Blog 6: The Formation of Communities

Something from phase two that surprised me the most was the enormous size of AT&T. I knew they were a big company but the way it is described in these chapters is that it is basically the only phone company and they had complete control over every aspect of telephones. It amazes me that the government took so long to step in and decided that they had a monopoly on the system. This inspired a group called the “Phone Phreaks” to meet and figure out how to cheat the system. I think it is funny that a kid was able to figure out that if he blew a certain pitch into the phone it would allow him to make free long distance calls.

Another thing that baffles me and a lot of other people is how AT&T passed up the opportunity to help with the ARPANET. I am sure looking back today they see this as a major mistake because once ARPANET was available to the public it took off. The importance of it in many situations was realized. Especially when they were able to send emails to each other. ARPANET was able to connect people globally. As Ryan progresses he talks about how they phased out ARPANET in favor of NSFNET because it was capable of speeds of 45 mpbs instead of the slow speed ARPANET offered. It seems like this section of the book focused on more of the cultural aspects of the early Internet. How groups formed like the computer science community, phone phreaks, or the even the Scifi community. This is important in understanding how the Internet connects groups today.

Questions:

How do you think the early Internet affected the formation of communities today? For example the formation of the phone phreaks or scifi community long ago.

What do you think the Internet would look like today if AT&T would have helped with ARPANET?