First essay

The internet as we know it today is not the same as it was when it first became, and will not be the same tomorrow. The internet is an always ever evolving way of communication in the world today. There are many innovations that led to what we now see the as the internet today such as packet switching, the creation of TCP/IP, e-mail, and the formation of Hypertext Transfer Protocol. I believe that these four things are what made the internet what it is today.
When the internet first became it was developed for the sole reason of communication in case of an emergency. During the time of the cold war the United States were scared that in the case of a nuclear attack that they would not be able to relay the proper information needed to help the situation. So the United States formed RAND, while reading about this research and development group I learned that their goal was to try and create a galactic network. RAND developed a system that would work through computers, and only needed to find a working line with another computer. In other words if New York was attacked and had to get a message to Florida but the direct line was interrupted this system would find another computer to relay the message so that there would never be a stop in communication.
This process of computer communication was soon improved with the introduction of packets. What the packet system did was take your message or data and break it down into smaller bunches of data so that the “traffic” could then be more controllable. Also with this process it made the message sending more reliable in the sense that if some of the message does not make it the hope that at least the major parts of the message will get through. Now that there was a more reliable way to transfer data you could now send more data and now there is more data transfer happening. Soon came the introduction of packet switching which speeded the process of data transfer even more. With packet switching your message would travel and find its way through the line of least resistance. So now your message is broken done into many smaller packets and not all of these packets would travel the same path. Each packet was given a header which was basically the who, what, where, when, and how. This header made sure that each packet got to the designated location (Adams & Clark).
Packet switching was governed by TCP/IP or Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol. TCP/IP was what the internet was waiting for it not only safeguarded information but made it faster and more reliable to transfer data. TCP/IP was not like the old existing protocol it was built into every network host instead of governing nodes. So we see because of this we see the data transfer and packet switching moving a great deal faster than before. As stated in the readings from Adams and Clark the major amount of packet conversion was done onsite before ever released into the network. After this great improvement TCP/IP became the “industries standard” for protocol of online communications (Adams & Clark).
With this new advancement in technology of communication people began more to use this medium of communications for personal message sending. “In 1972 a man named Ray Tomlinson created the first e-mail system that delivered messages through Arpanet (Adams & Clark). So now people can send messages to their friends even though the use of this medium was still pretty exclusive. From internal audits we know that almost 75% of the network activity going on was e-mail. So now on a day to day basis you saw people were using e-mail to send personal and non-personal information to their colleagues instead of analyzing data (Adams & Clark).
When I say the word internet you might immediately think of the World Wide Web (WWW) but in fact they are not the same. The WWW was introduced to us in 1991 by a man named Tim Berners-Lee. The WWW is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_wide_web). In other words it is a place to send and receive information through computers. Through the use of HTTP or hypertext transfer protocol one can link any document or information to another which in my opinion really makes the internet so important. With this people can access information on many things at the same time authored by different people, this take us to an age of endless possible growth of communication.
Over time the internet has taken huge steps forward to become what it is today. Even though you might not see the changes all the time the internet is ever evolving. These four innovations along with many others help us use the internet in the way we use it today. I am excited for the future and what it brings with the internet because I feel the possibilities are endless.