The Evolution Of The Internet

7 Pages 1765 Words

The Internet has become an essential part of our lives. However, as we use it on a daily basis to communicate with family and friends, find information, look for jobs, pay bills, etc., we often do not stop to ponder where the internet originated. According to Nua Internet Surveys, 513.41 million people were online worldwide in August 2001. The Internet we know today and evolved from a government research program into the largest form of mass medium we know today.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) scientist J.C.R. Licklider first envisioned the Internet in August 1962. Licklider, who was Presidents Roosevelt’s science advisor during World War II, headed the first computer research program at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), as it was then known, a unit of the U.S. Department of Defense (Daily, p222.) The first Internet originated when (DARPA) began a network called ARPAnet in 1969. Designed as a computer version of the nuclear bomb shelter, ARPAnet protected the flow of information between military installations by creating a network of geographically separated computers that could exchange information via a newly developed protocol (rule for how computers interact) called NCP (Network Control Protocol). This meant that even if enemies knocked out portions of the network it would continue to function because the information sent would automatically find an alternate route to their destination.
One opposing view to ARPAnet's origins comes from Charles M. Herzfeld, the former director of ARPA. He claimed that ARPANET was not created as a result of a military need, stating, "It came out of our frustration that there were only a limited number of large, powerful research computers in the country and that many research investigators who should have access were geographically separated from them" (Bellis, 3rd para.)
Four computers were the first connected in the original ARPAnet. They were located in t...