2000

The Birth of the Internet: An Architectural Conception for Solving the Multiple Network Problem

http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/other/birth_internet.txt

I - Communication Science and Cybernetics as Prelude

In his book published in 1949, Norbert Wiener predicted that research done on communications and control theory during WWII would lead to important scientific breakthroughs in the postwar period. He writes:

Many perhaps do not realize that the present age is ready for a significant turn in the development toward far greater heights than we have ever anticipated. The point of departure may well be the recasting and unifying of the theories of control and communication in the machine and animal on a statistical basis. The philosophy of this is contained in my book Cybernetics. Norbert Wiener, Extrapolation, Interpolation and Smoothing of Stationary Time Series, The Technology Press of Massachusetts Institute of Technology and John Wiley & Sons, 1949, pg v.