The idea of the Internet started in the early 1960’s. J.C.R. Licklider, an MIT student, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962. He then moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency later in 1962 to head the work to develop it. Leonard Kleinrock, another student at MIT, developed the theory of packet switching. This was to form the basis of the Internet. In 1965, another student at MIT named Lawrence Roberts connected a computer in Massachusetts to a computer in California over dial-up telephone lines. The internet was brought online in 1969 which initially connected four major computers at universities in the southwestern US (UCLA, Stanford, UCSB, and the University of Utah).
The internet came with routers which helped direct internet traffic around the network. In 1972 Ray Tomlinson adapted email. The telnet protocol enabled logging on to a remote computer. Internet usage was limited because it was so hard to obtain, but as the years went on it got easier, but nowhere near as easy as it is today.
The first attempt to try to index the internet, because it was so small, was in 1989 by Peter Deutsch and Alan Emtage, which they named Archie. It was used to find specific sites and pull their files. In 1989 another significant event took place in making the nets easier to use. Tim Berners-Lee and others at the European Laboratory for the Particle Physics, more popularly known as CERN, proposed a new protocol for information distribution. This protocol, which became the World Wide Web in 1991, was based on hypertext—a system of embedding links in text to link to other text. (Howe). In 1993 there was the development of a browser, named Mosaic. It was created by Marc Andreesen and his team at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Then Andreesen was the brains behind the Netscape Corporation, which was the producer of the most successful graphical type of browser and server until Microsoft developed Internet Explorer.
The internet was originally funded by the government. It was limited only for research, education, and government uses. This policy was until the early 1990’s, when independent commercial networks began to grow. Delphi was the first national commercial online service to offer Internet access to its subscribers. Email connection was opened in July 1992 and full Internet service began in November of that same year. All limitations on the internet disappeared on the Internet in May 1995. At the same time AOL, Prodigy and CompuServe came online.
Windows 98 was released in June 1998 which skyrocketed Microsoft. During this time people were looking for services which wouldn’t cost the consumer. Services, such as Delphi, offered free web pages, chat rooms, and message boards for community building. Today, there is a current trend with high speed connections. They used to only be 56K but now it is many times faster, with the use of cable modems and DSL. Wireless has also grown in the past few years. With the use of wi-fi a person can use the internet while away from home or the office.
Another trend that is rapidly affecting web designers is the growth of smaller devices to connect to the Internet. Small tablets, pocket PCs, smart phones, ebooks, game machines, and even GPS devices are now capable of tapping into the web on the go, and many web pages are not designed to work on that scale. (Howe). This is where social networking also comes into place.
Social networking has become one of the most popular services on the Internet. In fact, it is number four on the most popular online activity list. A social networking service is an online service that is designed for building a social network. It is used to study connections and relationships between individuals, groups, etc. It is also used to describe a social structure by certain connections and interactions. Some examples are LinkedIn, Facebook, YouTube, MySpace, etc.
In 2004, the amount of users on the internet just for social networking was only 11%. Then, by 2011, the amount skyrocketed to 65%. Researchers thought that the internet would take away from community and other forms of communication. In a survey in 2000, they compared different forms of social communication, whether it be face-to-face, a letter, etc. vs. the amount of emails sent out. The survey shows that even the people that use online networks still communicate the same amount in other ways.
The internet is made up of many different search engines. Search engines are used for the distribution of commercial, political and health-related info. Some examples would be Google, Bing, Yahoo!, and Ask. Google is the search engine which dominates the industry. Search engines are an internet user’s most important tool to find information.
Search engines also mediate information flow between online information providers and Internet users worldwide, but search engines do rank their resources by relevance, it limits the overall accessibility of online resources. Websites use certain search engines as their own searches (EX. Yahoo-Google) to keep from having to regulate their own searching infrastructure. Yahoo’s search choice with Google is believed to give Google the credibility to be the powerhouse it is today. Also, Google, Bing, and Yahoo all offer specialized searches such as photos, News, Travel, Google Scholar, and Bing Medical Search.
Another important aspect of the internet is advertising. Online advertising is a form of promotion that uses the Internet and World Wide Web to deliver marketing messages to attract customers. Examples of online advertising include contextual ads on search engine results pages, banner ads, blogs, rich media Ads, social network advertising, interstitial ads, online classified advertising, advertising networks and e-mail marketing, including e-mail spam. Many of these types of ads are delivered by an ad server. One major benefit of online advertising is the immediate publishing of information and content that is not limited by geography or time. To that end, the emerging area of interactive advertising presents fresh challenges for advertisers.
The three most common ways in which online advertising is purchased are CPM (cost per mille), CPC (cost per click), and CPA(cost per action). The use of online advertising has implications on the privacy and anonymity of users. Hosting the banner images on its servers and using third-party cookies, the advertising company is able to track the browsing of users across these two sites. There is also a class of advertising methods which are considered unethical and may even be illegal. These include external applications which alter system settings (such as a browser's home page), spawn pop-ups, and insert advertisements into non-affiliated webpages. Some companies can track what a person looks up and searches for and then make advertisements on the pages they visit that advertise the products they think that particular person will like. Online advertising has become a big part on the world wide web. Everywhere a user looks seems to be an advertisement. This time of advertisement works and is very effective so companies are going to continue to use it.
Another important aspect is education and the internet. Everyone has seen the ads on TV about taking college classes at home in your PJs. This may sound fun for some but for others the idea may be unappealing to. There are many different places to receive this online education from. These ads offer services to find the place and program for you. Online education is a big thing; there are many details that these ads don’t say upfront. All of these details are things you need to know if an online education is something you are considering
An online education can be defined as this; any form of education received from a source other than a normal campus. This can also be online learning and online training learning or training conducted via a computer network, e.g. using the internet and the World Wide Web, a local area network (LAN), or an intranet. Today most Universities offer online courses. Trine University even offers a few online courses. Other bigger Universities offer these courses nationwide to anyone.
When completing an online education requires the student to take a greater sense of responsibility towards their education, you must take the time to study the material and complete the course objectives. Most courses today assign course objectives. The students are given an allotted time to complete these objectives. Also some institutions require some face-face meetings with instructors or face-face lab time with other students and/or the instructor. Because of the courses being online students and instructors can be in both different physical locations and on different time schedules. This may cause difficulty when meeting with instructors. Once a student has completed all the required objectives they usually need to submit a final project and all the objectives together.
Some positives to online education are; students take greater pride in their learning because they are their own teacher. They take time to complete objectives and build their own understanding. This is otherwise known as project based learning and is very effective. Also students can learn on their own time. Some people like to study early in the morning, late at night, a little at a time, or much in one sitting. Online education enables the student to make their own choices.
Some negatives are students won’t build a strong enough understanding of the subject. This could be because they didn’t understand the directions or didn’t give it enough time. Also when using the online education in secondary and elementary age students they may lack the adult influences they need at this time of their lives. These influences are very important for these students to develop properly.
Another aspect of the world that the internet has greatly affected is the field of news. When you go back in time to about 20 years ago anything that was media or news related was either spread by word of mouth or by print. Now with the convenience, ease and cost of online news it is really affecting major providers. A great example of this is after 80 years of being a major news publisher, Newsweek, is going to go to all digital print in the year 2013. The reason they are doing this is a majority of their articles are being read is from online sources. Newsweek is not making the profits that they use to from the print copies. If the rate at which people continue stop buying the actual print copies continues, every news or magazine provider in the country is going to go fully electronic as well. But is this all really a good thing?
If you step back and what is happening to news publishers there are a lot of negative effects that are happening for not only the companies, but for everyone as a whole. A main reason that people prefer to read their articles online is because of cost, it doesn’t cost them anything at all. That means the only way for the news companies to make money is from advertisements, but these days many companies are taking their advertisements to companies other than news publishers. Another negative from this is blog sources. Readers are starting to get an increased amount of their information from bloggers instead of creditable sources such as journalists. The news field is being faced with some difficult hurtles in recent years and they seem like they are only going to get worse which is going to result in the loss of some news companies.
Right now with the internet we can do so many things. But a big thing is that we are able to watch TV and movies online. The first internet broadcast was done by ABC World News broadcasted their news show. Now we have three major branches for internet TV, they are Live TV, Video on Demand and Interactive TV. With these new ways of watching shows online they are able to be broadcasted on the internet in China and India.
Most every major broadcast company has developed their own internet distribution. For an example Hulu is a division of NBC, which distributes their own material. Many companies have built their own branches to develop Internet- Specific Content (ISC), so that they can use it on your own time, and if you miss the show you are now able to watch it. Right Now about 11 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 already watch TV online at least once a week. Online shopping has also grown with the internet.
Online shopping has become very popular in the last two decades. Almost anything can be bought online. Books, clothes, furniture, electronics, and even food are just a few examples of things that can be purchased via the Internet. Amazon and Ebay are two examples of popular online shopping sites in the United States. In the article titled “E-Shopping and Its Relationship to In-Store Shopping”, the author discusses the type of people who tend to shop online. People who shop online are usually under the age of 40, and have a higher income and education. Some reasons that people might decide to shop online are better selection of products, lower prices, convenience, and shop and Internet accessibility. Some disadvantages to online shopping include not being able to preview the product before purchase, the possibility of fraud, and the lack of privacy.
Internet is different all over the world. Some examples are Taiwan and China. In Taiwan, it is very similar to the United States. All websites that can be accessed in the US can also be accessed in Taiwan. Twitter is not as frequently used, though. The main social media in Taiwan is Facebook.
In China, it is a lot different. There are a lot of limitations in the Chinese Internet. There is no access to Google, YouTube, Facebook, or Twitter in China’s network domain. A person muse use Freegate to access these websites. In China, there have their own social media. For example, instead of Facebook, they use Renren, Weibo instead of Twitter, Youkyu instead of YouTube, QQ instead of Skype and Baidu instead of Google. Moreover, there is internet police in China. They monitor the posts on the internet. If you post anything about politics or something too sensitive, the post will be deleted without notifying you.
By: A. Bledsoe