[ih] What's special about the Internet?

[richard at bennett.com (Richard Bennett)]

It occurs to me that the thing that makes the Internet (and ARPANET, 
CYCLADES, and OSI) special as a historical artifact is that the 
"terminals" for Internet use existed before the network itself. In the 
case of all previous networks (such as telephone, telegraph, radio/TV 
and Telex) the terminal was created as part of the network design, but 
the Internet had to work with what was already there. And of course, not 
just with existing terminals but with existing networks. And not just 
existing computers, but existing computer programs.

It seems to me that's more important than claims about bottom-up 
standards or any such dubious claims and it's so basic that people tend 
to overlook it.

-- 
Richard Bennett