The internet has had a history that spans many years. It was founded in the 1950s and became a global network in the 1990s.
It started as a research network for government scientists and university staff, but has expanded into a worldwide information infrastructure. It has spawned electronic mail and the World Wide Web, a vast information resource that is changing society.
ARPANET
ARPANET, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, was one of the first networks to connect people in different locations via computers. It was created in the late 1960s as an experiment for the Pentagon.
This computer system was created using packet-switching technology, which allowed multiple computers to communicate with each other over a single network. This technology also allowed researchers to share their resources.
The network was developed in order to protect military data from enemy attacks. It connected the computers of the Pentagon’s research institutions.
The first message was sent over the network on October 29, 1969. Charley Kline, a UCLA student, tried to log in to the Stanford Research Institute’s mainframe through the network. This was the first successful connection on the network.
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web (WWW) is a worldwide information system of public web pages that are accessible through the Internet. It is built on a client-server architecture and consists of various building blocks or components such as hypertext documents, links to other resources, and servers that host these documents.
Tim Berners-Lee, a British scientist, invented the World Wide Web in 1989 at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) as a solution to the problem of automated information sharing between scientists from all over the world. He also designed the HyperText Markup Language (HTML) that is still used today to publish and store web documents.
He wrote a proposal for the World Wide Web in March 1989 and another in May 1990, along with Belgian systems engineer Robert Cailliau. The two documents outlined key concepts and defined important terms that would be used in the development of the Web. They were later formalized as a management proposal in November 1990, which was a milestone in the evolution of the World Wide Web.
The Internet Bubble
During the late 1990s and early 2000s, the United States experienced the Internet Bubble. It was a period of intense media attention, high-tech innovation, and investors’ speculation of profits by dot-com companies.
The bubble inflated when technology startups raised money, then went public with IPOs (Initial Public Offerings) that saw their stock prices skyrocket. This was despite the fact that many of these firms didn’t have a business plan, product, or track record of profitability.
These companies’ stocks began to decline, and capital started drying up as many investors became aware of the risks posed by these speculative stocks. This eventually led to the bursting of the dot-com bubble, and the US economy suffered heavily from its collapse.
Spam
Spam is a word that has become synonymous with unsolicited emails and other bulk messages sent to email accounts. It is a form of junk mail that is intended to be invasive and disruptive. The term is derived from a Monty Python skit that features a group of Vikings who loudly repeat the phrase, “Everyone must eat Spam” over and over again.
In the internet age, spam is a source of much frustration and headache for those who receive it. It disrupts email and web browsing, and it can even slow down your computer or freeze it completely if a huge number of messages are sent to a single address.
In his book, Spam: A Shadow History of the Internet, Finn Brunton provides a compelling account of this insidious problem. He offers a range of fascinating insights into how this strange and innovative practice is shaped by human, machine, and criminal activities. These observations highlight the complex and often surprising impact that spam has had on the Internet’s history.