One of history's main benefits is that it lets us detect trends that help predict the future. Over the past 30 years since the Internet started (1970-2000), many clear trends have emerged. The article very briefly examines the most critical of these trends, the one that led to the creation of the Internet: the packet switching cost trend. Today, the time division multiplexing/circuit switching market is starting to decline, and packet switching is taking over voice as well as data. This trend is clearly going to continue. A change to optical circuit switching because of DWDM-driven reductions in communications cost appears unlikely, since computing will remain less expensive than fiber capacity. Thus, computing can optimize the fill of each fiber at less total cost than adding circuit-switched fibers, even if the circuit switching is free.