This is going to seem like a joke but it's not: in ~1978, there was a minor crisis around connecting the various networks (ARPA, CYCLADES, etc) into an "inter-network environment", aka the internet. Some of the discussions seems similar to our discussion of interoperability between content types in ActivityPub networks. I think it would behoove fediverse nerds to read up on this stuff.
1978 paper summarizing the issue (PDF): https://www.rfc-editor.org/ien/ien20.pdf
