Without a doubt, the Internet is undergoing a major transition as it experiences a tremendous influx of new users. Due to the anarchic, distributed nature of the net, we cannot even begin to enumerate the population of the Internet or its growth. As more of the world's population moves on-line, new concerns will arise which did not confront the earlier generations. The new culture will demand different resources, services and technology than the old generations expected and used. Already we can witness a clash between the emergent culture and the entrenched culture. The largest conflicts occurring now are about sharing resources, the impending commercialization of the net, and the growing problem of computer crime.
The Internet was born in the union of government and researchers, and for two decades afterwards remained mostly the realm of those two groups. The net began as ARPANET, the Advanced Research
Projects Agency Net, designed to be decentralized to sustain operations through a nuclear attack. This nature persists today in the resilience of the net, both technologically and in its culture.
ARPANET was phased out in 1990 and the net backbone was taken over by NSFNET (National Science Foundation). Since 1969 the main users of cyberspace have been involved in research or in the university community as computer experts or hackers, exploring the limitations and capabilities of this new technology. These people formed a cohesive community with many of the same goals and ethics. In addition to the homogeneity of the net, the small size contributed to a strong feeling of community. There has been some conflict between the hackers and the researchers over sharing resources, and philosophies about security and privacy, but on the whole, the two groups have co-existed without major incident.
The newest of the members of the so-called old generation are the university users who are not involved in research work on the net.
Generally these are the students using the net for email, reading netnews and participating in interactive real-time conversations through talk, telnet or irc. This wave of people integrated smoothly with the community as it existed. Still sharing the common research and education orientation, the community remained cohesive and the culture did not change much, perhaps it only expanded in the more playful areas. These users did not compete ...
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...go. For many centuries after writing began, this skill was left in the hands of the educated elite - mainly the church servants. When literacy finally came to the majority of the middle class and some of the lower class, the
Renaissance began. Similarly, we are witnessing the opening of a new medium of information to the general populace, and we can only guess at the outcome.
References
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Brother. NameBase NewsLine, No. 2, July-August 1993.
2.Response from Canter&Siegel's net access providers April
1994
3.Dern, Daniel. ``Myth or Menace? A History of Business on the Net.'' Internet World July/August 1994 pp 96-98.
4.Elmer-Dewitt, Philip. ``Battle for the Soul of the Internet.''
Time Magazine, July 25, 1994 pp 50-56.
5.Hardy, Henry. History of the Net
6.Hirsh, Robert. AOL FTP Access Oct 13, 1994.
7.US State of MD gopher site
8.Meyer, Gordon. The Social Organization of the Computer
Underground. August 1989
9.Otto, Justin. post to alt.netcom.conspiracy Aug 9, 1994.
10.Townson, Patrick. MCI Employee Cearged TELECOM Digest
V14 #385
11.Taylor, Roger. ``Brave New Internet.'' Internet World,
September 1994 pp 36-42.
The History and Future of the Internet Many believe the internet was an overnight sensation, that one day, someone invented the internet and it spread in popularity faster than Tickle Me Elmo or the Macarena. Although the internet did have a surge of commercial popularity, with the invention of Mosaic and later with e-commerce, it was created many years ago with the development of military networking technologies. Also, the internet, unlike many pop culture fads of the nineties, will continue to see a growth in popularity and usefulness as a form of media throughout the information age. Sure, the internet has become overambitious to the point where many internet start-up companies lost their businesses in the recession of the past few years. The quality of the internet, however, has increased as companies realize that there exists competition and smarter consumers that demand superiority.
With an entity as vast as the Internet, it is not surprising that a variety of unanswered questions will arise. I’m positive that the Internet will continue to confound scholars as it continues to quickly evolve. By analyzing the views of the celebrants and skeptics, I have been able to understand the potential that the internet has. By using the PEC, I have been able to understand how democracy and capitalism relate to the issues of the Internet. In the future, I hope that society can develop a further understanding of the Internet and move toward the Internet that the celebrants had hoped for.
Holeton, Richard. Composing Cyberspace Identity, Community, and Knowledge in the Electronic Age. The McGraw Hill Companies, Inc. 1998. Reid and Count Zero. Cult of the Dead Cow. March 2003. 30 September 2003. <http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/hackers/interviews/reidcount. html>
What we know today as the Internet began as a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) project in 1969, which was designed to connect several research databases across the country. However, until the end of 1991, the advances were almost completely technical, as the goals set by those responsible in its growth were beyond what the hardware was capable of providing. In 1988, the Internet began to receive attention in the popular press, when the first documented computer virus was released at Cornell University. 1991 marked the beginning of the transition of the Internet as we know it today, with the National Science Foundation’s reinterpretation of its Acceptable Use Policy to allow for commercial traffic across its network, the development of the first graphic interfaces, the formation of the Internet Society, and the formation of ECHO (East Coast Hang Out), one of the first publicly available online communities.
The internet is an ever increasingly powerful tool for finding everything from entertainment to reference to daily news. When first created, the internet was only a shadow of what it has become. Most people didn't even have a computer, let alone a connection to the internet. In the last decade, however, computers have become more and more affordable, and internet service providers have become far more widespread. According to the World Almanac and Book Of Facts 2001 "By early 2000, more than 300 million people around the world were using the Internet, and it is estimated that by 2005, 1 billion people may be connected" (World Almanac). As with any new, powerful technology, the internet has brought with its positive aspects, a number of new problems which will have to be dealt with in the next several years.
The World Wide Web started as an idea that focused around the government’s need to communicate if there was a real war. In 1964 the Cold War was at its peak, the Advanced Researched Projects Agency, or ARPA began researching and developing a way to get computers to “communicate with each other,” this is how it all started (The Internet's History and Development). The government scientists who were, “developing networking technology in the 1960's knew that what they were building would be far bigger than themselves; nobody, however, could have predicted the explosion in Internet access and interest in the past several years” (The Internet’s History and Development).
The history of the internet shows that the internet is not a new medium. The internet was initially created in the 1960's to as a way for the United States to stay connected in case of a nuclear fallout due to the possible consequences of the Cold War. F...
The cyber world has become a most important part of our everyday lives. We spend an increasingly significant portion of our lives in it and use it to communicate with friends, acquaintances, loved ones, and business associates. We make use of our computers and Internet connectivity to look for and purchase all kinds of goods and services. We use the web and all its powerful resources to educate ourselves and to gain knowledge. We are able to look for, join and keep up with special interest groups and to discuss topics of interest to us. We research serious as well as mundane issues on line.
“The Net’s beginnings went largely unnoticed by the public. For all its technological brilliance, the Internet of today is far removed from the concepts that propelled initial research. And the Internet’s story- which has become the World Wide Web’s story- has not been so much one of planned development as of individual genius, at least until recently.” (Gilster. 1997).
To understand the current global market of the internet, one must first understand how the internet was built. The internet initially started out as the APARNET in the 1960’s, it was set up by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in September of 1969. ARPA created ARPANET as a way to mobilize research sources in order to build up technological military superiority over the Soviet Union. The original goal was to create an interactive computer network, after this was successful. Scientists wanted to find a way to make the connection to other computers; this created the new concept of a “network of networks” (Castells, 2001: p. 11).
Today, society is affected by the many advances in technology. These advances affect almost every person in the world. One of the prevalent advances in technology was the invention and mass use of the Internet. Today more than ever, people around the world use the Internet to support their personal and business tasks on a daily basis. The Internet is a portal into vast amounts of information concerning almost every aspect of life including education, business, politics, entertainment, social networking, and world security. (idebate.com) Although the Internet has become a key resource in developing the world, the mass use of Internet has highlighted a major problem, privacy and the protection of individual, corporate, and even government security . The argument over whether or not the Internet should be controlled by the government has developed into a controversial issue in almost every country in the world.
Initially the internet was created by the military and governments as a way of protecting their communications from enemy sources. In the present time, the internet has become an essential part of a person’s life. It is used for various kinds
In our society, there has been a revolution which competes that of the industrial revolution. It is called technological revolution. At the top of the technological revolution is what we call, the Internet. In the following report we will be discussing about what the internet is about in general and how it might be in the future, why it is necessary in our everyday lives, and why has it become so important to everyone (i.e. companies, individuals ).
Term Paper: The History of the Internet The Internet began like most things in our society, that is to say that the government started it. The Internet started out as an experimental military network in the 1960s. Doug Engelbart prototypes an "Online System" (NLS) which does hypertext browsing, editing, email, and so on. The Internet is a worldwide broadcasting resource used for distributing information and a source for interaction between people on their computers. In 1973, the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) initiated a research program to investigate techniques and technologies for interlinking packet networks of various kinds.
Since the development of the Internet in late 1980s, communication has changed enormously. The Internet has altered the lives of people in the world in a way that was never imagined before. As little as a decade ago, if someone tried to explain the Internet and World Wide Web, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to understand. Computers were just beginning to become popular and few individuals realized the capacity of one PC, let alone the power of a network of electronic technology. By linking together computers, users could remotely access others on the network, share information, and send electronic mail as easily as pushing a button. Millions of people with shared interests, exchange information and build communities through Web sites, email and instant-messaging software.