History of the Internet

You've learned what the Internet is and a little bit about how it works. Now, we're going to take a step back and learn why it was created. But before we do that, I'd like to introduce myself. My name is Gian Picasa and I'm a Program Manager in Android Security. I help protect Android's two billion plus users by managing new security features for each of Android's deserts or versions of Android. I've always loved technology and I worked in IT since I was 16 and throughout university, I would fill my past time reading about new tech and building servers from old computer parts in my basement. My earliest memory of working on tech is waiting for my parents to go to sleep so I could quietly dial up the Internet while the phone was free and just browse websites all night long and read about random tech things. My first jobs were as a one-person IT crew at three non-profit organizations. It was both stressful and really exciting to be responsible for everything, from configuring and administrating backup servers to just showing new employees how to access email and use their computers. I'm really excited to be here with you. I was never a really great test taker and my grades reflected that. But I knew with hard work and perseverance, I could build a great career in IT and so can you. Let's get started and dig in a bit more on the Internet. The Internet has become an essential part of our lives. Our bank accounts, entertainment, news and education are all on the Internet. It's important to learn why that is, since some of the original designs of the Internet have reached their limitations. As an IT support specialist, you should understand what the future of the Internet holds and why. Let's go back in time to the 1950s where it all started. Remember, back then computers were huge and bulky. If you're a programmer, you needed to directly interact with these massive computers that would get real old real fast, especially if you had several people who wanted to use the only computing resource available. The late 1960s, the US government spun up a project called DARPA. It went on to create the earliest version of the Internet that we've seen today with the ARPANET. Eventually, computer programmers were able to share a single computing resource by being able to remotely access the computer. But there were still a big problem. Networks couldn't talk to each other. It wasn't until the 1970s that we had a critical breakthrough in computer networking that fix this problem. It was thanks to computer scientists, Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn who created the method we call the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol, or TCP/IP. First, only a handful of computers in universities, governments and businesses adopt TCP/IP, then hundreds. Then in the span of 50 years, billions of computers. TCP/IP is the protocol that we use on the Internet today. Finally, people around the world could send data to one another. But there were still a problem. The information they sent was just text, it wasn't centralized and it was pretty bland. Then in the 1990s, a computer scientist by the name of Tim Berners-Lee invented the worldwide web. It utilized different protocols for displaying information in webpages and became the predominant way of communication and accessing the Internet. Anyone who had an Internet connection at that time was able to access the information source of the World Wide Web. It's been 30 years since the creation of the World Wide Web. We've gone from sending simple email messages in the viewing basic web pages to having video chats and instant news updates, order food, buy books, and even cars in a matter of seconds, taking the online course like this wasn't even possible until recently. The creation of the Internet that we know today was the culmination of knowledge and engineering from many brilliant scientists and organizations.