Internet History: Internet History

I will be using the words "internet", "web", "web page", "website", and "online" interchangeably, but they all basically mean the same. According to WordNet, internet is defined as "a computer network consisting of a worldwide network of computer networks that use the Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) network protocols to facilitate data transmission and exchange.[1]

Who invented the web?

This would be a tough question to answer if the internet didn't exist. I guess depending on the age, a person might say that Netscape, America Online, Yahoo, Microsoft or Google may have created the internet; and they would be wrong. Those companies that have invented web browsers that allows users to view and search for information published onto the internet. In order to publish information online, a website must be created and managed by a web host. The web host stores the website and all its web pages and makes it available to computers connected to the internet using TCP/IP networks. Websites and web pages is what contains the data or information that is viewed on browsers and created using computer programming scripts such as, XML, C#, ASP, C+, Java, and HTML that was all grandfathered by Tim Berners-Lee; inventor of Hyper-text Markup Language (HTML) [3]

The evolution of ARAPANET email

Electronic mail is a natural and perhaps inevitable use of networked communication technology that developed along with the evolution of the Internet. Indeed, message exchange in one form or another has existed from the early days of timesharing computers. Network capable email was developed for the ARPANET shortly after it's creation, and has now evolved into the powerful email technology that is the most widely used application on the Internet today.

Who Regulates the Web?

The web is regulated by the W3C organization and its mission is to lead the World Wide Web (W3) to its fullest potential by way of setting standards and creating guidelines that will promote long-term growth and development into unique products and services.[4] Tim Berners-Lee is part of the W3C management team and has a very interesting biography. [5]

Tim Berner-Lee is the overall Director of W3C, is the distinguished 3COM Founders Professor of Engineering in the School of Engineering, and at the Department of Electrical Engineering and Comuter Science at MITs CSAIL.

Tim invented the World Wide Web in 1989 while working at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. He wrote the first WWW client (a browser-editor running under NeXTStep) and the first WWW server along with most of the communications software, defining URLs, HTTP and HTML. [6]

[1] Princeton University, WordNet, definition of "Internet" (accessed: 06/24/2010)
http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=internet

[2] Glow Virtual Web Services, definition of "web host" (accessed: 06/24/2010)
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=1G1GGLQ_ENUS326&=&q=cache%3Ahttp%3A%2F%2Fglowvirtual.com%2Ffaqs%2Fdefinitions.html+%22web+host%3A%22&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

[3] The inventor of the web found at About.com, History of HTML - Tim Berners-Lee (accessed: 06/24/2010)
http://inventors.about.com/od/computersoftware/a/html.htm

[4] World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), W3C Mission (accessed: 06/24/2010)
http://www.w3.org/Consortium/mission

[5] World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), People -Tim Berners-Lee (accessed: 06/24/2010),
http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/

[6] World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), People -Tim Berners-Lee (accessed: 06/24/2010),
http://www.w3.org/People/all#timbl

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Monday, July 19, 2010