History of the Internet

Melih Bilgil gives us an appreciation for the technology that we have now by providing a brief history of the internet. This clip efficiently reviewed and described material that we learned in our readings and in lecture. It all starts our in 1957, when computers could only manage one task at a time through batch processing and developers were the only ones who knew how to work on them. Time sharing also came up in 1957 as an ideal concept where computers could share their processing powers with other computers. During the Cold War, Sputnik 1, the first unmanned satellite was sent into orbit by the Soviet Union, and Americans feared for their safety due to technological advances in other countries. As a result, in 1958 the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency was developed, and created ARPANET. Packet switching, the process in which files were divided into smaller packets, and put together again at the receiver, was a fundamental concept to the internet. New fears were stirred up when it was discovered that Cuba had missiles that could travel to the United States. To avoid communication breakdowns in the event of an attack and the loss of a node, a decentralized computer network had to be developed in order for vital communication to continue. The French network, Cyclades gave birth to the term inter-net. Lastly, TCP/IP protocol guaranteed capability between networks and finally merged these networks, creating the internet. ARPANET was then removed and the internet was up and running!

This clip does a nice job of combining the scientific, military and commercial approaches which gave birth to the internet. It describes how the internet has a rich history of not only one or few key developers, but many organizations and people across time who made this idea a reality. It demonstrates how humans are able to think and work through different time periods and sectors of interest, to create something as fantastic as the internet.