Which came first, the internet (ARPANET) or Star Wars?

the internet (ARPANET) came first, by 8 years. The first message was sent between two networked computers.

Side by side

the internet (ARPANET)

On 29 October 1969 a team at UCLA tried to send the word "login" to Stanford. The system crashed after two characters, so the first message ever sent over the internet's ancestor was "lo". By the end of that year the network had four nodes. The internet is twenty years older than the Web, and confusing the two is the single most common error in this whole subject.

Star Wars

Star Wars opened in May 1977 on fewer than forty screens because the distributor had little faith in it, and it went on to be the highest-grossing film made to that point. Fox let Lucas keep the merchandising and sequel rights in exchange for a lower directing fee, a decision that transferred an extraordinary amount of money. It is eleven years younger than Star Trek.