such as e-mail,
instant messaging and services, but lots more is going to
happen,” he said.
In addition to the experiences and hopes of Kleinrock, the
symposium featured discussions by a variety of speakers, including
Henry Samueli from Broadcom Corporation, a semiconductor solutions
company, Tim O’Reilly from O’Reilly Media, Google CEO
Eric Schmidt and Lawrence G. Roberts from Anagran, a company
developing an IP router.
One of the moderators, Bran Ferran, from Applied Minds, asked
what would be done differently if Kleinrock had the chance to go
back. Kleinrock said that he’d make it more flexible. The
other founders present at the event talked about their experiences
with the beginning of the Internet and what they would have done
differently.
Roberts answered that he didn’t think that they had been
that far off with their creation, referring to the differences
between then and now.
“I don’t think that we did it all that wrong. It
would’ve been nice if (authentication) was in, but it was a
fight to even get it the way it was,” Roberts said.
In addition, a session regarding the social, economic and
political implications of the Internet’s global spread was
moderated by Tim O’Reilly, founder and CEO of O’Reilly
Media, according to the engineering press release regarding the
symposium.