Four Aspects of the History of the Internet

Four Aspects of the History of the Internet

When people talk about the Internet today, they mainly talk about the World Wide Web which is a network of networked computers. What most users of the Internet do not know is how this network began. Some people also blindly believed Al Gore when he said that he invented the Internet. Today’s Internet was not invented by one man or a group of men. Our Internet was and is a collaboration of many entities and users including you and me. Our use of social software influences the growth and shape that tomorrow’s Internet will be. But how did it all start? This takes us to the first of the four aspects, the Technical Aspect.

The technical aspect of the Internet begins in the Cold War era, 1957. The Advanced Research Projects Agency, ARPA, is formed with the Department of Defense in response to Russia’s launch of the Sputnik satellite. This fear of this unknown satellite and its capabilities spurred the research that eventually took form as the Internet. By the way, many Americans today hate wars, conflicts, military organizations and even our military members but through conflict, wars, and the military many inventions are made both in the field of technology and medical. In 1968/9, ARPANET is constructed linking 4 nodes; UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. In 1972, Ray Tomlinson of BBN, created the first Email program. Also, ARPA was renamed to DARPA adding Defense to the name. In 1973, development began on the protocol that was later named to TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). This is part of the backbone of today’s Internet. This is not how we manage the Internet. That is done in other ways.

The operations and management of the Internet is done through Domain names. We all know at least one domain name even if we don’t know what it is called. Examples of some familiar domain names are Amazon.com, Sears.com, Nordstrom.com and Google.com. The domain name gives a name to a mostly numeric address on the Internet. This address is known as the Internet Protocol (IP) address. An example of this is Yahoo’s IP address of 68.180.206.184. This is one of many that they use. The first part of the Domain name is usually the company’s name. The second part (after the dot) is called an extension. This extension usually points to what type of organization that they are. Some familiar extensions and their purposes are; .com-used for commercial and non-commercial websites and is the largest extension in use, .net-used for Internet Service Providers, .org-used for organizations, and .gov-which is used for United States federal, state, and local entities. These last two aspects are interesting to some but the next two is where the majority of the Internet users’ interest lies.

The social aspect of the Internet is where we, as users, interact with other users. The most common interaction tool that we utilize is email or electronic mail. We can all get our email through the computer but now it is even being delivered to our PDA’s and cell phones like the Blackberry. Another common interaction tool that we use is instant messaging (IM). If email is like a prerecorded television show then instant messaging is like a television show that is filmed live. The most common IM programs are AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo! An old school way to communicate was through chat rooms and message boards. These are still used but not as much as they once were. Examples of these are AOL, MSN and Church Media.net. The new school way, and very popular with the younger generation, to communicate is through social software such as Second Life, YouTube, MySpace, and FaceBook. These are great for communicating with your friends but what about shopping.

The biggest explosion on the Internet is Internet shopping. This is the last aspect, the commercial aspect. Almost every brick and mortar store that you can walk into is online. There are even stores on the Internet that you cannot walk into, and these are not no-name stores. Amazon.com and Dell.com do not have a storefront that customers can walk into. All of their business is conducted online. The Internet has given the public access to worldwide shopping and many other things.
The Internet has allowed its users to travel the world, get information from any source, talk to friends around the world, and buy from many different retailers. Its founders had no idea of what was to become of their ARPA net. We thank them for their efforts. Now, enjoy a video that our group put together. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SJzAiYEJRFU information was taken from: http://www.davesite.com/webstation/net-history.html