Without aiming to insult here¹, is it interesting to anyone that the same things we say when we're 14-15 years old are the same things we say decades later? I remember having had this argument when I was a kid (and very space-obsessed) and it was almost exactly like this. I remember my classroom, even, and it was between Physics and English and the teacher hadn't come in yet.
It's like some number of people have to be thrown into the war of the ideas periodically to preserve the battle lines exactly as they are. Stop and you lose ground.
¹ like not saying I'm better than you guys, I could just as well do what you're doing.
Well, yes. Overton window and all that. Similar discussions on USENET 20 years ago. Although I think in some ways they've moved on, and in some ways regressed - the openness of troll conservativism, for example.
I sometimes think of these ideological fault lines as behaving like the geological ones; pressure maintained for years in equilibrium, then there is a crisis and a huge slip all at once. With a lot of stuff getting demolished along the way.
Calling the internet an ARPA system is like insisting on calling telephones the Bell system.
The government and military are very large consumers of internet hardware, software and services, all of which would look very different if they waited on the private sector. (Probably something specified by ITU).