Introduction

The first time I recall my status as a citizen of the 8^th continent, I was staying on the business floor of the Park Lane Hotel in Causeway Bay, Hong Kong SAR.

@ 4 sharp the complimentary Bar was open with the business floor Butler making absolutely the driest of martinis. I found myself relaxing at day’s end with a large troop of Virgin Atlantic crew, Virgins Hong Kong hub hotel was the Park Lane, with the 2000 world cup on at 2am local time theses former RAF stalwarts were starting early and going late. I was settling into a cold red star when one of the VA flyers asked “Canada[1], How did you get to live here? 

I then succinctly said British Airways, first class from Manila last Saturday night…great view of the city at night from the top deck of the747, I’m sure you have seen the view.

 I then, since tales have always been a strong suite of mine, began to illuminate my new friends with the debriefing of what had transpired to eventually have me in their company in Hong Kong ….

…..Exactly 2 weeks before I received a call from New Zealand, because I knew some people in NJ , who failed at launching what should have been the Master Cards ‘s “Mona Lisa” the mondex scheme[2] .  Had it succeeded in Canada then it would have been viral globally . The failure was not one without partners the Canadian Bankers balked at the new 32 bit multous smartcard in favour[Canadian spelling] of another future that included billions in mag stripe fraud even at the movies. I had a great idea using smartcards and payphones with chip readers as the new century teller network for digital money….shit that was 1997 and it didn’t have a chance…fast forward [ff]…..

So the guy in New Zealand, Tom, whom had looked me up on the Internet, immediately asks ‘Can you be in Manila on Thursday… ...what time zone? what time? I say.

If you leave at 6 am Tuesday no problem for a local Thursday morning meeting. Dispensing with the fee structure amongst other particulars, I left the next day for Asia.

So my debriefing concludes and my companion blurts out that I should have stated ….the simple answer to:  How did you get to live here?  The Internet I had become a denizen of THE8TH continent.

Granted, I had been exposed to the scientific wonders of networking some twelve years earlier by a friend who used AOL and other assorted Bulletin Boards in Toronto. It was actually a great gal who showed me what the Internet was, prior to Tim Berners-Lee inventing the World Wide Web interface. I credit Dr. Gail McVey, PhD with my introduction to the text based non graphical Internet [thanks GL].

Internet turns forty

"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.

Kleinrock led an anniversary event at the UCLA campus that blended reminiscence of the Internet's past with debate about its future.

"There is going to be an ongoing controversy about where we have been and where we are going," said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the popular news and blog website that bears her name.

"It is not just about the Internet; it is about our times. We are going to need desperately to tap into the better angels of our nature and make our lives not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world."

Huffington was on hand to discuss the power the Internet gives to grass roots organizers on a panel with Kleinrock and 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 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.

"The net is penetrating every aspect of our lives," Kleinrock said to a room of about 200 people and an equal number watching online.

"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 referred to spam emails, online scams and malicious softwarespread 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.  

"It feels to me like the alumni meeting of the framers of the US Constitution," Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow said as he addressed the gathering.

"There are a lot of people in this room who are honest to god uncles and aunts of the Internet. What you did is conceivably the most important technological event since the capture of fire."

Barlow, whose nonprofit legal organization fights for online freedom, maintained that Internet access is on the verge of becoming an inalienable human right.

Kleinrock was driven by a certainty that computers were destined to speak to each other and that the resulting network should be as simple to use as telephones.

US telecom colossus AT&T ran lines connecting the computers for ARPANET, a project backed with money from a research arm of the US military.

A key to getting computers to exchange data was breaking digitized information into packets fired between on-demand with no wasting of time, according to Kleinrock.

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 on the ARPANET because funding came from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established in 1958.

ARPANET grew into what is known today as the Internet.

Kleinrock, 75, 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."

The 8^th Continent will illuminate the salient aspects of the most ubiquitous human interface since well fire with humour and specific insight.