History of the Internet Essay Example

📌Category: History, Internet
📌Words: 1514
📌Pages: 6
📌Published: 14 June 2021

The internet, as new as it truly is, has found its way to become an essential technology in the majority of society’s life. It started as a new invention within the 1960’s with no intentions of becoming a general public item. From then, it has evolved to be able to do much more than anticipated. Due to it being such a new invention, the sky was and still is limitless with the new creations, knowledge, and interactions that came with the internet. As society’s curiosity grew, more ways were found to incorporate the internet as a part of different process only to become a part of everyday life. 

The internet is not a new thing, but it still is a rather young invention that has constantly been repurposed and added onto to the idea of the internet society has today. The idea of the internet has started in 1962 by MIT scientist J.C.R Licklider, simply having an idea of a computer network that would be able to be used internationally. Through the 1960’s, this idea was worked on by Licklider and his colleagues at the United States Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Paul Baran, an engineer a part of the American Think Tank, was tasked with the research for Air Force communication. In 1964, he had proposed distributed networks: a communication network that was able to continue communication with dead points, or in the case of the Air Force, dead pilots who no longer had control of the planes. From there, three scientists from ARPA– Leonard Kleinrock, Thomas Merrill, and Lawrence G. Roberts - had created the first wide-area computer network (WAN) using the proposal from Paul Baran. After creating WAN, Roberts publishes a plan for ARPANET, the first application for WAN and the basis on the internet. The ARPANET was established in 1969.

Since the creation of the APRANET was successful, use of it boomed in the early 1970’s. In 1973, Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf underwent a project that would connect multiple networks together, known as the Transmission Control Protocol or the Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). This followed the same idea was WAN, multiple networks would be at use all at one time; if one of these networks went down, the rest were able to stay running as normal. This connected system of networks become what we know as the internet. For more access to the internet, Dave Faber from the university of Delaware creates a network with dial-up phones in 1982. This network was called the PhoneNet and was connected to the ARPANET. This innovation allowed from nations around the world to have email communication. 

To start off the 1990’s, the ARPANET was decommissioned and with that development of hypertext markup language (HTML) and the uniform resource locator (URL) had begun. With use of HTML and URL, the idea of the World wide Web was created. As the first Web Browser, Mosaics was created and release to the public in 1993, opening up use of the internet to those with non-academic and non-politics needs. 1995 was an explosive year concerning the internet. Microsoft created the first operating system meant for the public, Internet Explorer was launched, and on Internet Explorer as well as other browsers, Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay were all now available, and Java was created. Google followed closely, being founded in 1998.

The internet was built off of ideas built off of even more ideas. The progress towards its creation was all dependent off what was needed from society at the time. At first, it was a form of communication that wouldn’t be lost, then transformed in to a way of communication across unimaginable distances, then to a global use and even public use. The use that this tool ended at was something that wasn’t foreseen during the original idea of WAN and its expansion has led to great things. 

Email were one of the first ways that the technology of the internet had an impact on society. Communication between distance was finally a reality, and much easier than system that were already established.  With email services such as Hotmail and Yahoo, the general public had access to this form of communication. These providers included advertisements at the bottom of each of the emails in order to make profit, allowing users to have access for free. This took over as one of the main forms of communication, taking over the use of hand-written communication. With this evolvement, postal services became a competitor against email providers. It was much cheaper, convenient, and easier on the consumer to use email compared using the postal service. This pushed companies like FedEx, USPS, UPS to take priority with packages and work around the shortage of physical mail to send. Now today, the correlation seen with FedEx, USPS, and UPS is working through Amazon, eBay, and company websites for online shopping.

As the internet grew and more people began to use it, social media soon followed. Social media is now a platform for people to communicate, share information, buy and consume things from others, and much more. With services such as America Online and Prodigy, people were starting to get used to the idea of messaging on bulletin boards and instant messaging. One platform that has stood the test of time is LinkedIn, a site for building one’s professional platform. It was founded in 2002, and is still used now in 2021 to put ones’ self in to the business realm and start forming connections. Another commonly known site is Facebook created as a way for college students and those around that age group to find each other and get together. Now, it has expansions such as Instagram, essentially a quick version of Facebook where the feed is mainly pictures instead of words, Facebook Shop where people are able to put their items on sale, like eBay, and others are able to find it simply by searching, and Messenger, an instant messaging application. 

With the internet serving as a major way of communication, there was more than one use with the internet other than communication. With the use of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP), people were able to transfer HTML’s, or information, from computer to computer, thus person to person. With the use of web browsers, the web became a form of spreading the word for startup companies. This created a technological paradigm, as people interested in these smaller companies began investing in shares. This allowed smaller companies to be founded, and many people joined in on this in hopes of spending little for a share and getting a hefty amount of money back. This was called the dotcom boom. With this boom came a crash soon after. Many of the companies that received investments went bankrupt a short amount of time after launch and lost people’s money. 

A large concern in among larger countries where the internet is now an impactful part of their society is security from the internet. With this wide band of communication and information easily accessible for most and the common integration of the internet without personal lives, it is now a lot easier to gain information on how to do things or about people and places. With the endless information available, it makes it that much easier to put others in physical or virtual harm. To combat this, governments are put in charge of tracking what individuals do and search on the internet. Yet again, this worries people as it is seen as a violation of rights.

As much concern there is when it comes to the internet, it seems as though people always end up coming back to it. With the convince it has brought with communication and the spreading of information, it has also affected how we shop. There are now thousands of retails that have been able to make their inventory digital in order to reach a larger audience with their products. In the United Kingdom, internet transaction account for approximately 20 percent of retail purchases in 2018, while being around five percent in 2008. In the light of COVID-19, businesses that were adaptable switched to online and were able to keep their businesses running. Those that had a harder time being able to create a platform for themselves online mainly went bankrupt since people were advised against going out in public for such a long stretch of time.

As the internet is seen as a revolutionary form of technology, it is natural to think of it being everywhere, especially with how involved it now is in daily life. However, access to this global network is not the same globally. On developing countries, those there are less likely to have access to the internet. This is not fully based of the idea that these countries cannot receive such technology. Other reasons as to why those in developing countries may not be using the internet is because they don’t have a proper education, they are female, or what is available to them on the internet doesn’t relate to the needs of the people. This separation of access has to ability to leave other countries behind technologically. 

With society’s constant move towards improvement as a whole, the internet has been pushed into society’s grand plans and is most likely going to stay. As a relatively new technology, it has been clenched in the grasps of the people and made to be a part of their lives. From the original creation, it has been modified and strayed away from then. However, as the internet has relevant, it continues to bring great things and innovations into society. Even with as long as society has had the internet, new innovations are bound to be created form it to continue society’s advancements. The internet has found its way to become an essential technology in the majority of society’s life.

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