Tuesday, July 10, 2012

History of the Internet

Alright guys and gals, although I missed the first portion of the video due to missing the first day, I will do my best to summarize the bit we watched in class on Tuesday.
For me, one of the most interesting points the video made was towards the beginning, when they talked about e-mail and the way it changed our world. This 'killer app' not only changed the pace of how we communicate, it changed the very way we communicate with one another. If this application hadn't been an early addition to the networks, I doubt the internet would have taken off so quickly and I imagine the internet a very different place than it is today.
Another intriguing point made was the difference in number of things one could do on early networks, nineteen, compared to just a few years later when that number grew exponentially with the congressional act of opening the internet up to public usage. The fact that in 1992 there were merely fifty webpages compared to over three hundred-thousand a little over a year later is astonishing. This growth is widely attributed to the development of Netscape and other open source web browsers.
The internet is a massive, constantly-developing, and most of all an integral part of all of our lives. 'The world at our fingertips' is a common expression used to describe the world wide web, and despite the high expectations that are attributed to such a broad statement, I truly believe this resource is not only under appreciated, it is also far from reaching all of it's furthest capabilities and even further from completion.

1 comment:

Cindy Royal said...

Good observations, but links and images are required in all posts.