A Birthday Card for the Internet

40 years from today- I see all kinds of smart devices connected to a common network (Internet?). Smart Cars, Smart Televisions, Smart Appliances, Smart Furniture, gosh the list is enless.... With all those devices online, one may look back and say..what PC?

Nicole,

My first exposure to the internet came in the late 70's at a company I was working at (and the company where I first moved into the computer world i.e. Data Processing as an Operator). I was at the Corporate location which also had several divisions there and one of these divisions had access. All text based. Man has it come a long way :-)

Chuck

LOL - good thing you aren't looking to Congress for anything Nicole. You might be young but you are wise beyond your years :-)

Dear Nicole!

Thank you for the warm words.I am glad , that you and many different folks from many different countries  talk about me so much( though sometimes it looks like gossips) Anyway, I am glad that I help you in many ways and make your life better.Just one tiny  request.Please, can you make something and silence those  people who blame me in every single problem on Earth. Some depressed teenager  or crazy manager comiites suicide- because of me...Some  terrorists blow up something- my fault.Can you please stop it?

NF:="Fascinating to hear these guys say "whoops" on security, isn't it?"

The IBM PC was was marketed in 1981

It was not until Aug.6 2004 when XP/SP2 was released that there was a serious effort to address the security problem.  Not for a lack of warnning: virus codes such as "Stoned", "Falling Letters", "Pakistani Brain" plagued Sneaker net users -- until we got rid of floppy drives.  at which time such virus codes have migrated into USB devices

and of course Nov. 1988 : The Robert Morris Internet Worm

now with VISTA and Win7 we have UAC -- which essentially asks the user to distinguish between good updates and bad ones.  the fakes are pretty good -- and getting better.

talk about being a "Day late and a dollar short" -- it is easy to understand that the original designers didn't anticipate the need for security -- they "knew everyone who was on the net" -- back in the beginning.

but look at the industry response to the issue

Public Key Encryption was published in 1991 -- that's 18 YEARS ago

Public key encryption provides the keys we need.  If you study it you will realize that it is MUCH MORE than just encryption.  It provides AUTHENTICATION: i.e. it allows you to VERIFY the IDENTITY of WHO YOU ARE TALKING TO

it provides INTEGRITY: it allows you to verify that your copy of a message has not been altered or substituted in transit.

these things are based on TRUST MODELS

you have a Trust Model in your computer-- it came with your browser.  Do you know what's in it?  why would you trust it?

we should have a general presentation and discussion of Trust Models here on IEv

think about this for a minute: if i have a proper authentication process and message integrity I don't care if you do steal my account number. although you can create a transaction: you can't authenticate it

that your data is going to be stolen on the net goes without saying. we should all operate on the basis that that has already happened.

A most back-handed kind of birthday card written from a glass-half-empty perspective but an amusing piece nevertheless.

From a glass-half-full pov, I would like to salute the incredible connections that the Internet now facilitates.  That plus the much greater visibility that it brings to all human activities is a great present for us all.

You ask, Nicole, where we will all be in 40 years, but I don't think you need to look as far ahead as that.  In 10 years, I think the Internet will have gone largely mobile and desktop PCs and even laptops will be anachronisms.  We all will be using our cellphones or if we're power users, our smart phones, to cloud compute to our heart's content.  It's only a matter of time.

Nicole, I'd like information to be shared on a much bigger scale. We're already seeing it with data.gov, but there are so many government entities and universities entrenched in old systems and that are resistant to change. I think in the science and medical fields especially we could accomplish so much more if we combined forces and could share info more easily.

Hi Paul. I'm glad you liked it and found it amusing. No worries. I'm not calling on Congress for anything. It's not up to Congress to decide whether we start paying for content online, that's for sure!

Thanks for pointing that out, Mike Acker. Vint Cerf actually said the same thing at a recent conference, and on live chat on Internet Evolution. When he was asked what he would've done differently in the beginning, he said he would've put in a much stronger focus on authentication into the Internet's architecture: "I think it would be very useful to have in hand ways to strongly authenticate persons and equipment and even software in the Internet. It would aid in avoiding malware or being phished or pharmed, for instance," he said.

Fascinating to hear these guys say "whoops" on security, isn't it?

Thanks guys, I'm glad you enjoyed it! Fun for me to write as well. But yeah you both make great points, and I'm curious as well to see where we'll be in another 40 years. The thing is, I think it's going to look completely different than it does now, but there's so much hype around what we have today (Twitter, Facebook) as if these things are the Mecca of the Internet. I think and hope we're going to move far beyond social media. The next 40 years should be interesting. What do you hope to see accomplished?