We can’t live without it, and it seems like it’s been there our whole lives (which in some cases is totally true), but the technology we use today to connect to the Internet is relatively recent. In fact, it is estimated that the birth of the modern Internet happened almost forty years ago, and that only since the late 1990s has the network really become popular not only among large organizations, but also on personal computers in each home. Today we are constantly connected to this great global network not only through our computer, but also through the Smartphone, the Tablet or any other mobile device with Internet access. We even have connection in the washing machine or the refrigerator, to keep everything connected. That is the goal , to live in a completely interconnected world . The same goal that was had at the beginning of the Internet.
Like the vast majority of advances that have occurred in the last century , the Internet also arises from the seed of a technological advance focused on the military terrain . In this case, to defend one’s own national security against a surprise attack. The first decentralized networks were built in the United States during the Cold War , as a method to send reliable and secure information against a surprise attack by the Soviets. Many years have passed from those first computer networks to what we have today, and many advances have come . Both in the form and in the use of the network itself, which is now available to anyone who connects to it, making it the window to a virtual world of information, entertainment and possibilities , although always with the shadow of the possible control of our data and the loss of our privacy.
The idea
The Internet seed arose in the 1960s, when during the Cold War, various universities, in collaboration with the United States Ministry of Defense , created several decentralized and computational networks to send the information as packets, and that it can reach all connected nodes, even when one of them disconnects. The ARPA and ARPANET networks were the result of all the research that was developed in North America to connect computers that at that time, and obviously, were not too fast or functional . But the seed was already in place, and at the beginning of the 80s there were hundreds of computers connected to these networks , each with its own protocol, with its own coding … until the system that would unify them emerged. everyone.
The WWW and its meaning
In 1983 , the United States Department of Defense decided to put an end to their information and limit their networks, creating the TCP / IP protocol to give access to certain “addresses” of computers. The ARPANET network mutated into Arpa Internet, subsequently keeping that name. In 1989, the HTML, HTTP and Web Browser protocols were created for the first time, first restricted to a small CERN network, and then opened to the general public in 1991. The www that appears at the beginning of the pages it would become the classic introduction to access them, and it comes from the initials of the expression World Wide Web. In 1993 there were only a hundred pages under this protocol. By the end of the same decade they would already touch one million worldwide. The Internet had become overcrowded.
The development of the network
The Internet network, which has managed to become the most important on a global level, now far from the control of a few users or the defense of a country, has developed in the last two decades at a cruising speed. From pages to find information to social networks , the Internet has become a true virtual world where we can find everything. The original pages and blogs have also evolved as technology did, especially with fiber optic lines , which give faster access to large platforms. Now it is possible to share huge packages with video files, audio, games, etc … The big platforms have become giants that monopolize a good part of the network traffic, and Internet penetration has already arrived 60% of the world’s population , who can connect to the Internet through any device.
Use of the Internet
Originally, the Internet served as an internal communications network for Defense and Intelligence departments in some countries, to share private and important information. However, the use of the Internet has been changing as users themselves have been able to take preponderant roles in pages and blogs. Today anyone can have their own space on the net, where they can develop their voice, their thoughts. Blogs and personal pages gave way to social networks in the middle of the last decade, and today electronic commerce and these social networks are the ones that serve the most traffic when connecting to the network. Today we can do anything on the Internet, from buying an island to meeting the love of our life, enjoying unlimited movies and series or listening to all the music that exists, practically.
The services offered
Everything that exists on the Internet must be hosted on servers , which are physical, but allow those files to be kept in a kind of digital limbo known as “the cloud”. It is a space that we can access to enjoy those files and that content, whether written, audiovisual or of any other kind, from anywhere in the world. It is the original idea of interconnection of devices, but taken to its maximum expression. The Internet offers us all kinds of services, both as users as well as as creators. We can do a live from Spain on Twitch and be seen by people from more than 100 countries at the same time, talking to each other and interconnected in that infallible network that has become essential today for our daily life.