The Internet was created in the 1960s by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in order to allow a few select universities in the U.S and the DOD (Department of Defense) to interact with each other over long distances. Over a very short time, approximately ten years, the Internet went from being a little idea to being a multi-million dollar system. The Internet is currently used in the home, at work, and in educational facilities, and so far the its potential has not been reached.
The Internet has a short history and yet, since the Internet was developed after 1950, most people in this day and age find its history relatively interesting. At the end of the 1960s, only a few institutes were using the Internet. By the mid 1970s, more than
a few select sites were using the Internet. As the idea caught on, more and more sites decided that they, too, wanted to utilize the Internet's features. However during the 1970s as more universities and institutions used the Internet, it became necessary to create data transmission standards. The two standards that were developed were TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol). In 1989 English computer scientist Timothy Berners-Lee introduced the idea of the WWW (World Wide Web). Berners-Lee wanted to allow the physicists, around the globe who worked for
the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (CERN), to communicate with each other. However, his idea of a WWW soon became popular not only among universities, but also among individuals due to the fact that the WWW can easily transfer multimedia documents anywhere on the globe. After 1989, it was obvious what has happened because, today, in opening any issue of a mass communication magazine, one is confronted with a multitude of computer ads, Internet access ads, and WWW addresses.
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The Internet's future looks bright right now. As telecommunication titans like AT&T, MCI/Worldcom, and Sprint make the change from using slow copper wires to using the lightning speed that satellites and OC (Optical Cable) -24, OC-48, OC-256 offer, the Internet will rapidly improve. Once the transition has been made from copper to fiber optic cables and satellites, businesses will be able to provide better consumer products and, services, and they will be able to work more efficiently than in the pre-Internet days. Once fiber/satellites have reached at least forty percent of the homes on this globe, people at home will perhaps shop only through e-commerce and do all of their banking from their home without ever having to leave it. Also, more people will not have to leave their homes to go to work; instead, they will sit down in front of their laptops and telecommute to work. Finally, people will be able to rent movies over the Internet within a matter of thirty seconds. The most important thing, however, is that people will be able to finally connect to the Internet at higher speeds than 56Kps.
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The Internet started out as a simple idea, but over the short span of thirty-five years it has grown to something without which, most businesses and people cannot live. Over time, too, the expectations that people have of the Internet have grown considerably. From just being able to handle simple text, to handling full-length movies that are coded in MPEG-2 with DTS sound. Someday, the Internet will be the place where a person is born, where they live, and where they die (virtually speaking that is). Within the span of ten years that could be a reality, not talk.
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