摘要：The most important new fact about the human condition is that we are now all suddenly connected. The first Internet packets were switched on October 29, 1969. Today, suddenly, the Internet has six billion users, 75% of the human race. I joined the Internet movement two months later and so have plenty of stories to tell, stories from Arpanet, Alohanet, Ethernet, Internet. Boggs RIP and I built the first Ethernet at Xerox PARC in 1973. It was a combination of Jerrold tap coax, Manchester encoding at 2.94 Mbps, and Alohanet randomized retransmission technologies, all of which were replaced long ago. Ethernet arrived just in time to enable computing's transition in the 1980s from dumb terminals to personal computers. I worked with three TELNET protocol codes using packets to let PCs pretend to be in the installed base of dumb terminals. Following Cerf, we started building internets in 1973, exchanging Internet packets inside of Ethernet packets. We asked the IEEE to standardize Ethernet local networking hardware. They gave us standard Ethernet, yes, but also GM Token Bus and IBM Token Ring to fight it out. Ethernet won, and for good reason. In the 1990s Berners-Lee added World Wide Web connectivity including search and social. Metcalfe's Law kicked in -- the value of a network grows as the square of the number of its users. Connectivity stories are quite varied, including the evolution of pathologies like advertising and of various switches like Negroponte's WAN-LAN, just two of many connectivity surprises. Expect connectivity to be surprising. For example, despite the neuron-transistor paradox, artificial intelligence turns out to be ... surprise! ... connectivity.

个人简介：Robert Melancton Metcalfe 是一位互联网先驱，自1970年起先后在 MIT、哈佛、Xerox PARC、斯坦福和 3Com 工作。他于1973年在 Xerox PARC 发明了以太网，并于1979年创立了硅谷市值数十亿美元的互联网公司 3Com。 他获得过众多奖项，包括 IEEE 荣誉勋章、美国国家技术奖，以及 ACM A.M. Turing Award（2022年）。在20世纪90年代，他担任 IDG/InfoWorld 的出版人；2000年代，他是 Polaris Partners 的风险投资人；2010年代，他在 University of Texas at Austin 担任创新与创业教授以及自由企业研究员。 如今，他是 MIT CSAIL 的计算工程附属研究员，以及德州大学奥斯汀分校电气与计算机工程的荣休教授。