Another major breakthrough technology of the past came from ARPAnet in 1969, which is considered the grandfather of today's Internet. ARPAnet was an acronym that stood for Advanced Research Projects Agency and was created to link a small amount of powerful computers together for researchers that were geographically separated. ARPAnet connected computers from UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. Through 1971-1973 this project paved the way of the information highway by allowing for the development of email, remote network access, and file transfer protocol (FTP). In 1983 more and more people had access to the "highway" and separate networks were created for military only use (MILnet) and also for universities and other reasearch groups. Those were called Local Area Networks or LAN's. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of today's Internet, is that it only took four years to become mainstream once it was opened to the public, surpassing radio, TV, and the first personal computer kit .
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Proof positive of the 'Net's ubiquity:
ReplyDeleteTen years ago I was amazed when I
noticed band posters slapped on the side garbage cans featured net addresses. Today, I'm somewhat surprised if condo
developers are NOT advertising buildings wired with Wi-Fi connections. Hmmm....
It is ironic you mentioned the blazing popularity of LANs and Internet, and how quickly it surpassed TV, among other forms of communication. The irony is because television and phone connections are now just variants of the internet protocol--IPTV & VoIP. So what was once an scientific experiment, then a geeky fad, is now an infrastructure on which most of our electronic communication (phone, TV, Email...and the Internet) is dependent on.
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