THE INTERNET 14 HISTORY OF THE INTERNET Answer these questions. a. What do you use the Internet for? b. Do you have an email account? What are its advantages? c. Could you define a cloud? Do you use one? What for? to air: mandare in onda to be disseminated: essere diffuso burst: scoppio dotcom company: azienda di commercio elettronico heating up: riscaldarsi outdated: fuori moda, obsoleto widespread: ampio, diffuso Charley Kline at UCLA sent the first packets on ARPANET as he tried to connect to Stanford Research Institute on 29th October 1969. The system crashed as he reached the G in LOGIN! ARPANET in 1969 212 Module 5 The Internet is a global network of computer networks and physical cables which are also used by wireless connections like Wi-Fi and 3G/4G. There are two main reasons for the birth of the Internet. In the 1960s, computers were very large and immobile and, in order to share information stored in any computer, US government researchers had to travel to the site of the computer or use magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system. Another reason was the heating up of the Cold War. The launch of the Sputnik satellite by the Soviet Union spurred the US Defense Department to consider ways in which information could still be disseminated, even after a nuclear attack. This eventually led to the formation of the first packet switching WAN called ARPANET (Advanced Research Project Agency Network) on 30th August 1969. ARPANET was a great success, but membership was limited to certain academic and research organisations which had contracts with the Defense Department. Later, other networks were created to provide information sharing. The official date of birth of the Internet is 1st January 1983. The communication protocol TCP/IP was established and this allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to communicate with each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/ IP standard on 1st January 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All the networks could then be connected through a universal language. In 1990 ARPANET, considered outdated and obsolete, was decommissioned. During the same year, Tim Berners-Lee and other CERN scientists began to create the first actual incarnation of the World Wide Web. In 1993 the Whitehouse and the United Nations went online and developed an official Internet presence. In 1995 Bill Gates wrote the famous memo entitled The Coming Internet Tidal Wave. In the same year, the bulk of US Internet traffic was routed through interconnected network service providers. The year 2000 would be remembered as the year of the rise and burst of the Internet bubble. That year, the presence of Internet consumer companies was widespread and visible in everyday life, including the visibility of dotcom companies which paid millions of dollars for half a minute-long advertisements to air during the Super Bowl. The growth rate of Internet users between 2000 and 2017 was 933.8% and the total number of world users in 2017 was 49.6%.