Lecture: CONNECTIVITY is a Thing, is THE Thing

Robert Melancton Metcalfe

The Internet began switching packets on October 29, 1969. Since then we’ve suddenly been awash in connectivity – over five billion people are already on the Internet, mostly mobile, mostly video. The stories about connectivity are full of mission, platform, and traffic evolutions, surprises, and pathologies. I’ll tell some of these stories from when I joined the Internet in 1970, helped birth the personal computer by inventing Ethernet and using the Silicon Valley startup ecosystem to help grow the Internet into the billions with 3Com Corporation.

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