History of the Internet: The Infrastructure
Historically, the Internet began with Paul Baran's study, which proposed the idea of a packet switched network. This idea was then implemented in 1969 between four universities in the United States. These networks evolved and expanded from United States to through out the world, and these inter-connected networks all using the same TCP/IP protocol are considered to be what the Internet is.
Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn have been credited in their paper on Transmission Control Protocol in 1974 for the first use of the word 'internet'.
The Internet and the World Wide Web
The Internet is essentially an infrastructure that allow computers to link together through a sets of computer networks. Using this existing infrastructure, Tim Berners-Lee wrote the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). Hypertext documents allow documents to be linked to other documents so using this protocol created by Berners-Lee allowed to give documents addresses on the internet.
Berners-Lee then expanded on this and created the first browser, which he called the "World Wide Web". He also set up the first web server which consequently created the first address "info.cern.ch", which is where he worked.
Internet, the New Comunication Channel
The Internet has revolutionized the way we communicate in society. It has opened up another channel of communication. All conventional forms of communication including telephone, radio, television and mail have all had to adapt to include the internet in the communication medium. However, the difference between the other mediums is quite unique, the Internet provides everyone the ability to express their own opinion, whether biased, truthful or corrupting to a global audience. While it has brought many positive aspects to society for example 'email', it has raised many ethical, sociological and moral questions.
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