Internet History and Networks

Technological Development

The Internet dates back to the early 1960s, principally in the United States but with some parallel developments in other nations. At this time, electronic telecommunications between two parties were a matter of circuit-switched networks, each interaction having a dedicated circuit. The infrastructure was cables and switching gear to open and close the circuits. Broadcast communications provided an alternative but, in both cases, the principal characteristic was that receiver and sender were simultaneously “present” in the communication. The Internet, as it has come to be known, changed this approach: it was a packet-switched network that did not rely on open circuits and copresence.

Packet-switched networking was first suggested by Paul Baran in 1964, (with Donald Davies and Leonard Kleinrock independently working on the topic). Packet-switched networks did not require simultaneous connection. Rather than using a stream of data, such communications involved breaking the message into many small packets of information that, along with instructions on how to assemble the packets, could then be sent via diverse routes at different times to the recipient. So long as the recipient eventually received all packets and instructions, it did not matter which route the packets took. Computers were essential to this concept, providing storage, routing, and processing power.

The most significant early example was ARPANET—an experimental network created in 1969 by the U.S. government. ARPANET is commonly referred to as the forerunner of the Internet, although at the time, few people would have foreseen the revolutionary changes that the Internet would entail. ARPANET was not designed for human communication, instead serving as the testing grounds to share then-scarce computer resources among researchers in different locations. Yet, what soon became clear is that a network of connected computers could easily sustain people's communications with each other, even when not copresent in time and space.

There were similar innovations in other countries—within private companies for commercial exploitation, as public service networks, and as computer bulletin boards were a staple of hobbyists. These developments occurred without coordination but with enthusiastic hopes for a connected information society. The Internet emerged when these separate networks interconnected, using the Internet Protocol (IP) that Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf designed in the 1970s: IP was the set of software rules to enable such interconnection.

The Internet's Effects on Social Networks

But technological development does not tell all of the story: the Internet also emerges from the popularization and simplification of the equipment and software needed to connect and use it, the commercialization of online activity to sustain business development, and the spreading throughout society of the cultural meanings that made connectivity desirable and useful. Much of this additional development occurred in the middle to late 1990s. And despite the sudden decline in investments in technology in 2000 (the dot-com crash), the next decade has seen an intensification of the role of networking and connectivity. Critically, while the 1990s were the decade of the virtual community—of escape from the everyday into cyberspace—the 2000s have shown that the real power of the Internet emerges when it becomes integrated into that everyday world with no clear boundaries between online and off-line.

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