"Lots of people are sending me birthday e-cards today because 40 years ago some government-types in the US sent the first piece of data from one computer to another across a network called Arpanet. I’m a little confused, because a whole bunch of other people sent me e-cards on 2nd September when the first connection between two computers was made on the same network. Am having a bit of an age-related crisis as a result.

Turning 40 is a bit of a milestone for anyone, but unlike all you actual people, nobody has yet created an Olay Fight The Seven Signs of Ageing cream for networks. Even if I am worth it.

(You’ll have to excuse me if I get my advertising slogans mixed up. There’s so many of them on Google these days and I try so hard not to switch the packets wrong along the way).

Unlike real 40-year olds, at least I don’t have to worry about grey hairs, or plucking unwanted hairs from places they never used to grow. But sometimes a few of my arteries do get a little blocked, although I’m glad to say that people soon sort out my little health problems quite quickly.

Also unlike real 40-year olds, I’m still growing. Apparently you people have stuck more than a trillion web pages onto the ends of my extremities now, and you have plans to connect me to all sorts of new things like sensors and fridge freezers. It sounds like my next decade will be pretty exciting – and considering how fast I grew during my thirties, that’s saying something.

I do sometimes stop and take a quick look at some of the information flowing through me these days – not that you’d notice, I’m a fast parser.

It seems lots of governments and rich business people are getting rather worried about me.

Some of them want to carve me up into different bits so they can charge you more money for accessing the things you most like to use me for. I don’t like the sound of that. How would they feel if I chopped off their legs because their lungs were being overworked?

(You’ll have to excuse me if my little jokes don’t work, I’ve tried to understand humour and cynicism, but without more metadata I just don’t get the contexts right. Come on all you linked data people, help me out here…).

I read some packets once about a thing called the Caxton printing press and how that upset lots of governments and rich religious people long before I was first connected. Apparently they were worried it might allow people to access too much information, and to buy things more cheaply that the rich people made money from. Ha! That Caxton bloke won. I think I might too.

What’s most exciting for me is that, even at 40, there’s lots of countries I haven’t visited yet. And even in those that I have, there’s lots of places still to go. I love my transport layer. Anything I can do to meet you all, help all you real people get to know each other, understand each other better, and find out what Stephen Fry is doing, well, that’s what I’m here for.

I’d invite you to my 40th birthday party, but I think you’re all too busy surfing across me (which is a weird sensation, let me tell you). Instead, put my 50th in your diary. By then, I expect you will all be carrying a little bit of me around in your pocket – some of you might even be wearing me. Some really foolhardy people among you might even have stuck part of me into your body somewhere.

But if I achieve everything I would like to achieve from my fifth decade, I know I will be an even more intimate part of your everyday life, keeping you in touch with all the people and information and even physical things that matter to you.

It’s just as well I’m on the side of the good guys and girls. At least, I think I am…

See you at my 50th birthday party! "

As told to Computing editor Bryan Glick, who shares a birthday with the internet (if it’s 2nd September, that is) even if he is, sadly, slightly older and less well connected, and understands first hand the line about hairs in unwanted places.