How the Internet has Changed the way we live Essay

How the Internet has Changed the way we live - Essay Example Department of Defense gave birth to ARPANET which later became the internet. The visionaries who saw great potential in using computers to share information on research in scientific and military fields laid the spark of internet's birth. In 1962, J.C.R. Licklider of MIT proposed a global network of computers. Leonard Kleinrock developed the packet switching which is the basis of internet connections. In 1965, Lawrence Roberts connected a Massachusetts computer with a Californian one over dial-up telephone lines. The ARPANET, first brought online in 1969, initially connected four computers at universities in southwestern US. Ray Tomlinson, in 1972, brought e-mail to ARPANET. He was the one who introduced the symbol-@- to connect the username and address. The internet was designed to provide a communication network that would resist nuclear attacks. The early users were computer experts, engineers, scientists and librarians. During the '60s and '70s, Frederick G. Kilgour of the Ohio College Library Center led networking of Ohio libraries. In the mid 1970s, New England, the southwest states, Mid Atlantic states, etc. joined it to form national, later, international networks. The ARPANET matured in the '70s due to the TCP/IP architecture proposed and developed by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf. USENET was born in 1979 with the Unix to Unix Protocol invention. Newsgroups were introduced to exchange information throughout the world. Though it was not a significant part of the Internet (due to the lack of TCP/IP), it played a vital role in the development of the Internet. BITNET appeared in1981 and it connected the mainframes of IBM and also provided mail services. SCNET, developed in 1984, grew into NSFNet, the backbone of Internet. In 1986, when it was developed, it gave access to a number of super computing centers. More departments started making use of the Internet. Hence, more tools and resources were needed. More universities, organizations and libraries got connected and Internet became harder to track. In 1991, the first friendly interface to the Internet was developed. In July, 1992, Delphi, the first national commercial online service offered Internet access to its subscribers. In 1993, Microsoft Internet Explorer was developed. With the release of Windows 98 which the browser well integrated in the desktop, Bill Gates capitalized on the Internet. The Internet Boom The impact of the Internet is too enormous that it takes a lifetime to elaborate on it. Business entered the Internet arena. Advertising showed up to attract consumers. Online shopping entered a faster pace. Consumers found it easy when they could compare prices. Delphi's free offer of web pages, chat rooms, community building centers, etc. made the Internet more and more on demand. High-speed connections spread. Cable modems and digital subscriber lines replaced the older, slower ones. Wireless access bloomed. Now, we even have small, portable devices that can be used to access the Internet like, the pocket PC, game machines, GPS devices, etc. Let us discuss how Internet affects the various fields of our day to day lives. IMPACTS ON BUSINESS In the beginning, the use of Internet remained to searching and mailing. With the rise of more innovations, people started applying technology to various fields. Business is one such field which was rewritten by the entry of Internet. ECONOMY We saw the days when anything was