Just the beginning..

Glancing through a powerpoint presentation done by William Slater III in 1996, I found a definition for the term "internet" that seemed to encompass it's different aspects: "A network of networks, joining many government, university and private computers together and providing an infrastructure for the use of E-mail, bulletin boards, file archives, hypertext documents, databases and other computational resources. The vast collection of computer networks which form and act as a single huge network for transport of data and messages across distances which can be anywhere from the same office to anywhere in the world."

In 1968, DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) formed a contract with Bolt, Beranek, & Newman (BBN) to create ARPAnet. The first five nodes were created at UCLA, Stanford, UC Santa Barbara, University of Utah, and BBN, all in 1970. In 1971, e-mail was invented. In 1974, a Packet network system of intercommunication came into being, along with TCP (Transmission Control Program). It was only in 1977 though, that the internet truly became a "reality," with the number of hosts breaking 100. On January 1st 1984, 1000 hosts on the internet converted to using TCP/IP for messaging. The number of users of the internet has grown from 111 hosts in 1977 to over 200 million hosts in 2002. It is estimated that by 2010 around 80% of the planet will be on the internet.

Today, the internet is not just used to send email and communicate with others, but is also a source for business, advertising, news, shopping, education, and so on.