General System Theory and The Internet Design Idea Essay

General System Theory and The Internet Design Idea - Essay Example The simplest definition of ‘Internet’ is â€Å"A worldwide system of interconnected networks and computers†. A more technical newer version is "A worldwide system of interconnected networks that use the Transmission Control Protocol - Internet protocol" (TCP/IP) (ibid). J.C.R. Licklider, a U.S. scientist wrote in 1962 about interaction through a ‘Galactic Network’ (Schnarr, 2008): Each network should be able to work on its own, requiring no modification to participate in the Internet. Each would have a gateway, to link it to the outside world, a larger computer. This gateway would cut-down workload and to speed up traffic, with no censorship. Packages would go through the fastest available route, bypassing jams. The gateways would always be open and its operating principles would be freely available to all networks, motivating them to carry out independent but coalescing research (ibid). The Americans set up their Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1957 (Griffiths, 2002). By 1968/69, research had developed sufficiently for ARPA to publish a plan for a computer network system called ARPANET (ibid). Data packet switching technology, invented in England in 1965 was imported for integration with their system. Packet switching allowed travel of messages from point A to point B across a network (ibid). Surviving a nuclear attack was not Arpanets motivation, nor was building a global communications network (Griffiths, 2002). â€Å"It was not about communicating over distances either, as we understand the net today. Arpanet was about time-sharing. Time sharing permitted research institutions to use other institutions’ computers when they had calculations to do for which they did not have the facility. This was the prime vision of the named luminaries about the Internet† (Peter, 2003). "What the Arpanet didnt address was the issue of