Harry Coover didn’t set out to make it easier for the average person to join two things together for life. Paul Baran probably didn’t forsee the democratic effects of the internet, yet alone how his work would bring people together, either. Both helped people do things we would not have been able to do before their discoveries, without requiring us to belong to a privileged class or know very much. Both made their finds working for the defense industry. In their own ways, they made the world more secure.
