Something that has become commonplace in our daily lives is the use of the Internet. Its main uses, frequented by users, cover the information routine, the use of social networks, entertainment, training, reviewing the media, etc.

We can see the Internet as a tool that allows an unlimited number of people to communicate easily and freely, without barriers. But… What is the Internet?

First of all, Internet is basically a worldwide network of interconnected computers in the form of a spider web. It is the union of all the networks and computers distributed throughout the world, defining itself as a global network in which all the networks come together.

Once this is understood, we can immerse ourselves in its history.

Before the Internet

The Internet revolutionized the field of communications in such a radical way that today it is the global means of daily communication in our lives. Today we can send information from one place in the world to another in just a few seconds, but this was not always the case.

These are some customs that were very normal before the Internet:

1. The address book

Next to the phone, there used to be a small notebook that kept contact numbers and addresses (handwritten) of family, friends and acquaintances.

2. Send postcards

Before the existence of WhatsApp, email and social networks, there was no choice but to contact our loved ones through postal mail, which consisted of putting a letter in an envelope, sealing it and sending it by mail.

3. Handwrite

Keyboards used to be reserved for office workers and IT specialists, so everyone else had to use pen and paper to type.

4. Phone booth

Although telephone booths still exist today, their use is not compared to that of years ago. These were small structures that contained a telephone inside, located on public roads.

5. Buy the newspaper

The newspaper is still used by many at breakfast or coffee time, but thanks to the digitization of communication, there is almost no such custom of going every day to buy your own newspaper.

Birth of the Internet: The Cold War

To begin with the history of the Internet, we must go back to the year 1947, the beginning of the Cold War, a confrontation that began at the end of World War II. This conflict was between the Western and Eastern blocs, led by the United States and the Soviet Union respectively.

In this war, two opposing models faced each other with the aim of implanting in a greater number of countries the system that each bloc considered “the good one”. It was called the Cold War because the US and the Soviet Union never directly clashed militarily.

At the end of the 1960s, in the midst of the war, the United States created an exclusively military tool so that, in the event of a nuclear threat or a Russian attack, state communications would be guaranteed and information could be accessed from anywhere in the country. This network was specifically created in the year 1969 and was called ARPANET.

ARPANET

Starting in the 1960s, ARPA emerged, the Advanced Research Projects Agency, an initiative of the United States Department of Defense that had among its objectives the creation of a computer network capable of of communicating users on different computers.

In 1969 Michel Elie, one of the pioneers of the Internet, enters UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles) and joins ARPA with a research grant. At the end of that year, he manages to connect the computer at UCLA with another at SRI (Stanford Research Institute).

Shortly thereafter, there were four interconnected American universities. This network was called ARPANET, whose objective, as we mentioned before, was exclusively military and had to maintain communications in case of war in the face of fear and uncertainty.

Two years later, there were already 40 computers connected. The network grew so much that its communication system became obsolete.

In the year 1970, the American engineer Ray Tomlinson was entrusted with the task of modifying this means used by the military to send communications, since, according to him, "there was no really good way of leaving messages to people”. Without knowing it, Ray invented one of the most popular forms of communication today, what we know as email. He not only accomplished his task, but also invented a new symbol, the at sign (@), the use of which remains to this day.

ARPANET continued to expand, allowing anyone with academic or research purposes to access it. Scientists began to use and develop it so that opinions can be shared and collaborative work can be established.

It was not until 1983 that the ARPANET, in order to allow computers to communicate on a network, adopted the TCP/IP protocol, resulting in the definition of the Internet (International Network of Computers).

ARPANET to the Internet

The number of users connected to the network grew significantly and the Internet began to internationalize. The use of the network was limited to the exchange of emails and to serve as a documentary collection in which to store global information. However, locating and identifying information is still a complex task.

The creation of the protocol TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol), which is the heart of the Internet, despite allowing communication between different computers that are miles away, was not enough. The problem with this is that the computers communicated using IP, which is a unique address that identifies a device on the Internet, and this was a number which was impractical to memorize, for example 192.0.2.44. Thus, Paul Mockapetris would be responsible for creating the DNS (Domain Name System) protocol, which allows you to assign a name to an IP address, such as www.google.com.

Imagine when you use GPS. If you need to go to a place, you write the address and not the coordinates. Just as remembering the name of a street is much easier than its GPS coordinates, the same thing happens with a domain. It is much easier to type the domain name in the browser than its IP address

The only thing missing now was a person with enough intelligence and creativity to take all of this to the next level.

In 1989 a man named Tim Berners-Lee appeared, who brought with him the representation of how we visualize and access information through the Internet. In short, the websites.

Tim Berners-Lee, today known as the father of the web, wrote a proposal for what would become the World Wide Web. He presented software based on protocols that allowed information to be viewed from any node on the network through hypertext known as HTML (HyperText Markup Language). Hypertext markup language allowed embedding objects, images, and videos. All a great advance. Together with it, other specifications were developed, such as the URL or the HTTP (HyperText Transfer Protocol).

The WWW grew rapidly: in 1993 there were only 100 World Wide Web Sites and by 1997 there were over 200,000. Since then it continues to grow to this day.

Web 1.0 was the first state of the World Wide Web, which dominated until 1999. It was the first phase that appeared in the 90s, in which the Internet was just a means to access information. These were static pages so that the user could navigate in search of data, but without the possibility of interacting. This was about to change with the arrival of the next website.

Social Networks: Web 2.0

With the arrival of the new century, the Internet stopped being something static to allow the user to interact with the content, thus being called Web 2.0 or also known as “social web”. At this time, information could not only be accessed and consulted, but also created. Users were allowed to interact and collaborate with each other, as content creators.

The social network began to be a collaborative work platform, ceasing to be a simple container or source of information.

The distinguishing feature of this new stage of the web is the collaborative participation of users. MySpace was one of the next social networks to appear on the scene in 2003, allowing its users to access all kinds of publishing and communication services, offering image, video and blog hosting.

In the heat of this revolution, a group of social platforms were developed, which are still standing today, such as Facebook, Twitter or YouTube.

In September 2010 the Internet already had 1,971 million users, that is, 28.8% of the world's population. Ten years later, the number of users worldwide reached 4.54 billion (approximately 60% of the world's population), of which 3,800 are active users on social networks. This is indicated by the We Are Social 2020 report.

Welcome to Web 3.0

The web 3.0 is the most current type of web, whose main characteristic is democratization. It is the next generation of internet technology that relies heavily on machine learning, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain. Its goal is to give users more control over their data online.

The websites in web 3.0 are built through a decentralized blockchain where there is no centralized ownership of content or platforms.

Web3 promises a substantial change in the future of the Internet, with a strong emphasis on consumer privacy.

This decentralized network that we are talking about is peer-to-peer (P2P) technology, which allows processing power to be distributed over hundreds of thousands of servers, where everyone owns the network in part. As we can see, there is a big difference with the centralized network, such as the servers of Amazon and Google, where they have complete control of the flow of information and, in addition, they are the ones in charge of determining its use.

Web 3.0 is based on technologies such as blockchain, something that will allow the Internet to be decentralized and give users greater power. In this way, instead of entrusting our data to large companies and depending heavily on them, a simple user will be able to create content, tools and make a more decentralized use of the Internet.

The most important point is that it will eliminate the centralization of data in third parties. The users themselves are going to be able to create content or establish communications without that information first passing through a third party that can control it.

Conclusion

The Internet, despite having its pros and cons, is the most widely used tool today for commerce, socializing, research, entertainment, education and more.

Its evolution was a long journey full of changes and it will continue to expand into new iterations. Undoubtedly our way of communicating on a day-to-day basis will continue to change and hopefully it will be for the better.

Thanks for getting here. We read in another post 😊