Coolest Thing Ever

What is the coolest thing ever? In our opinion is no the cell phone, the cars, the airplanes or the satellite television, is something more, something that offers free access to information for over 6 billions people, something that make us closer to each other, something that lets us communicate and something that made us free to express whatever and whenever we want and that thing is the INTERNET. The history of the Internet goes back in the early 1960s. In this period of time the people had a great and brilliant idea to create something that allows computers to share information in the military field and scientific developments. In 1962 J.C.R. Licklider was the first man to propose a global network of computers and at the end of 1962 he tried to develop it. The first connection from a computer to another was made in 1965 when Lawrence Roberts was able to connect a California computer to a Massachusetts computer thanks to dial-up telephone technology. After this test, Lawrence Roberts started to develop his plan of ARPANET in 1966. The beginning of the coolest thing ever officially started in 1969 when they succeeded in connecting 4 computers from University of Utah, UCSB, Stanford Research Institute and UCLA – all universities are in the southwestern US. The connection between the computers worked great, so in 1970 Cal., MIT, Systems Development Corp, BBN and Harvard were added and in 1971 Case-Western Reserve U, Carnegie-Mellon and Stanford were added.

The main design of the Internet was to provide a communication network even if the main sites or the main route were destroyed by a nuclear attack. The idea was to create a connection that could manage the traffic through alternate routes. The beginning of the Internet had nothing friendly and you couldn’t find the things we find now on the Internet because it was used by librarians, engineers, scientists and computers experts to communicate and to transmit information. In those days there were no office or home personal computers; therefore the Internet was not for the large public. The email was created in 1972 by Ray Tomlinson for ARPANET. Ray Tomlinson also was the man that chosen the @ symbol to link the username to the address. In 1972 was created the telnet protocol – the system that lets you use data and programs from a remote computer after you log in to it. In 1973 appeared the FTP protocol – this one means File Transfer Protocol and it allows the files transmission between different computers or different systems. The first things and information available on web were automated catalogs made by members of many libraries which they were not user-friendly. In 1978 the new ways to exchange information were provides by newsgroups – the discussions and opinion regarding a topic appeared on the Internet. In 981 Because It’s Time Network also known as BITNET was able to connect IBM mainframes from all over the world to provide mail services. For here new thing started in the Internet development, the e-mail discussion lists. From 1986 when the commands for telnet, FTP and e-mail were standardized many people began to learn how to use the Internet. The people started to share files and to communicate all over the world. The sites and the information available on the Internet were limited but many other departments and organization began to connect to the Internet. The first search engine was called Archie and it was created in 1989 by Peter Deutsch. Archie was a software that was able to index the FTP sites and allowed anyone the search for the software or the information they wanted. In 1991 at the University of Minnesota was created the first user-friendly interface of the Internet. Since them the Internet has become faster, better and accessible to everyone with a computer and an Internet connection. The social networking started to grow enabling many people to share ideas, interests and to communicate in many different ways. Site like Second Life, Flickr, YouTube, Twitter or Facebook offer people from around the world to express their ideas, their believes and to share them with people everywhere. Now the Internet offers us unlimited information and unlimited access to it. You can find anything you want on the Internet from free encyclopedias ( like Wikipedia)  to dating sites and free movies, songs and free communication between people. Thanks to applications like Yahoo Messenger, Skype or e-mails we can keep in touch with our colleagues, friends and family even if they are one continent away. The Internet gives you also the possibility to sell and buy whatever you want, you don’t have to leave your home and go to into crowded places just to look for good book or a nice movie, you can do this from you home and the thing you have ordered comes right at your door. We can search for online tests and information about anything (colleague applications, world news, local news, events in history and anything we can think of) or we can access our university courses on the Internet. Everything you can thing of is on the Internet and that is way this is the coolest thing ever, well not actually a thing, but one of the coolest inventions human kind has done. By the year 2011 almost 22% of the planet’s population will stay connected to the Internet every day and will surf it regularly. This study excludes the people who search the web from their mobile phones and it is only for the online users that access the Internet with a laptop or a desktop computer.