The History About The Internet Technology

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Describe the development of the internet with a stress on the technical, social, political and economic impact that the Internet has had and is likely to have in the near future.

Internet Technology has evolved dramatically in recent years and has had significant impact upon social and political interaction and has largely affected global economies. With continued development of the internet, new opportunities have become accessible for individuals and organisation alike, but greater access also increases the potential to be exposed to various online threats.

Before access to the Internet can be obtained there are a few pieces of equipment and software required; a computer is important, an active telephone line and a router. The router accesses the Internet through the telephone line and translates computer language into data that can travel through phone lines. An Internet Service Provider (ISP) is also required; the ISP is a gateway to access the Internet. Users access the ISP through phone lines, and the ISP will connect them to the Internet. It does this by utilising thousands of pounds worth of hardware and software, and users will have an account with the ISP and will pay £X per month for the service of accessing the Internet through the ISP.

A user will need two pieces of software to be able to connect to the Internet; the first is the software that connects a user to their ISP. This is different for each ISP, some ISP's will supply a disk with the connection software on it, other ISP's will use the connection software that comes with computer operating systems such as Windows or OS X, which allows the users to input data into this software.

The second piece of software required is a Browser which selects web pages and displays them on a computer upon request. There are lots of browsers available, but the most popular and commonly used browsers are Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox and Microsoft Internet Explorer. These browsers can also provide e-mail functions, but if a user has a browser that only provides web surfing functions, then they may need a separate e-mail account.

The Internet has had predecessors, such as the telegraph system, that dates back to the 19th century. The concept of data communication; – the process of sending data from one place to another utilising radio or wired technologies, such as those used in telex and telegraph systems, predate the computer era whereby systems were limited to point to point communication between two end devices. (Internet Society; 2012).

The Internet followed on from developments of electronic computers in the 1950s; it was designed to establish a reliable communication network even if major sites were offline. If desirable communication paths were unavailable, routers enabled the diversion of network traffic via alternative avenues. (Howe; 2012).

Leonard Kleinrock, a computer science professor at the University of California sent a computer message to Stanford Research Institute on the 29th October 1969. This data transmission is considered to be the first message to be sent over a network, a network which eventually became the internet (Chapman; 2009).

From then onwards began point-to-point communication between mainframe computers and terminals, that expanded towards point-to-point connections between computers and furthermore, into Packet Switching research. Packet switched networks such as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), Mark I at the UK National Physical Laboratory (NPL), Cyclades and Merit Network, and Tymnet, and Telenet were developed in the late 1960s using various protocols. The ARPANET network led to the development of internetworking protocols whereby individual networks could be linked to each other, forming a network of networks so to speak. As many different network methods existed, a platform to unify them was required, and as a result, the TCP/IP architecture was proposed by Bob Kahn of Bolt, Beranek and Newman technologies (BBN) and further developed by himself and computer scientist Vint Cerf. ARPANET was adopted by the Defence Department in 1980, replacing the previous Network Control Protocol (NCP) (Gilbert; 1995).

Further migration from ARPANET to Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) was officially completed on the 1st January 1983 and the concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP networks called the Internet was introduced (Cerf and Leiner; 2012).

By 1987, there were nearly 30,000 hosts on the Internet. The ARPANET protocol was limited to only 1,000 hosts, but with the adoption of the TCP/IP as standard, it made larger numbers of hosts possible.

1977 was a great year for Internet development. It was the year that the first PC modem, developed by Dennis Hayes and Dale Hetherington, was introduced. A router was designed to forward data packets between computer networks thus creating an overlay internetwork. The router is connected to two or more data lines from different networks and when a data packet travels on one of the lines, the router reads the address information in the packet, in order to determine its destination. Next, using information in the packets’ routing table or routing policy, it is directed to the next network on its journey.

Routers perform the "traffic directing" functions of the Internet and data packets are forwarded between routers, through networks that constitute the internetwork, until it reaches its destination node.

Home and small office routers that transfer data such as web pages and email are widely available mainstream technology, which pass data between a home computer and a DSL modem, connected via an ISP to the internet. Large businesses and ISP networks using more sophisticated enterprise routers, enable high speed data forwarding through optical fibre lines of the Internets’ backbone (Chapman; 2009).

Though routers are typically dedicated hardware devices, the use of software-based routers has become increasingly common. The original Interface Message Processor (IMP) was the first device to work using the same principles as modern day routers. The first packet network called ARPANET was composed of IMP’s. Original router concepts (previously known as Gateways) were designed by various international groups of computer networking researchers.

Electronic mail (e-mail) was first developed in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson, who also made the decision to use the "@" symbol to separate the user name from the computer name. As the demand for e-mail was gradually standardised, non-technically minded people were able to learn how to use e-mail and internet technology more easily. Still, ease of use was far from what it is today, however it did open up the use of the Internet to many people, particularly in universities. An increasing number of departments, previously not exposed to methods of internet communication, began to make use of the networks to communicate with colleagues around the world and share files and other resources.

As the popularity of e-mailing grew, the first modern email program called MSG was developed in 1975 by John Vittal, a programmer at the University of Southern California (Chapman; 2009).

In 1989 Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics (also known as CERN), suggested a new data distribution protocol which eventually became the World Wide Web in 1991. The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet, creating a more user friendly internet platform.

With a web browser, text, images, videos, and other multimedia can be viewed on web pages and it is possible to navigate between them via hyperlinks.

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much thought to distinguish between them. However, the Internet and the World Wide Web is not the same thing. The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks. In contrast, the World Wide Web is one of the services that run on the Internet; - it is a collection of text documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs, usually accessed by web browsers from web servers. In short, the Web can be thought of as an application ‘running’ on the Internet (Cerf and Leiner; 2012).

The Internet has also introduced new ways of social interaction, such as enabling the formation of social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace.

Debates surrounding the impact of the internet upon strong and weak social ties continue to develop questions regarding whether prolonged internet usage leads to social isolation for users, leading to a less diverse social environment, however it is undeniable that websites such as these provide channels for rapid networking and provide additional financial injections to businesses and overall economies.

The internet is deeply embedded into groups and organisations all over the world. People can join a community and create new social contacts globally, which could not be done so easily without the internet. However the internet can negatively impact and alter the social behaviours and abilities of people in their day to day lives. Children for example are often negatively influenced by the internet. Today, where the majority of households own a computer and have internet access, many people choose to communicate over the internet with their friends, families and work contacts. Users are becoming younger and younger, and gradually becoming competent ‘experts’ on using the internet, but their real life experiences are being compromised in the process (Temmel, et al.; 2001).

Users can also put their own information on the Internet by creating their own web pages or setting up an online business; software can be expensive to do so and can be bought online or in store, but free software and media is widely available on the Internet, and there are many easily accessible programs developed to make downloading it a simple task.

Computer and internet usage has also increased the flexibility of peoples work habits. For example, house-bound women caring for their children are increasingly able to work a job from home via tele-working, at times suit them. Tele-working can also reduce the time spent in company meetings and increase productivity. However if people do not manage their time effectively, working from home can cause distractions, negatively affecting productivity. Also social interaction is also reduced with working from home which could lead to problems with people’s social skills and mental health.

The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool too. In 2004, Howard Dean’s United States presidential Campaign became renowned for taking internet donations; a method repeatedly used for campaigns ever since. Overall, the internet has been used increasingly by organisations to promote social movements and activism.

Similarly, Governments around the world have an increasing on-line presence. Some countries, such as North Korea, Myanmar and the People's Republic of China have adopted the use of filtering and censoring software that restricts what material people in their country are exposed to. As for the UK, software is also used to locate and arrest individuals who are perceived as a threat to the country.

On the other hand, the internet has introduced new problems to governments, individuals and the economy which require appropriate but costly management and prevention measures. These problems include a significant increase in cyber terrorism, online hacking, identity theft and overall computer related crime since 2001; furthermore extending into software piracy, that alone costs the software industry $12 billion globally, on an annual basis (Fundamentals of Information Systems, 2008; 399).

Internet policy makers are keenly aware of the Internet’s increasing economic importance but there is, as yet, no widely accepted methodology for assigning an economic or social value to the Internet economy. Yet understanding the economic and social impact of the Internet is vital because policy makers look to broadband and mobile data networks as platforms for innovation and development (Manyika; 2011).

The internet has allowed entrepreneurs to start new businesses and connect with customers around the world and it has provided users with access to limitless amounts of information. In an extraordinarily short amount of time, the Internet has surfaced as a key driver of economic growth, by creating millions of jobs that generate hundreds of billions of pounds worth of revenues.

Policy makers need to understand the social and economic benefits of the Internet. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) for example announced the launch of the Long Tail Alliance; a group of small independent online businesses working to educate policymakers about the benefits of online advertising and to advocate against burdensome online restrictions that would damage the Internet economy. As the Internet economy continues to grow, Members of Congress turn to groups like the Long Tail Alliance and the Google Small Business Network, to better understand the tremendous economic and social advantages of the internet and its benefits to businesses and entrepreneurs globally.

An ongoing area for growth in the future is with regards to wireless Internet access, and its efforts to provide ‘hot spot’ access to as many geographic areas as possible. With the ever expanding growth of small devices that can connect to the Internet on the go, such as personal computer tablets, smart phones, eBooks, and GPS devices, there is a need to make sure that web pages can work properly on all these devices, in as many locations as possible.

The internet will continue to develop and change in response to the vast needs of the people who use it and it must continue to evolve at the speed of the computer technology industry if it is to remain relevant. As Heraclitus said in the 4th century BC, "Nothing is permanent, but change!" (Howe; 2012).