Why the Internet is like Miles Davis....

 Miles was famous for constant innovation. Actually, that's not strictly true - he went through very distinct phases, much more akin to punctuated equilibrium in evolution - so there was the bebop, then birth of cool, Kind of Blue, then the gil evans/spanish era, Sketches of Spain, then, tout d'un coup, the segue through In a Silent Way to Bitches Brew, then in the last full on electric stuff with Marcus Miller and John Scofield etc

So the Internet was born out of feverish DARPA funded work to catch up with the perceived advanced tech of Soviets (who talked qabout centrally planned economies but also visibly put a person in orbit).

So like a fast track, the ARPANET and Apollo programs delivered, but delivered into a slightly calmer period of slow, steady growth (e.g. in the net's case, the 1980s) - lots of cool. Then the tripych of the IETF, Interop and Sigcomm, plus the divestment of the NSFnet, deliverd the world's first Internet Service Providers, electric warriors with serious backbeat, but still not the full horror. Finally, but early 2000s, we had the funkeisters take over from the maestros, the tail wagged the dog, and google, meta, cyndi lauper cover songs, and endless loops of the echo chambers of humanity. Miles could no longer play the trumpet properly, and the Internet was going down the tubes.