Summary
Half-joking in its title, Licklider’s memo to colleagues working on advanced computing posed the practical questions of how independently developed machines and groups could share programs, data, and language across a network. As head of ARPA’s computing office, Licklider was positioned to seed the research that became ARPANET.
Why it matters
The “Intergalactic Computer Network” is the imaginative seed of internetworking: many autonomous systems cooperating without a central owner. That autonomy-with-interoperation is precisely the posture the Independent Internet and decentralization return to.
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