INTERNET Prehistory: ARPANET Chronology
Noel Packard
Abstract
How did ARPANET or Advanced Research Projects Agency networks, arguably the most expensive invention in history, become the Internet?The US tax-funded ARPANET was tested before being commercialized.Testing included neutralizing civilians in an anti-Communist counterinsurgency with minimal evidence and plausible deniability.Max Weber's ideal type and social order concepts help describe how occupational status groups (OSGs) tested ever-changing ARPANET derived networks for illegal, unconstitutional spying, while presidential orders dictated ARPANET's development.After testing, ARPANET was transferred to Defense Communications Agency, cloned in smaller versions and distributed in low-intensity warfare and military base building abroad.As the US telephone system was broken up, Americans sought affordable telephone services from new networked and wireless communication systems.The government did not want to manage growing databanks and ordered ARPANET backbone be commercialized.Merit, IBM, and MCI commercialized the ARPANET's backbone in a way similar to what Weber described in his first dissertation.Conclusions include 1) ARPANET was convenient for the military since it hid evidence