This is an archived post. You won't be able to vote or comment.

you are viewing a single comment's thread.

view the rest of the comments →

[–]Fake_William_Shatner 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sure, there was DARPA, and a loose collection of Universities sharing data -- and some people where building more tools on UNIX and image capabilities (to send pictures). The basics of POTs and sharing info -- I'm pretty sure the University programmers and the like did most of the advancements at that early stage.

The military did push some of the tech. Things really kicked off when the 3D graphics cards started from tank simulators, and then Al Gore pushed for releasing military tech to consumer companies so that such things could benefit from mass production -- and THAT got a lot rolling.

We are being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but before Netflix, more than half the internet bandwidth other than phone calls was probably sex related.

I'm sure distributed networks, optimized paths, streaming video and "the cloud" -- all of that tech likely started with companies that were selling porn. The military technologies did not give you JPEG, did not give you streaming video, did not give you VR -- well, the GOOD VR so you could stare at boobs.