This timeline was researched by Kristina Redgrave, Diane Chang, Becky Kazansky, Andrew Seo and Micah Sifry, and edited by Micah Sifry. It is a work-in-progress. If you would like to suggest an important development that we may have missed, or make a correction to the record, please [use this form](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dFNQT3NYNG5zOGFTRm1sQXpxY0NQZEE6MQ#gid=0).;xNLx;;xNLx;Partial research support provided by the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. Copyright 2012 Personal Democracy Media.;xNLx;;xNLx;Note: Some events that are dated on the first of a month occurred during that month but the exact date is not recorded. Events are color-coded blue for USA, purple for international and green for online.
As computers grew more powerful, visionaries foresaw the rising potential of collective intelligence. In "The Computer as a Communication Device," published in Science and Technology, computing pioneers J.C.R. Licklider and Robert W. Taylor wrote: "We believe that we are entering a technological age in which we will be able to interact with the richness of living information—not merely in the passive way that we have become accustomed to using books and libraries, but as active participants in an ongoing process, bringing something to it through our interaction with it, and not simply receiving something from it by our connection to it." Their article also contains an early discussion of "on-line interactive communities."
On this day at the Fall Joint Computer Conference in San Francisco, inventor and computer pioneer Douglas Englebart, along with 17 researchers working with him at the Stanford Research Institute, made a 90-minute live demonstration of an array of experimental technologies including the computer mouse (which he invented), video conferencing, hypertext links, word processing, "what you see is what you get" editing, and collaborative real-time editing. The historic demonstration is widely regarded as having blazed the trail toward human-computer interaction, showing how the computer could be used for everyday tasks. Video of Englebart's presentation can be watched
Request For Comment-1 was the first of many open standards planning documents that created the protocols of the Internet. This approach to decision-making was later summarized by engineer David Clark as "rough consensus and running code."
Tomlinson, an engineer at Bolt, Beranek and Newman in Boston, implemented the first system that enabled users to send mail from different hosts connected to ARPANET. Previously, you could only send mail to another user on the same computer. Tomlin used the @ symbol to show that the user was "at some other host rather than being local." Tomlinson, on sending a message to his group explaining how to send messages: "The first use of network email announced its own existence."
The direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machine is patented in 1974 and is first used in elections in 1975. Commercially called the visual voter, the machine used phototransmitters and projected light but did not contain a computer.
The Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol are core to the architecture of the internet, and enable computers to reliably move bits around the network, using a technique called packet-switching. Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn wrote a paper for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers describing TCP that was formally published in May 1974. Why is this a political development of importance? Cerf told techPresident: "The design of the internet architecture is captured in the TCP and IP protocols. It confers equality on all interlocutors on the network (a supercomputer is treated as equal to a laptop from the protocol point of view). This means that peer-to-peer was built into the network from the beginning and was kind of rediscovered with Napster, Skype, Bit-torrent, etc. The end devices did not and do not need to know about the topology of the Internet, the number of networks involved, the exact path of packets, etc. There is decoupling throughout the system because it is layered and this has given the system remarkable ability to absorb new technology and to allow what we call 'permissionless innovation' - just do it."
DARPA worked with BBN Technologies, Stanford University, and the University College London to develop a stable, operational version of the Internet Protocol Suite. Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. The Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), which were the first networking protocols defined in this standard. TCP/IP v4, developed in 1982 and still in use today, was declared in March of that year to be the standard for all military computer networking.
Lubbock, Texas-based Cult of the Dead Cow (cDc) was one of the first organizations to engage in online activism, which they called "hacktivism." cDc believes the Universal Declaration of Human Rights applies to user rights on the Internet and that free access to information online is a human right. Unlike recent hacker groups such as Anonymous, cDc opposes the use of hacking techniques to disrupt the information infrustructure of states, even those engaging in repressive practices. Instead, it advocates developing software that aids the forbidden actions of those who are repressed. cDc also organized HoHoCon, one of the first modern hacker conventions, starting 1990.
Short for Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, the Well is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. It was started by Stewart Brand and Larry Brilliant and began as a dial-up bulletin board system. Users were told "You own your own words."
The non-profit advocacy and legal organization was formed out of a conviction that internet civil liberties needed to be fleshed out and fought for. The co-founders were John Perry Barlow, Mitch Kapor and John Gilmore. Barlow himself had been visited by the FBI in April of the same year for allegations of theft of source code. The visit convinced him of a coming “great paroxysm of governmental confusion during which everyone's liberties would become at risk.”
