History of the Internet Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

History of the Internet - Essay Example This paper will trace the history, growth and development of internet and how World Wide Web has changed the world which is based on the vision, hard labor and dedication of a few committed people. Internet is a network of networks that joins many government, university and private computers together. It provides an infrastructure for the use of e-mail, bulletin boards, file archives, hypertext documents and other computational resources (Slater, 2002). This network transports data and messages across distances which can be anywhere from the same office to anywhere in the world. The internet today is a widespread information structure and the initial prototype of internet is often called the National Informatics Infrastructure and has a complex history. The history of internet can be traced back to the launch and orbit of Sputnik I in 1957 which sent scientific and psychological shock waves in the science policy community as well as throughout American politics and the American public (Russell, 2001). This formed the basis for fundamental breakthroughs in American science, which resulted in a dramatic increase of federal spending on scientific research. Immediately after this, President Eisenhower created an agency known as Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA later known as DARPA) which would be responsible for coordinating advanced, high-risk research that could lead to technological breakthroughs for the military at the height of cold war. The idea of ARPA was basically shaped by a group of scientists who feared that the government either misused or misunderstood modern science and technology. Since World War II scientists had been exploring how advanced computing could enhance national security. The SAGE air defense system, funded by the Air Force was developed by the MIT scientists during the 1950s (Russell, 2001). Computers were initially used as batch processing number-crunchers but subsequently they were used to work with people in real time to