The history of the internet

The internet today is our life. Plain and simple.....to think that even 50 years ago this concept was new and very naive is almost unreal. Now there are millions of people online daily doing a variety of different things.

Recently in my online media design class with @cindyroyal we watched the "history of the internet" produced by the History channel which describes the internet as "no other invention that has grown so fast and touched so many lives" and also as "in an instant you have access to things everywhere" In the beginning of it all, ARPA created something called the ARPANET.

Vinton Cerf who now works for Google is recognized as one of the "fathers of the internet" describes the WWW as the Telecom infrastructure of the 21st century. I would say he was pretty accurate. The video provides insight from the brilliant individuals involved in the creation and advancement of the internet and the way the networks were established. Interestingly enough, some of these remarkable individuals were graduate students at the time of their discoveries and decisions that are important today. It gives us grad students some inspiration! :)

Just to name a few of these pretty neat and creative individuals:

Dr. Leonard Kleinwreck - professor at UCLA also known as the "father of the internet" he developed the theory of the packet of networks. His host computer at UCLA became the first node of the internet in September 1969. And....he was a graduate student at the time:)

Ray Tomlinson -BBN - 1971 wrote a program to enable electronic mail to be sent over the ARPANET. He sent the first true email over the ARPANET, Tomlinson is the inventer of email. He also developed the @host convention. He my friends.....developed "the killer app" What in the world would we do without email? This is an effective and convenient way of communicating to people no matter where they are.

Robert Metcalfe- created a wire-based system using protocols for Local Area Networks (LANS) which becomes Ethernet.

It is intriguing to think about these individuals who created and developed technologies that are SO important and integrated so heavily in our lives.