digital perfection and analog formalities have never been associated with network messages, simply because their advantage was for all generations and almost: being faster ...

electronic mail aka electronic message systems:

"it soon became obvious that the ARPANET was becoming a human communication medium with very important advantages over normal U.S. mail and telephone calls. One of the advantages of the message systems over letter mail was that, in an ARPANET message, one could write tersely and type imperfectly, even to an older person in a superior position and even to a person one did not know very well, and the recipient took no offense ... Indeed tolerance for informality and imperfect typing was even more evident when two users of the ARPANET linked their consoles together and typed back and forth to each other in an alphanumeric conversation. | licklider, vezza: applications of information networks, 1978 [djvu]

"Under 10% of IPv4 Space Remains" (icann)

four billion addresses may not be enough. well, maybe. it was told already 1992 and then came NAT [network address translation], the users don't care and industry fears the cost of transition. more likely there will be other solutions and more glueing done. the problem might be for those who dream: every thing its own ip address, but that's a stupid idea anyhow, imho.

the ipv4 address report

● God, the ISO and the ITU rested ● The geeks got up early on Sunday morning and built the Internet | Nigel Titley: In the Beginning

rob blokzijl: some internet history and what happened before. slides at uknof and text at ripe58, amsterdam - as i assume.