In this episode of Know-It-All, host Avi Polirer takes listeners on a brief but fascinating journey through the origins of the internet, tracing it back to 1957 during the Cold War. Born out of the U.S. government's response to the launch of Sputnik, the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) funded the development of computer communication, leading to the first successful data transmission between two computers in 1969. This marked the beginning of ARPANET, the earliest version of the internet. The episode explores ARPANET’s rapid growth, its eventual decline with the rise of NSFNET and MILNET, and its decommissioning in 1990—all while highlighting the crucial role ARPANET played in laying the foundation for the global internet we rely on today.
About the Host:
My name is Avi Polirer, and I’m a freshman at the Community College of Baltimore County (CCBC), majoring in Sports Management. My goal is to transfer to the University of Maryland and work with their football team as a coach—part of my larger dream of becoming a successful football coach or sports executive. This podcast episode was created for Professor Beth Baunoch’s Intro to Mass Media class. I chose this topic because it connects directly to what we’ve been learning, and it’s something I’ve been curious about for years. I’ve always been fascinated by how technology shapes our world, and digging into the history of the internet gave me a new appreciation for the digital age we live in today.
Sources Featured in This Episode:
- ARPANET. DARPA RSS. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://www.darpa.mil/about-us/timeline/arpanet
- Hauben, M., & Hauben, R. (1998). Behind the Net: The Untold Story of the ARPANET and Computer Science (Chapter 7). First Monday, 3(8). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v3i8.612
- Lukasik, S. (2011). Why the ARPANET Was Built. IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, 33(3), 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1109/MAHC.2010.11
- YouTube. (2011, November 19). Charley Kline at UCLA October 29, 2011. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BQcLqtZz4lM