A little history

Computer networks are fairly new. The first Internet backbone, the US National Science Foundation NSFNet was begun in the late 1980s, and it only connected universities and research institutes. However, this was the culmination of many years research and vision on both interactive computing and networking technology and applications. (Users did not directly interact with early computers; they submitted jobs to computer operators who ran them in batches and returned the results some time later).

The following are links to papers written by three early visionaries:

Vannevar Bush conceived of a network to facilitate scientific communication before World War II, and his 1945 article in Atlantic Monthly was read by Doug Engelbart, a young Naval officer.
In the late 1950s and early 1960s, JCR Licklider conceived of both interactive computing and computer networks, then he led ARPA funding of the research which made his vision a reality.
Doug Engelbart set out to augment human intellect using networked computer, and his 1968 demonstration showed the vision to the world and inspired generations of computer science research.

History survey articles:

Survey of interactive computing and related development
Survey of network development