The Internet
Yes, you can again thank the DOD for being able to read this article right now (and, you know, anything else the Internet lets you do). In the 1960s, the military wanted to develop a communications system that was less vulnerable to attack than telephone operators’ rooms and began working on directly linking computers. The first network was called the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) – which was the basis for the modern Internet as we know it.
