Lesson1
History of Internet
Today, many of us consider the internet as essential to our daily lives. It is now part
of our daily routine, activities and connects us not just virtually but psychologically
and emotionally.
The internet and everything that it offers has changed our society. It has changed
the ways we gather news and share information, and the way we communicate with
one another. In short, the internet is one of the greatest inventions of all time.
This lesson will help us understand by bringing us back in time when the internet
was first created, why it was created in the first place and how far it has come
throughout the years.
The Internet vs the World Wide Web (www)
Most of us use the words web and internet to mean the same thing but they are quite
different.
The internet is the hardware part - it is a collection of computer networks connected
through either copper wires, fiber-optic cables, or wireless connections. In short, it
is the network of connected computers that the web works on, as well as what emails
and files travel across.
The world wide web, or web for short, can be termed as the software part – it is a
collection of web pages you see when you use your device, and you are online. It is
connected through hyperlinks and URLs. In short, the World Wide Web is one of the
services provided by the Internet.
Therefore, the term internet and www though used interchangeably, are not
synonymous.
WWW and the Internet Timeline
The origins of the internet are rooted in the USA of the 1950s. It was in the middle
of the Cold War, October 4, 1957, that the Soviets launched the first man made
satellite into space called Sputnik. As it was the world's first ever artificial object to
float into space, this was alarming for Americans.
The Soviets were not only ahead in science and technology, but they were a threat
and that nuclear attacks on American soil were possible. So, Americans started to
think more seriously about science and technology. After the Sputnik wake up call,
the space race began. It was not long after that in 1958 the US Administration funded
various agencies, one of them being ARPA.
1969 - ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) goes online in December,
connecting four major U.S. universities. Designed for research, education, and
government organizations, it provides a communications network linking the country
in the event that a military attack destroys conventional communications systems.
Without ARPA the Internet would not exist. It was because of this institution that the
very first version of the Internet was created – ARPANET.
1972 - Electronic mail is introduced by Ray Tomlinson, a Cambridge, Massachusetts
computer scientist. He uses the @ to distinguish between the sender's name and
network name in the email address.
1982 - The word “Internet” is used for the first time as an abbreviation of the term
internetworking.
1984- Domain Name System (DNS) is established, with network addresses identified
by extensions such as .com, .org, and .edu. Writer William Gibson coined the term
“cyberspace.”
1989 - Tim Berners Lee developed the basic idea of the World Wide Web (www) to
merge the evolving technologies of computers, data networks and hypertext into a
powerful and easy to use global information system.
1993 – America Online (AOL) came to windows charging for internet access by the
hour and popularizing the phrase “You have mail.”
1994 – Netscape is founded by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen.
1995 – Windows 95, Amazon, Yahoo and Ebay were launched.
1996 - Approximately 45 million people are using the Internet, with roughly 30
million of those in North America (United States and Canada), 9 million in Europe,
and 6 million in Asia/Pacific (Australia, Japan, etc.). 43.2 million (44%) U.S.
households own a personal computer, and 14 million of them are online.
1998 - Google opens its first office in California and quickly positions itself as the
top search engine.
– ICANN is founded to help coordinate all the unique addresses of the
internet across the globe.
– Wi-Fi is introduced to consumers.
1999 - College student Shawn Fanning invents Napster, a computer application that
allows users to swap music over the Internet. The number of Internet users
worldwide reached 150 million by the beginning of 1999. More than 50% are from
the United States.
- “e-commerce” becomes the new buzzword as Internet shopping rapidly
spreads.
2000 - To the chagrin of the Internet population, deviant computer programmers
begin designing and circulating viruses with greater frequency. “Love Bug” and
“Stages” are two examples of self-replicating viruses that send themselves to people
listed in a computer user's email address book. The heavy volume of email messages
being sent and received forces many infected companies to temporarily shut down
their clogged networks.
2001 – Limmy Wales and Larry Sanger launch Wikipedia.
2002 – Friendster, a social networking platform, was launched.
2003 – It is estimated that Internet users illegally download about 2.6 billion music
files each month. Spam, unsolicited email, becomes a server-clogging menace. It
accounts for about half of all emails. Apple Computer introduces Apple iTunes Music
Store, which allows people to download songs for 99 cents each.
– Wordpress is founded and allows people to create webpages without the
implementation of HTML.
– Linkedln is launched and is now the biggest professional networking site
on the web.
– MySpace was launched, becoming the largest social networking platform
in the world between 2006 – 2009.
2004 – Facebook is launched at Harvard University, and is quickly picked up by
students at other universities. Access was limited to students in the US and Canada
until 2006.
2005 - YouTube.com is launched.
2006 – Twitter publicly launched as the start of microblogging on the internet.
2007 - Legal online music downloads triple to 6.7 million downloads per week. The
online game, World of Warcraft, hits a milestone when it surpasses 9 million
subscribers worldwide in July.
2007 – The first iPhone hits the market and greatly increases the publics’ access and
expectations of mobile internet use.
– Netflix delivers its billionth DVD and begins a shift into on-demand video
streaming.
– Hashtags (#) fist came into trend.
2008 - In a move to challenge Google's dominance of search and advertising on the
Internet, software giant Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.
– Android phones hit the market and cement the mobile revolution.
2010 – Instagram launches, bringing filters to personal photos which leads to the
popular term “selfie”.
2012 – Reports showed that 30% of the business were using the cloud service.
2015 - On September 26, Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) spoke during the 70th annual
U.N. General Assembly session. Zuckerberg's goal is to bring the Internet to the
masses; universal Internet access, he claims, is a basic human right and is an
essential tool in the fight to achieve global justice. He wants people to understand
that Facebook’s role in this effort is driven primarily by his deep social conviction
that such connectivity is the best way to alleviate poverty.