Paul Baran was laughing when he told me about AT&T.
This was before I joined the board of Telebit, his company, a seat I would hold because he later asked me to, which sounds like a credential and was really a gift. At the time we were simply meeting. Before he said a word about the idea the company was built on, he wanted me to know what had happened the first time he tried to explain packet switching to the people who owned the telephone network.
It had happened years earlier, in the early days. They heard him out. They decided it would never amount to anything. He told me the story the way you tell a story about an old friend’s worst haircut, with his whole face, delighted. What amused him was not that they were wrong. It was how complete their confidence was, the particular serenity of people who have never once had to imagine the thing that is about to replace them. Amusement, I would come to understand, was his entire theory of the people who said no.
Then he explained the modem.