Letters to the Editor
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
‘Shock Doctrine’
Amity Shlaes holds up the Internet as an example of private development of “serious infrastructure” [Arts & Letters, “The Shock Doctrine,” April 2, 2008].
Wrong. The Internet was created and developed by the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, which had been created in response to the Sputnik crisis.
It was further refined at five government-funded university centers through the 1970s and 1980s.
The technology for the Internet’s powerful, easy interface that we know today — the World Wide Web — was given to us by Tim Berners Lee, who well knew the patent value of what he was giving away.
Certainly private businesses have expanded and refined on these developments, and used the Internet to create great consumer value — but business had little to do with the basic infrastructure itself.
If you want an example of what private business can do with infrastructure, look what happened to Integrated Services Digital Network, or ISDN.
The fast Internet connection developed in the 1990s was rendered obsolete at birth by the inability of competing businesses to agree on a standard.
GENE BORIO
New York, N.Y.
