[ih] ARPANET and Apollo 11

[Vint Cerf]

our grandchildren will be able to tell us.... :-)

v


On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 10:35 AM, Noel Chiappa <jnc at mercury.lcs.mit.edu>
wrote:

> So I was sitting here, not really up to working, and idly watching The
> History
> Channel, and there was a documentary about Apollo 11 on. They had a number
> of
> people (including Walter Cronkite) talking about what they thought it
> meant,
> retrospectively.
>
> Several said something about how it was the greatest accomplishment of the
> century, etc (it certainly was an amazing accomplishment - looking back on
> it,
> it's completely amazing that they managed to do it with 1960s technology -
> although winning WWII was an even greater effort, I'm quite sure), and one
> said that when people look back at the 20th Century, centuries from now,
> that's the thing they are likely to think was the most significant event of
> the century.
>
> It suddenly struck me that something else happened in 1969 - that was the
> year
> the ARPANET was turned on. Given that the ARPANET gave birth to the
> Internet,
> and the impact the computer networking has had on the world (admittedly, in
> tandem with the development of the personal computer), I wonder if in the
> long
> run, landing on the Moon will really be seen as more significant than that?
>
> Odd how two such major things, long-term-historically speaking, happened in
> the same year!
>
>     Noel
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