These days, most of us myself included see the internet as just social media, streaming, and memes. But let’s pause for a second and ask ourselves: Is that really what the internet was meant to be?

Why the hell was internet built in the first place?

I kept thinking about it for days. Then, by breaking it down through first principles, I finally understood why it was really built. The internet had one simple, powerful reason to exist:

To share information

So let’s continue with an amazing story (if you're bored, feel free to skip this part — but I promise it’s worth it).
It all began after World War II, when two superpowers the United States and the Soviet Union entered a competition to dominate history.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched Sputnik, the world’s first man-made orbital satellite. This shocked the U.S. and pushed them into action. To ensure America stayed ahead, the U.S. President established DARPA ( Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) a secretive organisation focused on high-level research and surveillance.

One major challenge was how could U.S. research centres and defence hubs stay in constant contact 24/7? A regular phone call wasn’t reliable or scalable. So they needed a better solution, a resilient network that could survive disruptions and still transfer critical data.

At the time, massive mainframe computers existed, but they weren’t connected. So DARPA funded a project to connect these machines not by phone calls, but by something more powerful: data packets between computers. And that’s how ARPANET was born.

In 1844, the world saw the invention of the telegraph a device that used copper wires and Morse code to send messages across distances. This inspired future innovations, especially in how we think about data transfer.

Fast forward to October 30, 1969 the first ARPANET (grand father of INTERNET)connection was established between Charley Kline at UCLA and Bill Duvall at Stanford.

Kline attempted to send the word “LOGIN” across the network.

\=> The ‘L’ was received.

\=> The ‘O’ was received.

\=> And then… the system crashed.

Yup — it failed.

They tried again.

This time, only the ‘L’ got through.

So technically, the first message ever sent over the internet was literally: “LO-L“

Kind of poetic, right?
We tried to say “LOGIN” — but ended up just saying “LO” to the world.
And from that small glitch… came a revolution.

But today, we mostly use the internet to share a reel or a meme or entertainment. It wasn’t invented to distract us.
It was invented to solve the problem of communication to share valuable information faster, more reliably, and across vast distances.

What’s fascinating is that something created to monitor the enemy during wartime… eventually turned into a tool that revolutionised the entire world.

Before you tap on anything, ask yourself: Am I about to build something, learn something, or just burn time? Because TIME is the most precious non-renewable resource we have. Use it wisely.

If you were in Kline’s place, what would your first message over the internet be?
Drop it in the comments — I’m curious!

That’s all for today. See you in the next episode. byeee…