ARPAnet was created on
October 29 1969, by a team of researchers who had been researching the
possibility of connected computers for eight years before that. Universities in
America were the first to connect using this technology.
Email (still one of the most
important things we can do today!) was created in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. He
decided to use the @ symbol to separate the parts of an emai, which is obviously
a protocol we still use today.
In 1973, the first international
ARPAnet connection was made, to the University College of
London.
Tim Berners-Lee invented 'rules'
for the Internet - HTML so that all computers would 'see' the same thing when
connecting to a webpage, the same year that Alan Emtage developed the first
search tool - 1980.
Transmission Control Protocol
(TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), commonly referred to as TCIP/IP was officially
established in 1982.
In
1991, MP3 file formats become a standard and the first webcam is used - to
monitor a coffeemaker so that students don't waste time!
In
1995, the internet slowly became commercialized - eBay made its first sale,
encryption was developed, Amazon was launched.
Google went live in 1998! So did a
site called Napster, which introduced audio
file-sharing.
Web 2.0 started being widely used
to refer to interactive websites after 2004.
MySpace, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube all went live
in quick succession after 2004.
2007 brought the iPhone to the scene and started
serious consideration towards the mobile compatibility of the
internet.
I have no idea why it was
invented but it was pretty inevitable really - humans have an insatiable urge to
be connected and transferring data via computer was the obvious
development.
Before 2000, most people used it
for information and basic tasks like email.
Nowadays, most everyone uses it
for entertainment - YouTube being the obvious big one, as well as being able to
download music (legally, via iTunes, illegally via torrent sites and murkily by
converting from YouTube), watch TV on demand and many other tasks. Social
networking has blown up in the last decade and almost everyone with access to
the internet has a Google+, Facebook or Twitter account.
232 people can access the internet
at any one time using the current IP address allocation algorithms, but new ones
are being put in place.
Usage of the internet is dominated
by large companies, specifically Google, who bought YouTube and also produce the
Android OS for mobile devices. Apple is another big player, being the first
company to develop a widely-used online music store (iTunes Store). Apple also
produces the iPhone, currently running iOS 6.0.1. Facebook and Twitter are the
largest social networking sites at this point in time, with Facebook having more
than 800 million active users and Twitter's largest follower base being Lady
Gaga at more than 31 million.
Many people also file share by
uploading and downloading files from places like Google Docs, YouTube and
torrent sites which enable peer to peer sharing.
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