From Neatorama.com
July 29, 2008
Click here for the original article
“[The Internet] is not a truck. It’s a series of tubes.” – U.S. Senator Ted Stevens
Ah, the Internet: you use it every day for school, work or fun. In such a short period of time, the Net has grown into an essential every day thing that it’s hard to imagine life without it.
But how much do you know about the Internet? Did you know that you have the Soviets to thank for this wonderful invention? Or that despite the flack that he got for inventing the Internet, Al Gore actually did play a major role in the creation of the Net?
Here are [just a couple of] the 10 Things You Should Know About the Internet:
1. Sputnik: Kick in the Pants that Launched the Net
In 1957, the Soviet launched Sputnik (Russian for “traveling companion” or “satellite”), the first man-made object to orbit the Earth. It was a big surprise to the United States, who feared that it was falling behind technologically against its Cold War enemy.
In direct response to Sputnik, President Dwight D. Eisenhower directed the Department of Defense to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency or ARPA in 1958. One of its research programs was headed by Dr. J.C. R. Licklider (or simply “Lick”), who convinced the U.S. Government to create a computer network, which would later evolve into the Internet.
Licklider, in his epic 1963 memo to “Members and Affiliates of the Intergalactic Computer Network” (Yes, that’s right – “Intergalactic”) explored the challenges in creating ARPANET, the precursor to today’s Internet.
So, who says war isn’t good for anything? The Internet is arguably one of the most important technologies that came out of the Cold War.
5. Al Gore Actually Did Create the Internet. Sort Of.
“Remember America, I gave you the Internet and I can take it away,” joked Al Gore on the Late Show with David Letterman.
Okay, I was being cheeky with that heading. But here’s the story: During the 2000 U.S. Presidential Election, Al Gore took quite a drubbing for the claim that he “invented” the Internet. Problem was, Gore made no such claim. During an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN, Gore was asked how he would distinguish himself from others, and he replied:
During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system. …
Though the term “initiative in creating the Internet” is vague, Gore did quite a bit of legislative work in creating a high-capacity national data network that is a significant part of the Internet. And don’t forget: though Gore didn’t coin it, he did popularize the term “information superhighway.”
For more, read “Al Gore and the Creation of the Internet” by Richard Wiggins.
10. The Rise of Social Networking and Social Media
In a way, the Web is a big social network. Even before there was the Web, BBSes served as online communities where people chatted and collaborated. But the term “social networking” became a buzzword when it was reported in 2005 that MySpace had more pageviews than Google (Source).
But before MySpace, there was Classmates.com (launched in 1995) and SixDegrees.com (launched in 1997, dead by 2001). Afterwards, more successful websites followed: Friendster, MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn and Facebook. And how successful were they? MySpace was sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. for $580 million and Facebook is now valued in the billions of dollars).
There’s a social networking website for everybody under the sun: Like movies? There’s Flixster. Online games? Avatars United. Anime? Gaia Online. Books? LibraryThing and so on. (Wikipedia has a huge list of social networking sites here)
On the other side of the new Internet are social media websites. The term “social media” is kind of a hodgepodge (Wikipedia, blogs like Neatorama, and videosharing websites like YouTube can all be classified as social media). But all of them have one thing in common: they encourage active interaction and participation of their users.
An interesting subset of the social media websites are social news sites like Digg, reddit and Mixx. These user-driven websites let people discover and share content on the Internet in a social way: users submit and vote on others’ submissions to determine which links get featured prominently on the websites’ front pages.
But there is a darker-side to social media website. The “Digg Revolt” on May 1, 2007 (remember that?), over the AACS encryption key controversy illustrates how the “social” in social media can be a double-edged sword:
Photo: rtomayko [Flickr]
Digg.com has become one of the Web’s top news portals by putting the power to choose the news in the hands of its users. Just how much power they wield, however, only became clear one Tuesday night almost a year ago, when Digg turned into what one user called a “digital Boston Tea Party.”
When the site’s administrators attempted to prevent users from posting links to pages revealing the copyright encryption key for HD-DVD discs, Digg’s users rebelled. Hundreds of references to the code flooded the site’s submissions, filling its main pages and overwhelming the administrators’ attempts to control the site’s content. (Source)
Ultimately, Digg admins capitulated to its users’ demands and stopped deleting stories with the forbidden codes.
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