Los Angeles Times

50 years ago, I helped invent the internet. How did it go so wrong?

When I was a young scientist working on the fledgling creation that came to be known as the internet, the ethos that defined the culture we were building was characterized by words such as ethical, open, trusted, free, shared. None of us knew where our research would lead, but these words and principles were our beacon. We did not anticipate that the dark side of the internet would emerge with such ferocity. Or that we would feel an urgent need to fix it. How did we get from there to here?