Why the Internet failed to collapse

DEEP in the Internet, the digital troglodytes are celebrating. For a year, the engineers who keep the network running have been poking their heads out from time to time to claim that all is well. They have been drowned out by warnings of impending doom. Bob Metcalfe, who invented modern networking technology and is now a respected Internet columnist in InfoWorld, said in late 1995 that he would eat his words if the Internet did not “go spectacularly supernova and, in 1996, catastrophically collapse.” He spent much of the next year crowing about every hiccup and brownout. But as catastrophe failed to ensue, the wireheads demanded revenge.