Carl’s Internet History Dateline/Lesson – did you know the Internet was invented during the Cold War to effectively deliver messages to military leaders in the event of a nuclear attack?
The Internet has an amazing history – knowing it isn’t just cool coffee table conversation.
1968: US Government think tank invents IP (“Internet Protocol”) as a communication system for launch codes for nuclear warheads.
1972: IP is published globally (prevents “mutually-assured destruction”).
1975: mil.net – created in Berkeley/Stanford primarily for university and military use.
1981: City College of NY/Brooklyn creates BitNet, which is the precursor to the DNS (Domain Name System).
1985: NSF (National Science Foundation) takes over the Internet – this is the official date where the Internet moves more to educational control away from the military. Congress (and yes, Al Gore is on the subcommittee!) strikes a deal with MCI to build an “internet
backbone” on fiber cabling for $85 million – the “Information Superhighway” was born.
At this stage, there are approximately 10,000 users of the Internet
1990: Tim Burners Lee at CERN (Swiss University for Particle Physics) theorizes a “web” of (shared) information (first mention of the “web”) and publishes it. The theory postulates that if there were a way to connect research published online to “link” directly to sources, a true “web” of communication would result.
1992: Two grad students at University of Illinois contact Lee that they have created Mosaic, which created the “hyperlink,” which Lee endorses.
The creation of the “hyperlink” (today we call it a “link”) was the birth of the world wide web – as differentiated from the Internet.
The students create Netscape and offer to sell it to Bill Gates for $100,000. Gates turns them down. Microsoft would go on the copy the Netscape system and engage in many legal battles with Netscape – so when people tell you Bill Gates invented the web, you can tell them the real story!
1995: Web is opened to commerce (“e-commerce”). At this stage, it is estimated the Internet passes 1 million users (mostly use for emails).
2000: The “Dot Com Boom” emerges, growing the Internet to 100 million users.
Early 2000s brings the advance of "high-speed" ("broadband") Internet/Web access - to me, this was a second and more profound "boom" as it would eventually lead to today's "Virtual Internet" promoted by real-time downloads of rich content.
In 2001 when I invented the Promo Web Online Job Tour, less than 30 million had broadband and when I filed for the patent on it in mid 2003 it is estimated that the number was 60 million.
Today in 2009, the number of high-speed Internet users has exceeded 1.5 Billion (that's a b).
Now THAT is a Boom, and many of my blog posts will be based on how this massive shift of our world culture to the Internet world has changed the dynamics of recruitment, from the expectations of jobseekers to impacting the costs of recruiting, and everything in between.
I hope you enjoyed this review of the the Web's history!
Carl
