The Internet: Past, Present, and Future

The Internet Past, Present, and Future

Whether easily recognized or not, the internet has changed the way the entire world functions. Innovations as simple as how a businessman in New York acquires his daily schedule, to how a teenager in Japan searches the internet for the next purchase. The internet has simplified many tasks of everyday life, and for many jobs. Anything from obtaining lunch, to filing tax returns can all be done from home with a computer and internet. These tasks are possible because of what started in 1966 by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, innovators such as Robert Kahn, the NSFnet, and modern day technology (Internet History from ARPANET to Broadband). With the Internet being a part of 75 percent of homes in just the United States today, the impact that it has had since 1969 is unignorable (Computer and Internet Access in the United States: 2012).

Before there was the World Wide Web allowing anyone with internet to access information and communication in the click of a button, communication and interaction was limited to face to face contact or mailing letters. The ways of communication have been innovated by society and changed by time. Before the internet, there were two other major innovations in distant communication, the printing press and telegraph. In the early fifteenth century Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press, allowing for mass production of books and letters. From the 1400s until around 1832 sending letters was the main method of communication other than direct conversation. One of the earliest inventions that can closely relate to the methods of a internet network is the telegraph (Imagining the Internet). The telegraph changed the world just as t...

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...ssible because of what started in 1966 when DARPA began the research for ARPANET and progressed from there.

If someone hears the word, “internet”, the first thoughts are most likely Google, YouTube, or some type of social media. Forty-five years ago when DARPA placed the first IMP node at UCLA the vision was not on social media or a search engine that has over 12 billion searches sent through the servers in a month. The focus was on communications and sending information across the country. The impact that the internet has had on society undoubtedly was never envisioned. Stepping outside without in some way being affected by innovation of the internet or a by-product of the internet is nearly impossible. Everything from the cell phone inside a pocket to the booming internet market the world would not be the same without modern day internet.