this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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I did not read the full article since it is paywalled.
But well, nobody asked for the internet either.
Yes they did.
People wanted two computers to be able to talk to each other, so we wired them together when we got sick of walking punch cards and tapes back and forth.
Then we wanted multiple of them to be able to talk to each other so we invented a way to hook more than two together,
Then we wanted that to happen at distances further than we could just run a cable, so a bunch of different solutions were created, one of which was to connect over normal phone lines, one of which required dedicated telco cabling between big university computers and big business computers. Then clever people found solutions to making many smaller computers connect to fewer large computers for business and academic reasons, and then all those got connected and
Voila ! The internet.
It grew organically out of the need to transmit data.
If you meant the world wide web protocols and not the actual internet network, then that also was designed in response to a demand, and got popular because it met a demand.
ARPAnet was also conceived to be a resillient communication network to ensure reliable command and control communication between surviving assets in the event of nuclear attack.
Or at least thats what the nerds told the rich warlords in order to get funding.