I watched Katie Hafner’s talk at the Jepson Leadership Forum entitled “The Origins of the Internet.” In just under an hour, she summarized how the Internet, the most ubiquitous technological advancement of the 20th century, was born. She described how the origin of the government project that resulted in the Internet was the result of a frustrated psychologist working for the Department of Defense Advance Research Project Agency (ARPA) who wanted his computer terminals to be able to communicate with each other. That psychologist was named Bob Taylor, and he subsequently hired Larry Roberts, a computer engineer, who developed some of the core concepts that would allow computers to communicate with each other. The project yielded a network, called ARPANET that connected the computers of the federal government and universities across the country, allowing them to communicate and share resources. ARPANET was the precursor to the modern Internet, as its concepts were adopted by the telecommunication and computer industry to create today’s world-wide network.

The most insightful part of Hafner’s talk was her commentary on the debate over the origins of the internet, based on two key questions: who gets the credit and why was it created?  She noted how many people significantly contributed to the creation of ARPANET, all in different ways. Taylor and Roberts were at the head of the project in ARPA, but Donald Davies, Paul Beran, and Leonard Kleinrock each made advancements, all of which were necessary for the dream of ARPANET to be fully realized. Hafner recounted a story, told to her by Paul Baran, that compared the process of building ARPANET to building a cathedral. All of these individuals came along and laid a few bricks, and at the end of it all, a cathedral was built. To me, this was an interesting example of how a vision can be more of a leader than an individual. Taylor was hardly the first to come up with the idea, but he did have access to the necessary ARPA funding to get the project going. But rather than focus on directly leading the project with more hands-on action, he simply tried to hire the right people and let his vision lead the way, which allowed those other contributors to come onboard and add their pieces. A shared vision can be more powerful than one individual, but it also shows that Taylor understood how to fulfill his role as a leader.