who invented the internet

Some statists, or more accurately anti-anarchists, may claim that the internet is not the product of the market but was developed by the state for the military. This may well be historically accurate. However the free market has clearly taken the idea and developed it far beyond its original limited scope into the resource it is today. but more importantly making the case that the internet has its origins in coercive action does not justify or legitimise the state in any way. The implication would be that the internet has its origins in the state and that absent the state we would not have the internet. This is an a priori statement that cannot be proven. That the state invented the internet does not preclude the development of a similar or better system in a non coercive society. If the state had not monopolised communications from the very inception of its history then things may have been very different. The state has claimed monopoly over communications throughout history – postal services, telegraph services, telephone services. It is only in the last ten years or so that most states have de-nationalised such communication services. These industries are still licensed, heavily regulated and cartelised for purposes of control and profit. But my point is that absent the state, communications may have developed differently. For example digging trenches across entire continents, and burying millions of miles of the precious metal copper (all centrally controlled) may perhaps not have been the most effective way to implement such networks. Perhaps radio (a technology contemporaneous with wired telecoms) would have been the choice of non centralised society. Perhaps in this non state world we would have had mobile telephony fifty to one hundred years sooner. Perhaps competing telecoms networks would have innovated new services to entice custom. Perhaps the age old human dream of the video phone (up there with the similarly state-prohibited flying car) would have come to fruition far sooner. Perhaps wired networks were the best choice and wireless televisual and radio services would have been more plentiful without the costs of nationwide broadcasting if simply piped into the home. Perhaps nothing would have ever been broadcast. Perhaps private commercial enterprises without the opportunity to offload IP type enforcement onto the state, would have opted for physical media to avoid free riders rather than mindlessly spewing their content free to all. (I'm thinking postally delivered wax cyclinders, vinyl discs, vhs cassettes etc)

Perhaps air ballons or tethered kites would have been a cheaper, earlier and more easily achievable form of signal intermediary than trillion dollar orbital space satellites. Perhaps the somalian post state mobile phone telecoms explosion shows the possibilities.

The possibilities are endless. But my point remains that just because the state does something does not follow that that good or service is impossible absent state involvement. Who is to say that in a totally free market telecoms companies would not have innovated a system similar to what we call the internet? Bastiat's that which is not seen. The internet is hampered by its origins. It was never meant to do what it does now. Its foundations are limited. Who is to say that the alternative anarcho-web would not have been more able to adapt and grow.

Even saying that 'just because the state did it first does not mean the market would not have done it later' does not go far enough. My point is that the state may have hampered and otherwise impeded the development of such goods and services to the point where the state was the only actor capable of such ‘innovation’ at that time.