Originally Posted by
Napoleon XIV
Originally Posted by cranos
Okay I'm a little confused, how would the disappearance of the Nazi party from the timeline prevent the invention of the Internet? Or result in a Communist Europe?
The electronic digital computer was invented to aid in English code breaking efforts during WWII. I’m not sure if this would have affected the Internet much, however, as something else would have come along requiring it. Still, what would that be? The need for making thousands upon thousands of calculations per second is not something that comes up a lot in regular life, though once you can do it, the applications become endless. I still give more credit to the American space program, which miniaturized the computer.
Originally Posted by Count Dearborn
The war might have started later, and as the computer grew out of the cryptography devices of WWII, the computer as was know it would probably appear later. Thus, in this world, as of 2005, the Internet would still be part of DARPA, and not open to the public.
Napoleon XIV is correct. The electronic digital computer was indeed invented to assist Allied code breakers decode encrypted Nazi communications. Without Nazis, there would be no WWII, or at least a very different one, and thus no German Enigma machine so the invention of electronic digital computers would be prevented or rather delayed. As Napoleon said, the need for making thousands upon thousands of calculations per second is not something that comes up often in everyday life, though once you can do it, the applications become limitless. This statement is at least as true, probably more so, about the Internet as it is about the electronic digital computer itself. The need for a distributed global network of decentralized computer networks is trivial, but once built finds unlimited applications. Put simply, the Internet is one of those rare inventions that we never actually needed and did just fine before it ever existed, but once it was around, we can not live without it!
Of course, I mostly agree with Count Dearborn that a premature demise of Nazism would prevent the invention of the Internet, though Napoleon neglected to explain why (apart from saying that without Nazi codes to crack the invention of electronic digital computers would at least be postponed), and Count Dearborn did not go into much depth. Essentially, the Internet is a military technology recieved by the civilian sector. It is purely a product of the Cold War. To understand the origin of the Internet, it helps to know the background. Though the Internet is not a singular invention, and thus has no one inventor, it is largely the brainchild of Paul Baran. Baran was one of the sole inventors of packet switching and devised concept of decentralized computer networking, two major technological prerequisites. In the late fifties, Paul Baran worked at RAND Corporation where he wrote theses on distributed and decentralized computer networks and their strategic importance in nuclear war. Shortly before Paul Baran's brief employ at RAND the Soviets launched Sputnik and early in 1958, Congress established the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) under the US Department of Defense (DoD) so as to promote American technological research and counter the threat of potential Soviet technological superiority. When Paul Baran moved to ARPA, he continued his research and eventually ARPA considered building such a network. ARPANET was intended to facilitate communication between DoD computers, including computers at civilian universities accross the USA so as to link ARPA researchers. It was itself a project to develop a "nuke-proof" military computer network. ARPANET was built in 1969, then consisting solely of four interconnected nodes throughout California and Utah. Within a few years the network grew to hundreds of nodes accross the West Coast and eventually the entire nation. By the 1970's, ARPA was renamed to DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and ARPANET, by now having expanded to massive size split into two distinct but interconnected networks, ARPANET (which connected computer nodes at universities such as UCLA) and MILNET, with the whole system collectively referred to as DARPANET. The modern Internet essentially grew out of ARPANET. In the meantime, various smaller decentralized computer networks were built by government agencies, all modeled on ARPANET. Also, various private (corporate) computer networks such as BITNET were built. By the 1980's, ARPANET declined and would be completely and permanently decomissioned by decade's end. The National Science Foundation established NSFNET, which grew into the new Internet backbone in the civilian infrastructure. Eventually Tim-Berners Lee developed the World Wide Web protocol.
In short, the precursor to the Internet was originally devised as a sort of defensive military communication network. Its primary objective was to facilitate communication in the event of nuclear bombardment and thus provide a retaliatory strike. Because of the distributed decentralized layout of this network, even nuking a cities and obliterating local network nodes could not destroy or sever the network since there are no hubs. Given that Cold War paranoia concerning mutually assured obliteration pushed such innovation, would there be an Internet without the possibility of nuclear war? One might imagine that without a Nazi Party there would be no WWII. Otherwise whatever would turn out to be WWII would be different. Even if America had an eventual conflict with Japan, would the Americans have an atom bomb to use? The main reason for developing a bomb was because it was feared that Nazi Germany was developing one. It is clear now that the Nazis did not have a program to develop the Bomb, or rather at least not a successful program, and it is fortunate that the Nazis failed to develop nuclear arms. But without a Nazi Germany, what is the likelihood of nuclear arms ever being developed? And what about the Soviet Union? Assuming the USSR exists in this timeline, would they acquire nukes? It seems that without a nuclear arms race, any smaller arms races as well as civilian technological struggles would seem trivial and frivolous. Would the USSR even bother with space exploration? Presumably the government infrastructure would not be as big. Also without a WWII (or a different one), would there be a Cold War comparable to the OTL? After all, the Soviets were able to extend their protectorate over wartorn Eastern Europe, Central Europe, and East Germany, thus giving birth to the Warsaw Pact, but probably would not have been able without the chaos of war. Also the events of WWII in the Asia-Pacific region including the power vacuum following the collapse of Japanese and Euro-American imperialism helped the Maoists take China and Ho Chi Minh rise to power in Vietnam. Nevertheless perhaps the contagion of World Communism was inevitable at this point.
Which brings up my final point. I am not so sure how no Nazis mean 75% of Europe would turn Communist. Perhaps if Marxist factions seized control of Weimar Germany, Communism would expand throughout Europe. On the other hand, without a Nazi threat, the Western allies would never team up with Stalin's Russia and for all we know the WWII in this timeline might be between the Soviets and the US.