The Interwebs

The internet is not older than dirt. It's not even older than Sean Connery. Al Gore invented it. And look how we abuse his creation. He clearly made it so that we wouldn't waste as much paper to help slow our destruction of the planet. America has abused this gift and Gore is, by this time, threatening to take it away. So, help heal the planet, or you lose all your internet.

1958- ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) Formed by US to try to get a boost in the cold war's technology race. The idea was to create a large network, perhaps even one of global proportions.

1969- The first "node" of the internet, called ARPANET, was created, and still contributes to today's internet.

1978- Britain catches on to the network phenomenon and a huge collaborative effort of the BPO, Tymet, and WUI results in IPSS, which covered a large portion of the civilized world by the time 1981 came around.

1983 "Birth of the Internet" NSF creates a network running through TCP/IP, which was available to businesses by 1985.

1989 Tim Berners-Lee, "Father of the Internet" begins work on the first web pages, as well as HTML and HTTP.

1991 World Wide Web project gets public showing.

1993 Browsers for the public are available.

1996 Internet is a household term, although its usage is largely mistakenly used, when World Wide Web would be the appropriate term.

2000 64% of Americans are online.

2004 Highspeed internet is availabe to 77% of Americans.


And to think Vannevar Bush was skeptical of the possibility of creating such a network, not to mention nuclear capabilities (i.e. fitting a bomb into the nose cone of a missile). Bush predicted a giant brain of knowledge whose mechanics would rival the Empire States building in size and require a coolant system equivalent to Niagra falls.


Sources Referenced: Wikipedia.org (not the most credible) and PEW Internet.