Was the Internet originally intended to be a military or civilian space?

A History of the Internet and the Digital Future gives a good history of the internet from what I recall, but I read it maybe five years ago and it's the only source I've ever encountered on the subject.

The author argues that the internet grew out of a government program intended to explore the creation of a communication network that could survive a nuclear attack. So it was technically a government project.

But, as I recall, the project was populated by engineers who were obsessed with their craft and used it as a way to fund their passion, putting their own personal endeavors ahead of the actual goals of the project. He discusses the geek culture which emerged around it, detailing the all around lack of hygene, eccentric social behavior, refusal to wear shoes, and tendency to work obsessively, around the clock, sometimes sleeping under ones work desk as the only extended break.

So answering this question is not so straight-forward. On the one hand, it did in fact emerge from a government project with the intended purpose of safeguarding the nation against a nuclear attack. On the other hand, a community of dedicated computer scientists used it as a means to incubate their own ideas, and a decentralized communication network based on packet-switching technology was what many of them were interested in developing (someone in the UK, his name slips my mind, was trying to get funding for exactly this before the project ever began in the US).

The author makes the point that the project didn't actually reach its intended goals and, instead, led to the emergence of the internet thanks to a small community of stubborn, self-serving computer scientists. And regardless of where it started, the internet evolved beyond its initial simplicity thanks to a vast, online community of developers collaborating on the many open-source projects which make it all work the way it does.

I have to be mindful of the twenty-year rule here, but check out the W3C Mission over at w3.org if you want to know more about that side of the argument. This is the organization which sets the recommended standards which the international community of developers follow.

Here's the second line of code on this very page, for example:

You can see the address in there. This shows that Reddit is adhering to W3C standards, not imposed but universally recognized, the same as virtually everyone else.