Web pioneer recalls 'birth of the Internet'

It was 1969 and a busy year for making history: Woodstock, the Miracle Mets, men on the moon, and something less celebrated but arguably more important, the birth of the Internet.

On October 29 of that year, for perhaps the first time, a message was sent over a computer network. Leonard Kleinrock, a professor of computer science at the University of California-Los Angeles, connected the school's host computer to one at Stanford Research Institute, a former arm of Stanford University.

Forty years ago today, the Internet may have uttered its first word.

Twenty years later, Kleinrock chaired a group whose report on building a national computer network influenced Congress in helping develop the modern Internet. Kleinrock holds more than a dozen patents and was awarded the National Medal of Science last year by President Bush.

In an interview with CNN, the 75-year-old looks back on his achievement and peers into the exciting and sometimes terrifying future of the Web he helped create.

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