"Packet switching", the fundamental technology of the Internet, predates government involvement with it by 10 years

There's been a lot of back-and-forth lately about how the Internet was invented / developed / created / designed / specified / etc. / etc. by the government.

The fact is, the idea of packet switching - the idea of sending information in small, individually-routed pieces, or "packets", rather than in one long continuous stream - was first developed in 1959, and worked on by several people through the 1960's.

Federal government involvement in the ARPANET - what would eventually evolve into the Internet through the intervention of private industry - did not begin until 1969.

So the underlying technology was available well before the federal government "invented the Internet", LOL!

And something very much like the Internet would undoubtedly exist today even if the government had never developed the ARPANET. It would most likely have been developed and marketed by the phone companies and/or the cable television companies.