Artifact 3 – The Search Engine in America

The Internet has been revolutionary to the world at large. It represents the culmination of the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer. It is simultaneously a platform for world-wide broadcasts, a medium of communication, and a tool of collaboration. It is without a doubt, the most significant advance in communication technology in the history of mankind. Before search engines though, users had to know the exact URL that they were seeking. It required prior knowledge to access specific information, which is fine for limited user interaction such as universities. The culmination of these things and the invention of computers and networks were necessary, but not sufficient, steps towards what the internet is today; it was the search engine that made the internet.

While Internet technology was being experimented with and on by professional scientists, the usefulness of grand-scale networking became apparent. E-mail, especially. Such to a degree that, by the seventies, computer networks started springing into existence wherever anyone could get funding. the United States Department of Energy established its own network, and then did it again for another internal group. NASA quickly followed, and finally AT&T created USENET using the UNIX operating system. Others soon connected academic mainframe computer in a program known as BITNET.

With the exception of maybe BITNET and USENET, all of these networks were purpose built, though. They were intended, and restricted, to the companies, scientists or universities which they linked together. You couldn’t access them from any computer anywhere. To this end, Vinton Cerf began to work: connect all computers everywhere. And thus, he invented the “Transmission Control Protocol” or TCP. Later he added the “Internet Protocol” as well, the IP we are all familiar with.

Cerf’s protocol transformed the fledgling internet into a full-blown worldwide network. Through the eighties, scientists used it to send files between computers all over the world. But, it wasn’t until 1991 that a programmer named Tim Berners-Lee introduced the “World Wide Web” as a system that wasn’t just for direct sending and receiving, but as a system accessible by anyone on the internet. A “web”, if you will.

In 1992, students from Illinois created a browser called Mosaic, later known as Netscape. It allowed users to see pictures and text on the same page and allowed navigation via scrollbars and clickable links. Simultaneously, Congress gave the go-ahead for the web to be used for commercial purposed. Naturally, it was a stampede for companies to set up their own websites, and “e-commerce” entrepreneurs began selling goods online. This boost in web users drew even more corporate attention and Microsoft Windows’ Internet Explorer came into being alongside AOL, America Online.

During the first decade or so of wide-spread use, the internet was something of a novelty. It existed, but it wasn’t connected to everything the way it is today. Cellular phones were just used for calling. Social Media did not exist at all. Laptops were bulky and people really didn’t own home computers. I mean, DVDs and CDs were just catching on. The Internet was used almost exclusively for e-mail, commerce, and forums. From 2000 to today, the internet exploded. Browsers such as Opera, Firefox, Chrome, and Explorer waged war, and cell phones came equipped with them all. Social media stole the stage and became the most widely visited sites. Myspace had its heyday, and today it is Facebook’s. Location tracking, crowd sourcing, “.com” companies, Amazon, and the countless apps that have come into existence are all due to the invention if the internet: the most important advance in communication technology in human history.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

References

https://www.internetsociety.org/internet/what-internet/history-internet/brief-history-internet