Obviously,
this brings us to Charles Sanders Pierce, probably the most extremely
underappreciated American since way before the beatniks.
A contemporary of the robber barons, with whom
he shared nothing, especially wealth, he plunged feet first into new ground in
philosophy, mathematics, logic, and pure science. You know, the invisible stuff
politicians sneeze at.
In the
1870s, Pierce speculated that this new-fangled electricity thing could be used
to send tiny blips over the electrical wires, in little coded packs of impulses.
Like little digits. Digits of coded information. Purely theoretical. Of no use
whatsoever. The barons were building railroads, and you could carry stuff
around on them. Pierce was building a vast super highway in his mind, and you
couldn’t carry anything on it. It was of no value whatsoever . . .
. . . Until
about a hundred years later, when the U.S. government (Department of Defense)
applied Pierce’s vision in a particular way, and the prototype of the internet
came into being. You could carry a lot of imaginary stuff on it. And the government
made it. Out of a theory, and some wires, and some electricity.
Sounds like
a fairy tale: Destitute genius imagines something that only the government has
the imagination to actually create. We all live happily ever after. In our new
shoes. Two shoes. Looking at both twice.
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