#)The Internet is a large, complex information space that reflects much of the variety of our physical world.

#)The conceptual foundation for creation of the Internet was significantly developed by three individuals and a research conference, each of which changed the way we thought about technology by accurately predicting its future:

•    Vannevar Bush wrote the first visionary description of the potential uses for information technology with his description of the "memex" automated library system.

•    Norbert Wiener invented the field of Cybernetics, inspiring future researchers to focus on the use of technology to extend human capabilities.

•    The 1956 Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence conference crystallized the concept that technology was improving at an exponential rate, and provided the first serious consideration of the consequences.

•    Marshall McLuhan made the idea of a global village interconnected by an electronic nervous system part of our popular culture.

#)In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the first satellite, Sputnik I, triggering US President Dwight Eisenhower to create the ARPA agency to regain the technological lead in the arms race. ARPA appointed J.C.R. Licklider (image shown belos)to head the new IPTO organization with a mandate to further the research of the SAGE program and help protect the US against a space-based nuclear attack.

#)The image below is that of J.C.R. Licklider

#)Licklider evangelized within the IPTO about the potential benefits of a country-wide communications network, influencing his successors to hire Lawrence Roberts to implement his vision.

#)Roberts led development of the network, based on the new idea of packet switching discovered by Paul Baran at RAND, and a few years later by Donald Davies at the UK National Physical Laboratory.

#)A special computer called an Interface Message Processor was developed to realize the design, and the ARPANET went live in early October, 1969.

#)The first communications were between Leonard Kleinrock's research center at the University of California at Los Angeles, and Douglas Engelbart's center at the Stanford Research Institute.

#)The first networking protocol used on the ARPANET was the Network Control Program.

#)In 1983, it was replaced with the TCP/IP protocol developed by Robert Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and others, which quickly became the most widely used network protocol in the world.

#)The peicture below show the protocol architecture of TCP/IP protocol

#)In 1990, the ARPANET was retired and transferred to the NSFNET.

#)The NSFNET was soon connected to the CSNET, which linked Universities around North America, and then to the EUnet, which connected research facilities in Europe.

#)Thanks in part to the NSF's enlightened management, and fueled by the popularity of the web, the use of the Internet exploded after 1990, causing the US Government to transfer management to independent organizations starting in 1995.

Key Internet Features

•    Geographic Distribution
•    Robust Internet Architecture
•    Internet At Light Speed
•    Universal Internet Access
•    Internet Growth Rates
•    The Internet's Digital Advantage
•    Internet Freedom Of Speech.

Geographic Distribution

#)The geographic distribution of the Internet continues to spread, around the world and even beyond.A key attribute of the Internet is that once you have connected to any part of it, you can communicate with all of it.

#)All of the Internet's technologies -- web, newsgroups, email, mailing lists, IRC, MUD's -- enable geographically distributed groups of people to communicate who otherwise couldn't do so.

#)Largely because the basic architecture of the Internet is open -- fundamentally designed to connect new networks -- this powerful communication medium has spread rapidly to interconnect our world and turned it into a true multi-way electronic global village.

#)The rapid geographic distribution of the Internet is having the same effect on our civilization as previous inventions that have dramatically expanded the geographic boundaries of our communication abilities, each making the world just a bit smaller, such as the following:

• Boats
• Horses
• Roads
• Books
• Printing
• Railroads
• Typewriters
• Telegraphs
• Cars
• Amateur
• Telephones
• Citizen
• Satellites

#)The Internet is the latest and most powerful such invention, with a current distribution to every corner of this planet, and already inevitably moving into space.

Robust Internet Architecture

#)The Internet is the most robust communications network ever designed, able to adapt itself almost instantaneously to damage or outages to individual sections.

#)The Internet has no irreplaceable central control, administration, or authority. It can't be bought, hijacked, or monopolized.

#)The loss of individual computers and networks does not affect its overall reliability.

#)The Internet perfectly realizes its original intent -- it is actively robust, and cannot be completely deactivated without bringing down every single connection.

#)The Internet is robust over time, too. Many people alive today were born before the Internet was invented. I

#)f we mark its birth from 1969, we can safely assume that it is now effectively immortal, and will continue to exist in some form for the rest of human history.

Internet Near Light Speed

#)The Internet operates at near light speed, which on a planet the size of Earch often practically amounts to near real-time.

#)Digital information such as Internet packets travel at 2/3 of the speed of light on copper wire and on fiber optic cables.

#)Since light speed is about 300,000 kilometers a second, this means digital communications travel at about 200,000 kilometers a second, slowing down only because copper and fiber optic materials are about one-third thicker than a vacuum.

#)At this speed and neglecting switching delays, two computers have to be more than ten thousand kilometers apart, or almost half way around the world, before they experience a tenth of a second in communications delay.

#)With fixed near-optimal transmission speed, there are only two ways to make Internet networks faster -- increase the number of bits that are traveling at once down the connection, or increase the speed at which you switch them from one connection to another at the junction points.

#)Internet routers are getting faster and faster with switching speeds nearing instantaneous, while fiber optics and wireless technologies are enabling networks to send much larger numbers of bits at once.

#)The Internet is getting even faster.

Universal Internet Access

#)The Internet provides universal access, giving the same powerful capabilities to everyone who has access to the network no matter where they are.

#)The Internet is based on a common standard, the TCP/IP network protocol, which provides all computers with access to the network with the same technical interface and capabilities.

#)This common foundation makes all of the internet technologies equally available to anyone connected to the Internet.

#)This architecture gives everyone the ability to make information like text, audio, and video accessible to a world wide audience at an extremely low cost, since web site storage space and lots of bandwidth can be rented from web hosting providers for low fees.

#)Because the Internet has a "many-to-many" architecture, with everyone having the same capabilities as anyone else, it allows anyone to become a global publisher.

#)The earlier Citizen's Band radio and Amateur Radio technologies provided a similar ability to share a common space across geographical distances.

#)The Internet is the current such frontier.

#)You should feel free to approach the Internet with a spirit of exploration, and don't need to have a task or a question to answer -- you can surf from link to link or try random searches just to see what turns up, like exploring a new city. If you feel moved to set up a web site about your favorite hobby, go ahead. The Internet is universally empowering - everyone can participate.

Internet Growth Rates

#)The growth rate of the Internet exceeds that of any previous technology. Measured by users and bandwidth, Internet has been growing at a rapid rate since its conception, on a curve geometric and sometimes exponential.

#)Today, the Internet is growing exponentially in three different directions -- size, processing power, and software sophistication -- making it the fastest growing technology humankind has ever developed:

•    Size. The graphs in the historical statistics section show the exponential rate of growth in the number of people that use the Internet. Soon more than half the world's population will have access to the Internet.

•    Power. As first appreciated at the Dartmouth AI Conference in 1956, computer processors and storage continue to double in power and capacity about every 18 months, providing steadily more powerful computers for use by increasing sophisticated software.

•    Functionality. Software applications from routing programs to browser applications continually build on previous technology to become more sophisticated with every release, continuously evolving to incorporate new features and capabilities.

The Internet's Digital Advantage

#)Digital communications have the D4 advantage: "Digital data doesn't degrade".Analog systems and digital systems are like mirror images of each other.

#)Analog systems are usually controlled by physical mechanisms that can be in an infinite number of continuous positions.

#)A typical example would be the bicycle, which provides force to the wheels through the gear system depending on the continuously varying force of your feet on the pedals.

#)An example from the 20'th century would be one of those old record players that recorded music with the depth and pattern of a tiny groove cut into a vinyl disk by a diamond needle.

#)In contrast to approximate, analog systems, the Internet is a digital medium based on data made up of discrete 1's and 0's.

#)A bit of computer data is not infinitely adjustable, and only has one of two unambiguous states -- it is either a 1, or a 0.

#)This limitation has a very important compensating advantage: there is no "drift" that can introduce error.

#)For example, for many years radio stations that broadcast on the AM frequency had a lot of static because their signal was based on an analog measurement of radio waves that were distorted in transmission.

#)However, FM radio stations used a different method based on the phase of the radio wave frequency, which was a digital measurement with only one of a small number of different values, and therefore provided static free sound that wasn't distorted in transmission.

#)On the other hand, once you got far enough away, and the FM receiver started having trouble decoding the weakening signal, then the station would often just drop out altogether.

#)The Internet, like all computer systems, is based on digital data, so that information never changes or becomes distorted over time or in transmission between sites.

#)This is the key feature that makes it possible to construct the very complex software systems that run the Internet, so that a web site doesn't age and become fuzzy or garbled over time, and the characters in an email don't get transposed or mixed up when they are sent over long distances.

#)One of the most important strengths of the Internet is that it's based on one of the simplest concepts -- digital 1's and 0's.

Internet Freedom of Speech

#)Information wants to be free, and the Internet fosters freedom of speech on a global scale.

#)The Internet is a common area, a public space like any village square, except that it is the largest common area that has ever existed.

#)Anything that anybody wishes to say can be heard by anyone else with access to the Internet, and this world-wide community is as large and diverse as humanity itself.

#)Therefore, from a practical point of view, no one community's standards can govern the type of speech permissible on the Internet. In the words of John Barlow, a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) -- "In Cyberspace, the First Amendment is a local ordinance".

#)The principle of freedom of speech is also embedded in the Internet's robust architecture. In the words of John Gilmore, another founding member of the EFF -- "The Net interprets censorship as damage, and routes around it."

#)Because of the Internet's robust design, it is impossible to completely block access to information except in very limited and controlled circumstances, such as when blocking access to a specific site from a home computer, or when using a firewall to block certain sites from employees on a workplace network.

#)If you believe that progress of human civilization depends on individual expression of new ideas, especially unpopular ideas, then the principle of freedom of speech is the most important value society can uphold.

#)The more experience someone has with the Internet the more strongly they generally believe in the importance of freedom of speech, usually because their personal experience has convinced them of the benefits of open expression.

#)The Internet not only provides universal access to free speech, it also promotes the basic concept of freedom of speech. If you believe that there is an inherent value in truth, that human beings on average and over time recognize and value truth, and that truth is best decided in a free marketplace of ideas, then the ability of the Internet to promote freedom of speech is very important indeed.

Events that signaled the power of Internet

• Written by Raaghavan Krishnamurthy.
• In category Engineering.
• 15 years ago.

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