LOS ANGELES ? Technology and media stars, pundits, and entrepreneurs joined the Internet?s father on Thursday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his culture-changing child.

?It?s the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke,? said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.

Kleinrock led an anniversary event at the UCLA campus that blended reminiscence of the Internet?s past with debate about its future.

?There is going to be an ongoing controversy about where we have been and where we are going,? said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the popular news and blog website that bears her name.

Internet Age here

?It is not just about the Internet; it is about our times. We are going to need desperately to tap into the better angels of our nature and make our lives not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world.?

Huffington was on hand to discuss the power the Internet gives to grassroots organizers on a panel with Kleinrock and Social Brain Foundation director Isaac Mao.

?The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent voice,? Kleinrock said. ?There is no way back at this point. We can?t turn it off. The Internet Age is here.? Kleinrock never imagined Facebook, Twitter or YouTube that day 40 years ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as the Internet.

?The net is penetrating every aspect of our lives,? Kleinrock said to a room of about 200 people and an equal number watching online.

The dark side

?As a teenager the Internet is behaving badly, the dark side has emerged. The question is when it grows into a young adult will it get over this period of misbehaving??

Kleinrock referred to spam e-mails, online scams and malicious software spread by crooks as an unexpected dark side of the Internet.

On Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock led a team that got a computer at UCLA to ?talk? to one at a research institute.

?It feels to me like the alumni meeting of the framers of the US Constitution,? Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow said as he addressed the gathering.

?There are a lot of people in this room who are honest to God uncles and aunts of the Internet. What you did is conceivably the most important technological event since the capture of fire.?