The history of the internet can be traced back through four distinct aspects. The technological evolution, the global operations, and management of complex operational infrastructures, the social aspect, and the commercialization aspect. The 1950s marked the early introduction of electronic computers then followed with the invention of a variety of packet switching networks like ARPANET, and NPL network using different communication protocols. In the early 1970s, scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf developed Internet Protocols and Transmission Control Protocol (TCP/IP) that were used to regulate the standards of data transmission in the network (Andrews, 2013) and (Friedman & Friedman, 2015).
In the past four decades, the advance in internet communication exploded globally with the introduction of the World Wide Web by computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee. This invention provided a more straightforward way of accessing data online through websites. The widespread of the internet was also propelled by the development of LANs, PCs, and workstations in the 1980s. The Domain Name System (DNS) was later introduced by Paul Mockapetris, which permitted a flexible distribution mechanism. The DNS resolved the issue of hierarchical host names that was feasible in the use of LANS (Friedman & Friedman, 2015), (Curran, Fenton, & Freedman, 2016) and (Brügger, Goggin, Milligan, & Schafer, 2017).
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The commercialization of the internet involved the development of commercial products and integrating them into the internet technology. Many vendors saw an opportunity in the networking technology and incorporated the TCP/IP into their products. However, the intended consumers viewed it as a nuisance add-on that needed to be embedded into their networks. The internet has over time become one of the most vital infrastructures in product and service industry through global information source and support of the commercialization of the industrial outputs. The general widespread and adoption of browsers and World Wide Web has also facilitated the access of new products and sophisticated services (Andrews, 2013), (Brügger et al., 2017) and (Winters, 2017).
- Andrews, E. (2013, December 18). Who invented the internet? Retrieved from History Stories: https://www.history.com/news/ask-history/who-invented-the-internet
- Brügger, N., Goggin, G., Milligan, I., & Schafer, V. (2017). Introduction: Internet histories. Journal of Internet Histories, 1(1-2), 1-7. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2017.1317128
- Curran, J., Fenton, N., & Freedman, D. (2016). Misunderstanding the Internet (2nd ed.). New York: RoutLedge.
- Friedman, L. W., & Friedman, H. H. (2015, July 9). Connectivity and Convergence: A Whimsical History of Internet Culture. SSRN, 1-20. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2628901
- Winters, J. (2017). Breaking in to the mainstream: demonstrating the value of internet (and web) histories. Journal of Internet Histories, 1(1-2), 173-179. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2017.1305713
