Before the apps and algorithms, there was a different internet. Not the garage-born startup myth, but something built in the shadow of the Cold War - a network designed to survive nuclear war that became the foundation of modern life.

For a brief moment, it was public. Funded by taxpayers. Built for research and shared access.

Then came the handoff. Not a conspiracy or collapse, but a quiet transition from public to private. From open system to controlled infrastructure. From sharing information to capturing attention.

A series of choices that felt small at the time and inevitable in retrospect.

This is Part 1 of that story.

This interlude explores the history most people never learned:

• 1957: Sputnik launches. Cold War paranoia births ARPANET—a distributed network designed to survive annihilation.
• 1991: Congress passes the High-Performance Computing Act. The NREN (National Research and Education Network) promises a publicly controlled internet with guardrails: privacy, equity, security.
• 1993: While Congress debates, MCI, IBM, and Merit Network quietly build commercial backbones. Their mantra: build it before there's a law to stop it.
• April 1995: The NSF decommissions its backbone. Overnight, the public web becomes commercial. No conditions. No compensation. The NREN is abandoned mid-construction.

What followed wasn't chaos. It was order...the kind only capital can impose.

This is Part 1 of a 2-part interlude. Standalone listening or part of the "What Radiohead Knew" series.

Part 2 coming soon: The architects of enclosure. The legal frameworks that locked the doors. And how hope became our greatest weakness.

The With Jay Burke Show is a member of the Unfiltered Studios https://www.unfpod.com/ Please be sure to Rate and Review this episode. Subscribe and Share

Visit me @jayburkeshow.podbean.com

Email me at: jayburkeshow@gmail.com Twitter/Instagram: @jayburkeshow TikTok: @jayburke17

As part of the What They Knew series, Part II of What Radiohead Knew follows an android Mother teaching her child about time — how it shaped humanity… and how they broke under the forces gathering at the end of the century.

As Thom Yorke spirals into the making of Kid A, the world outside fractures: Y2K, the dot-com bubble bursts, the internet becomes a second bloodstream, and culture slips into the uncanny.

But something else is waking. In the static, the child hears the Conductor — a voice tied to humanity’s fall, murmuring of grief, progress, and impossible forces.

As one century collapses and Kid A emerges, one truth surfaces: no one survives the future unchanged.

This is the story of a band trying to outrun fame, a world trying to outrun itself, and a machine child standing at the edge of a revelation it may not be ready to face.

Intro music: “Monkey House” by Evan Toth. Grateful for Evan’s generosity in letting this track set the tone for What They Knew.

**The sections discussing Radiohead were informed by research conducted by Stephen Hyden, particularly his book This Isn’t Happening, and I want to acknowledge and credit his work accordingly. Please Check it out.**

Further Exploration:

• “Exit Music: The Radiohead Story” by Mac Randall (2000)
• “Radiohead’s OK Computer: An Oral History” by Rolling Stone (2017)
• “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
• “The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity” by Amy Webb (2019)
• "The Birth of The Web" CERN
• “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by Tim Wu (2010)
• “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us” by Bill Joy, Wired Magazine (2000)
• "Tim Berners-Lee on 30 years of the World Wide Web: We can get the web we want." The Guardian (2019)

The With Jay Burke Show is a member of the Unfiltered Studios https://www.unfpod.com/ Please be sure to Rate and Review this episode. Subscribe and Share

Visit me @jayburkeshow.podbean.com

Email me at: jayburkeshow@gmail.com Twitter/Instagram: @jayburkeshow TikTok: @jayburke17

Radiohead didn’t predict the future—they just paid attention.

This Episode is a deep dive into how OK Computer was never just an album, but a premonition. A warning. A status update we ignored.

Through a blend of storytelling, history, and eerie parallels, we explore how a 1997 album captured the creeping unease of a world being swallowed by technology—from corporate surveillance to algorithmic control to the silent loss of human agency.

Was OK Computer just an ambitious rock record? Or was it a glimpse into a future we were already hurtling toward?

Let’s find out together.

🎵 Featuring: The evolution of tech, capitalism’s mutation, AI’s rise, and the unseen forces that built the digital throne.

Further Exploration:

• “Exit Music: The Radiohead Story” by Mac Randall (2000)
• “Radiohead’s OK Computer: An Oral History” by Rolling Stone (2017)
• “The Age of Surveillance Capitalism” by Shoshana Zuboff (2019)
• “The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could Warp Humanity” by Amy Webb (2019)
• "The Birth of The Web" CERN
• “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires” by Tim Wu (2010)
• “Why the Future Doesn't Need Us” by Bill Joy, Wired Magazine (2000)
• "Tim Berners-Lee on 30 years of the World Wide Web: We can get the web we want." The Guardian (2019)

The With Jay Burke Show is a member of the Unfiltered Studios https://www.unfpod.com/ Please be sure to Rate and Review this episode. Subscribe and Share

Visit me @jayburkeshow.podbean.com

Email me at: jayburkeshow@gmail.com Twitter/Instagram: @jayburkeshow TikTok: @jayburke17