The Internet

When historians look back at the latter half of the twentieth century, they might well remember it less as the time man walked on the moon and more as the time when the Internet was born. The Advancement Research Projects Agency Network, known as the ARPANET, was developed in the 1960's by the U.S. Department of Defense. This was the world's first operational informational sharing network, and the predecessor of what we now call the Internet. Although the creation of the Internet was primarily to allow the sharing of resources, its true popularity came in the ability to send and receive mail. This communication process, known as electronic mail or more commonly referred to as e-mail, has now evolved into the most used application on the Internet today.

E-mail has had a great impact on the amount of information sent worldwide. It has become an important method of transmitting information previously relayed via regular mail, telephone, courier, fax, television or radio. An examination of these previous forms of communication provided an easy understanding of why e-mail became such a success. For example, communicating through speech, face-to-face, must be coordinated with others by location and time, therefore only a few could be reached. When utilizing writing or printing, the preparation of documents can cause a delay in time, but this method enabled the sender to reach many more people than face-to-face communication. Telephone, radio and television are able to reach a mass of people globally, but this too, had to be synchronized in time. E-mail has brought about the concept of anything, to anyone, anytime, anywhere.

After such an achievement as e-mail, what could be next? With the advancement of the Internet op...

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...aking a step backwards in education (252-257).

With the introduction and utilization of information sharing first introduced by the Military as a means to communicate, to the ability to find a common interest with a person whom you may never meet or speak with, the Internet has forever evolved technology and our lives. The advancements are limited only by the imagination as proven with the metamorphosis of e-mail, to the ‘instant' communication of Instant Messaging, to the personal sagas found in Weblogs. Meanwhile with the unlimited possibilities comes the responsibility of using these new achievements for good purposes, however, opportunists may see this as an new way of exploiting the naive. Advocates and critics may disagree on the uses of the Internet, but one thing is definite, it has become a part of our every day lives and will forever change the future.