Almost all the early protocols and systems (smtp, bgp, dns...) set up in place relied on the goodwill of people and assumed that they are inherently trustworthy. In a way it's a reflection upon the creators of those technologies themselves that they didn't see their creations being abused or exploited by large tech firms and governments - the creators did it for the joy of tech, their passion and optimism for the future potential of what they were doing. And then we came along and everything got worse.

> it's a reflection upon the creators of those technologies themselves that they didn't see their creations being abused or exploited by large tech firms and governments

The designers of a network built to withstand nuclear bombardment had a wide-eyed view of human nature?

You are merging the reason for the funding of the project (political decision) with the motivation of the people doing the actual job (scientist). That's unfair.

The motivation could be altruistic. But OP implies they were blindsided by human nature. Given the adversarial aim of the project, which was known to them when they built the protocols, and the personal writings of its designers, I question that assumption.

The protocols weren’t naïvely designed. They were designed against the threats of the day. The threat model has changed, making the protocols look childishly optimistic in the way someone walking into a modern battlefield with a wooden shield and sword might .

Still, what you're doing is something like downplaying the entire space program as being merely a happy accident resulting from building a better ICBM.

It's daft, and it oversimplifies the motives, goals, and characters of a hell of a lot of really great people. Sometimes military/defense applications is one of the best ways to guarantee funding. DARPA is even considered "defense" because it was decided that something like "those damn commies" being first to orbit a satellite happening again was unacceptable, and a technological lead was deemed a critical cornerstone of the United State's national defense strategy.

That that lead has been completely sacrificed in the last 60 or so years to foster increasing globalization in the foolhardy belief of winning over the communist bloc through capitalist flexing notwithstanding, the people who have been pushing the envelope have not by any stretch been some sort of series of diabolical Dr. Strangelove's. Quite the contrary in fact. It's just so easy for techies to get caught up in the pedantism of historical record they completely lose sight of the rest of humanity going on around them.

> DARPA is even considered "defense" because it was decided that something like "those damn commies" being first to orbit a satellite happening again was unacceptable, and a technological lead was deemed a critical cornerstone of the United State's national defense strategy

This is factually incorrect. ARPA, DARPA’s predecessor, predates America’s spacefaring ambitions.

>Originally known as the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), the agency was created in February 7, 1958 by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in response to the Soviet launching of Sputnik 1 in 1957.

--Wikipedia article for DARPA

ARPA may have existed, but was clearly found wanting, and not necessarily under the umbrella of the Department of Defense.

I think you might find the book "the innovators" by walter isaacson interesting, especially wrt the protocols.

An military or university network is probably much easier to administrate as the university or regiment administrators can be relied on to disable malicious users. www is more of an almost anarchy that works suprisingly well.

I strongly disagree.

Although there have been some less-than-optimal implementations in some protocols, in general the internet protocols were designed by people with their eyes open.

The protocols were designed to resist centralized control, and have been very successful.

You should read specifically about how tcp/ip was developed, not technically, but the people behind it and their motivations.

IP addressing is centralized to make routing easier. Source routing was possible for a while, but got strongly deprecated due to security.

DNS is a singular centralized namespace.

HTTP(s) bakes an authoritative server into the name of every object.

Sure there are counterexamples - TCP doesn't require router state, UDP lets users skip the OS protocol stack, DNS could be even more centralized.

But the basic protocols weren't really designed to resist much of anything. Their decentralization arose out of administrative concerns (site A should be able to administer its own names without coordinating with B and C) and engineering concerns (E2E principle) rather than power relations (powerful C can force its will onto the relationship between A and B). Designing to resist against the latter takes public key cryptography, which was nascent and too computationally expensive prior to the past few decades.

I could pretty much say the opposite of everything you say and be correct as well:

IP addressing is not centralized.

DNS has a distributed common namespace with lots of delegation.

HTTP is peer to peer.

The easiest book to read about the personalities and history of this stuff is probably "the innovators" by walter isaacson.

If I compare the networking we came up with to the other types of networks available in the day the ip protocols were invented, I think what we have is remarkable.

> but the people behind it and their motivations.

Surviving nuclear war isn't quite the same thing.

That's sort of a myth. The Baran stuff wasn't responsible for tcp/ip.

I would need some sort of proof to believe this narrative about a tech originally born for military usage.

You might start here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET

Technology is just a tool. Nothing here was made with authoritarianism in mind and the shape of the tools reflect that. It’s just a shame that they are authoritarian.

As Uncle Ben would say: with great power comes great responsibility. Technology created a lot of power in a short time. Humans haven’t had enough time to gently learn how to be responsible with it yet. Hopefully we don’t blow a hand off.

Especially companies that operate walled gardens for the sake of "security".

I often wonder if this is the solution to the Fermi paradox. The assumptions go like this.

    * Natural selection works everywhere, on individuals and societies. They compete even after survival is secure
    * Intelligent creatures need social order and specialization to become industrial
    * There will be administrative/ruling specialties because flat organizational hierarchies work for ants and bees but not when work and global coordination becomes complex
    * Social order installed, tech attained
    * Absolute power corrupts absolutely
    * ET gulag, end of space travel, everyone is busy making war and pleasing dear leaders

No references.