The Internet is probably the most important invention of our era, comparable to other milestones of human ingenuity such as the light bulb or the steam engine. In fact, the internet responds to the concept of ‘global village’, coined by Professor Hebert McLuhan. Scientists and philosophers already had in mind the idea of a global communications network, due to the natural tendency of the human being to share, to create community. All things considered, the internet, in anthropological terms, could be one more step in human evolution, an inevitable state, one more extension of our way of communicating and getting closer to the world and to other people.
But for that, an ambition was needed. Many times it is this feeling, and not that of brotherhood, that drives innovations that later contribute to the brotherhood of peoples. This is the case of the internet, which was born as a secure and secret academic communications network in the United States Department of Defense that, during the Cold War, could withstand a nuclear attack. This first conception was called ARPA, which later, in 1968, would be baptized as ARPANET. In turn, the most cutting-edge research centers, such as MIT, were already working on the technology necessary to send a transmission of information from one computer to another, the first email.
Over the years, ARPANET was democratized, and went from being a secret Defense network to an academic network, until the first public demonstrations were carried out and the sending of the first emails became popular. Between 1983 and 1990, the ARPANET was progressively migrated to the TCP / IP protocol, disappearing that one and remaining its successor, inter-networking or, as we know it today, the Internet.
With the birth of the World Wide Web in 1989, the first hypertext communication system (with links), the foundations of the new era of communications were laid. From there, “life would make its way”, with the birth of the first search engines, the first social networks … The infinite universe of the Internet was taking shape, and it laid its foundations in the late nineties. Today it continues to grow and mutate, like a living organism.
Twitter, Instagram, chats, Amazon, webs, Google, memes, Wikipedia, apps … All of them are today, for the vast majority of people, inseparable companions and have produced profound and global changes to the point of radically change our way of seeing life. But, how were your first steps on the internet, the network of networks?
We review the exciting history of the internet.
Text of the images: Sergio Parra.
