Leonard Kleinrock (Associated Press)
LOS ANGELES -- The internet officially turns 40 years old Thursday and the milestone is being marked with a party at UCLA, with the man known as "father of the internet."
"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, 75, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.
The anniversary celebration was attended by "technology celebrities" and entrepreuers, including Arianna Huffinton, co-founder of the popular news and blog website Huffington Post as well as Social Brain Foundation director Isaac Mao.
"The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent voice," Kleinrock said. "There is no way back at this point. We can't turn it off. The Internet Age is here."
Kleinrock says he never imagined Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that day 40 years ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as the Internet.
"As a teenager the Internet is behaving badly, the dark side has emerged. The question is when it grows into a young adult will it get over this period of misbehaving?" Kleinrock said.
Kleinrock referred to spam emails, online scams and malicious software spread by crooks as an unexpected dark side of the Internet.
On October 29, 1969 Kleinrock led a team that got a computer at UCLA to "talk" to one at a research institute.
Engineers began typing "LOG" to log into the distant computer, which crashed after getting the "O."
"So, the first message was 'Lo' as in 'Lo and behold'," Kleinrock recounted. "We couldn't have a better, more succinct first message."
Kleinrock's team logged in on the second try, sending digital data packets between computers. Computers at two other US universities were added to the network by the end of that year.
Funding came from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established in 1958 in response to the launch of a Sputnik space flight by what was then the Soviet Union.
US leaders were in a technology race with Cold War rival Russia.
The National Science Foundation added a series of super computers to the network in the late 1980s, opening the online community to more scientists.
The Internet caught the public's attention in the form of email systems in workplaces and ignited a "dot-com" industry boom that went bust at the turn of the century.
Kleinrock says he sees the Internet spreading into everything.
"The next step is to move it into the real world," Kleinrock said. "The Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and it will know I am there. It will talk back to me."
"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, 75, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.
The anniversary celebration was attended by "technology celebrities" and entrepreuers, including Arianna Huffinton, co-founder of the popular news and blog website Huffington Post as well as Social Brain Foundation director Isaac Mao.
"The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent voice," Kleinrock said. "There is no way back at this point. We can't turn it off. The Internet Age is here."
Kleinrock says he never imagined Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that day 40 years ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as the Internet.
"As a teenager the Internet is behaving badly, the dark side has emerged. The question is when it grows into a young adult will it get over this period of misbehaving?" Kleinrock said.
Kleinrock referred to spam emails, online scams and malicious software spread by crooks as an unexpected dark side of the Internet.
On October 29, 1969 Kleinrock led a team that got a computer at UCLA to "talk" to one at a research institute.
Engineers began typing "LOG" to log into the distant computer, which crashed after getting the "O."
"So, the first message was 'Lo' as in 'Lo and behold'," Kleinrock recounted. "We couldn't have a better, more succinct first message."
Kleinrock's team logged in on the second try, sending digital data packets between computers. Computers at two other US universities were added to the network by the end of that year.
Funding came from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established in 1958 in response to the launch of a Sputnik space flight by what was then the Soviet Union.
US leaders were in a technology race with Cold War rival Russia.
The National Science Foundation added a series of super computers to the network in the late 1980s, opening the online community to more scientists.
The Internet caught the public's attention in the form of email systems in workplaces and ignited a "dot-com" industry boom that went bust at the turn of the century.
Kleinrock says he sees the Internet spreading into everything.
"The next step is to move it into the real world," Kleinrock said. "The Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and it will know I am there. It will talk back to me."
