Not many people know that the Internet was outcome of a military venture and not a glorious venture either. The ARPA, the precursor to the internet, was launched by the Department of Defense of the US government in response to Soviet Union's launch of the first artificial satellite, Sputnik. The objective was to develop a mechanism which would allow the US military to retain control and counter-attack in case of a nuclear attack. At the height of the Cold War both USA and USSR were obsessed with developing "the first strike capability" since it was believed that with the destructive power both nuclear powers possessed, the party attacking first would annihilate or at least incapaciate the enemy. It was the fear of this scenario that led DoD to research and develop a mechanism that would allow the military to control nuclear missiles and bombers even if all US sites had been destroyed in the first strike. Thus ARPA/DARPA was a military apparatus and continued to exist as such though civilian researchers were being accommodated with the passage of time.
Around the same time European scientists at CERN had already implemented a network between academies using X.25 standards which unlike ARPA/DARPA was available for non-military use. However, access was limited to researchers and academics even if it was open to businesses. It was at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee developed the concept of linking hypertext with the internet to facilitate sharing of information between researchers. This concept provided the quantum leap in usability of the network and the World Wide Web came into existence. It was followed by the development of Mosaic, the world's first popular and web browser that had support for images as well. What had started as a military venture became the primary means of interactions between members of the rapidly shrinking global village.
The World Wide Web was characterized by the increasing number of users turning to the internet for information sharing, collaborative development and social interaction. Web portals offering to sell products and services to online buyers, instant messaging and chat programs, virtual communities, sharing of rich multimedia content (images, video, audio) spawned entire generations that turned to the cyber space for social interaction.
(to be continued...)
Around the same time European scientists at CERN had already implemented a network between academies using X.25 standards which unlike ARPA/DARPA was available for non-military use. However, access was limited to researchers and academics even if it was open to businesses. It was at CERN that Tim Berners-Lee developed the concept of linking hypertext with the internet to facilitate sharing of information between researchers. This concept provided the quantum leap in usability of the network and the World Wide Web came into existence. It was followed by the development of Mosaic, the world's first popular and web browser that had support for images as well. What had started as a military venture became the primary means of interactions between members of the rapidly shrinking global village.
The World Wide Web was characterized by the increasing number of users turning to the internet for information sharing, collaborative development and social interaction. Web portals offering to sell products and services to online buyers, instant messaging and chat programs, virtual communities, sharing of rich multimedia content (images, video, audio) spawned entire generations that turned to the cyber space for social interaction.
(to be continued...)
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