Of course, I’m not saying much that isn’t fairly obvious, but allow me, if you will, to let you know what it was like in the beginning; the New York City equivalent of New Amsterdam. You see I was one of the people who actually “invented” the Internet. True story. Of course, It’s also a long story. However, I shall try and shorten it for you here. Keeping in line with the daily requests I get to “Cut to the chase,” I shall do just that and offer you a condensed version of how some friends and I invented the Internet. 

It all started in 1982 when I received a call from my friend Bob Kahn. I have known Bobby all my life. I can remember walking around the neighborhood when we were kids, picking up dog shit and throwing it at children younger and smaller than ourselves. 

As it goes he and some other friends, Vinton Cerf and Al Gore had taken an apartment in Anaheim, CA and were attempting to put a band together. They needed a guitar player and the boys thought I was their man. At first I was reluctant, after all Anaheim is along way from St.Paul, MN where I had just taken a German shepherd as a lover and started a landscaping company.  The pay wasn’t great, but I did get winters off, and I liked that.

Anaheim, CA, at the time, was a world away. I was just getting settled down and starting my life in great North of the mid-West. Did I really want to throw everything away, fire up the Dart and bugger-off to Southern California to play guitar for a band that hadn’t so much as laid down a demo, never mind gigging? 

At first I said, “No.” But that Bobby--if he’s anything he’s a persistent motherfucker. He eventually wore me down. I broke it off with the dog, not an easy thing to do since she had once worked for the United States Customs Service and had a strong set of hind legs on her. I packed up my Hondo electric guitar, my Peavey amp and began the long drive West. 

When I arrived I was rather shocked. The boys were living in a two bedroom, I would call it a dump, in the heart (if there really is one) of Anaheim. The place was a mess. Al’s girlfriend Tipper had moved in as well and there were no signs of her moving out. Other than grabbing a peek at her coming out of the shower, I saw no reason for her being involved in this experiment, but you know bass players…they have to have their girlfriends with them. 

None of us had a job but Al’s old man was hooked-up and mostly we lived off Gore’s credit card. He told us not to worry about it because some organization called the DNC would pick up the tab. This was fine with me. 

We didn’t even have a name for our band but we rehearsed a lot, much to the chagrin of the neighbors and we eventually got a few numbers down, including a really great cover of a Fleetwood Mac song. 

We spent the nights trying to come up with a name for our band; this was difficult. No one could agree on anything. Al went so far as to call my suggestions “gay.” Tipper was no help. Her only contribution was that we drop the words “cock sucker” from one of our songs and replace them with “Peter-puffer.” I thought this was ridiculous and I said so. Gore came out with his “gay” comment again. He was getting so uptight. 

After a few months we all sort of lost interest in the music thing. (To be honest, Bob couldn’t hold down a 4/4 beat to save his life, Vinny had a voice best suited for silent film, and playing anything over the third fret seemed out of Gore’s ability.) 

It was after we disbanded that we picked up on the computer thing. Bob called a friend of his dad’s, Larry Roberts and asked him about his IPTO project. Larry and some others, I forget 
who--we’re talking about guys from the late sixties here, Licklider or something had put together some form of networking system for the military, I think that’s what Bob told me. They called it ARPANET. (That would have been a great name for the band! Only Gore would have shot it down, calling it…you know what.)

Anyway, we managed to buy some computer stuff on Al’s magic credit card and collectively we started to dabble with the idea of building a computer network system of our own borrowing some of the ideas these Larry and Licklider fellows had come up with just after the “summer of love.” Bob and Vinton were really good at the stuff. They had taken some vocational study classes at a school somewhere. I forget if it was MIT or Stanford. Maybe both. Who knows? 

With all of us working together, It didn’t take long to develop a system. Again, the problem was coming up with a name. We spent many days and downed many bottles of 40 ounce Cobras before settling with TCP/IP. It had a nice ring and a mysterious quality to it. 

Even though he was “technically” dead (don’t believe everything you read) Marshall McLuhan stopped by one night. He had been blowing reefer and was shooting off at the mouth about the concept of a global village, interconnected by an electronic nervous system. Man, was he high. 

At its core, though, we agreed it was a good start for our TCP/IP project. Soon some other guys we had met at the miniature golf course came over and began dicking around with the stuff. There was this Tim Berners-Lee, guy and this weird character with a beard, Dave Crocker or Crockit or something. He was always barefoot and his feet stank. 

Anyway, from there it was all pretty easy. But things got tight around the apartment (Al and Tipper were a bit much to take. They were always engaged in heavy petting inside one the bedrooms. WITH THE DOOR LOCKED! THANK YOU VERY MUCH! –No, don’t worry. I don’t need my car keys.) We all went our separate ways after a few months but kept in touch with the electronic mail system we had developed, and still do, to some extent. 

So, there you go. Unfortunately, the Internet has been dumbed down quite a bit. Mostly when I open my email account I receive unsolicited messages encouraging me to enlarge my penis (rather presumptuous) or I receive offers of a lower mortgage rate (I rent an apartment.) 

I dislike all the pop-up window-ads I encounter when using the system we developed in our little Anaheim ghetto. They offer me discount airfare. (I don’t fly.) There are also many offerings of a sexual nature. (I’m back with the German shepherd and perfectly satisfied.) 

A lot of people made a lot of money on our ideas and a lot of people lost a lot of money on our ideas. People use our mail system to meet, marry and molest other people. Teenagers spend hours in chat rooms, sharing, for the most part, not so intellectual ideas and opinions. The word “virtual” became very popular after we finished our handy work. There are virtual stores, virtually everywhere. It seems every company, every magazine, every movie, every sports team, everyone everywhere has or needs a web site. I guess you could say we changed the world. Many people offer that we have. I don’t know if we changed it for the better or for the worse. In my opinion, the jury is still out. 

Anyway…I hope everyone is having fun. Just remember…I had to put up with a lot of crap to get this whole thing up and running. (I didn’t even mention the car breaking down in Dallas.) So…don’t fuck it up too much. Try and behave. Keep both hands on the keyboard. Ta.