Internet Seen Through the Perspectives of Different Cultures or Religions - Essay Example

Internet content and views by different cultures or religions Submitted: The internet as we know it today started off with a simple yet revolutionary idea by J.C.R. Licklider of MIT in 1962, who asked what if computers could share information with each other. He joined the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 and started working on his idea. The internet was not just the result of one revolutionary idea instead it was made possible with a number of advancements by a number of pioneers. Leonard Kleinrock of MIT and later UCLA developed the theory of packet switching; they proposed that apartfrom circuit switching (where a new connection has to be made whenever the communication takes place) communication can also take place by transferring data in form of packets containing their unique address. This would allow electronic signals to be sent and received between different machines without a need for separate circuit connection every time the communication takes place. This theory of packet switching formed the basis of internet connections as we know today. The first long distance communication link was set up between two computers, one in Massachusetts and the other in California by a MIT professor Lawrence Roberts. The link was established with dial-up telephone lines, which worked on the basis of circuit-switching. There were two significant outcomes of this event. First, it proved that wide area networking was indeed a possibility and secondly the technique of circuit switching was insufficient for such a network. In 1966 DARPA initiated a project called ARPANET, with the help of Lawrence Roberts and his team. Then in 1969 the team was able to link the computers of four universities i.e. UTAH University, UCSB, UCLA and Stanford University. This was the first time packet switching was used instead of circuit switching. The ARPANET was the first proper form of modern day internet. Soon the ARPANET began to grow, more and more universities and research institutes began to join the network including NASA/Ames, MIT and Harvard etc. by 1971 the ARPANET covered almost all the major universities in North America. Initially ARPANET was about “Time Sharing” and not about establishing communication liks between people. In the words of Larry Roberts “sending messages between people was not an important motivation for a network of scientific computers” it was build to facilitate time sharing between different computing machines. Time sharing would have allowed the processors to draw additional computing power from idle computers, to perform complex scientific and business intelligence calculations. But the concept of “time sharing” was not realized at that time (today it is indeed a possibility). There were some major problems that were overlooked by the experts such as all the computers used different operating systems, and different versions of programs. So there was no compatibility which made it impossible for computers to share processing power. But when the experts zeroed in on these problems, Minicomputers appeared on the scene and suddenly there was no need for time sharing anymore because these lightening fast computers had hundred times the processing power of a normal computer. So the purpose for which ARPANET was established was no longer there. Now the founders of the network were left with an invention with yet unknown purpose. They needed to prove the feasibility of this massive achievement. In 1972 one of the research members of ARPANET came up with something he called “email” which allowed messages to be sent and received between computers. This new idea gave ARPANET a new direction; it could now be used for communications between people like a telephone or mail. In 1970s Bob Braden, Jon Postel, Bob Kahn, Vinton Cerf, and other members of the Networking Group headed by Steve Crocker developed the “Transport Control Protocol (TCP) or the Internet Protocol (IP) The TCP/IP helped greatly in solving the problems faced by the developers of ARPANET in establishing commutations links between the computers. The inclusion of email and TCP/IP in to ARPANET meant that the network was ready to be presented to the rest of the world so after some improvements, the ARPANET was unveiled to the world in October of 1972 at the International Computer Communications Conference in Washington DC. Soon after that a Global networking group was established which was chaired by Vinton Cerf. Then came the RFC (Request for Comments) which allowed logging on a remote computer linked with the network. This gave birth to the FTP protocol, a protocol that made file sharing between computers possible. During that time the term “internetworking” became commonly used to describe ARPANET, later on its shortened form “internet” caught on. In 1975 the first prototype was tested and in 1978 TCP/IPv4 saw the light of the day. The standardization of e-mail, FTP and telnet allowed nontechnical people to use the net. However it was still not easy to learn to use the system by a layman, but it did help to provide greater accessibility to many people especially in universities. Initially the internet was funded by the government and its original purpose was research, education and governmental use. So it could not be used commercially unless its commercial use served the goals of research and education. However in 1990’s an independent commercial network began to grow. By that time internet became accessible to the common people. Then came Yahoo, which made it even more accessible. People began to use the internet to shares email and chat electronically. Yahoo was the pioneer of the dot-com industry; soon many new sites offering innovative services came in to existence. Then sites like Friendster and Myspace brought the revolutionary concept of “social networking”. Then a Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg along with his hacking buddies developed a site called “The Facebook” which allowed people to interact with each other, maintain their online presence, and share information about themselves through their profiles. Soon after the internet was flooded with a mammoth amount of websites, some which made quite an impact like YouTube, Flickr, Second Life, Twitter, Linked-In and other blogs and wikis. This gave rise to a multibillion dollar industry of internet companies. Google came to power with its search engine, Yahoo and some non-profit organizations such as Wikipedia. Mark founded the company Facebook over its idea, Facebook is today the biggest online social networking platform which has the ability to cause political revolutions and massive solidarity movements. The company is about to issue its first ever IPO, Which will make its share holders billionaires. Google is another notable example, the search giant is worth trillions of dollars. Its revenue is more than the GDP of many developing countries, which stems from online advertising. Internet has also greatly contributed to the field of science and research. It is found that most Americans would only turn to internet if they want to research about specific scientific topics. The topics that specifically are of interest to this general population revolve around the stem cell research and the climatic change (Project).  The search relating to these topics would generally start from search engines such as Google and Yahoo. 71% of the people said that they use internet as the information available on internet can be accessed easily without any hastle (Project) Apart from science and research, internet has a great cultural impact. It has caused the cultures of the world to interact with each other. In fact internet in itself has created its own culture, a culture where race, religion and color does not matter, where relationships are formed on the basis of mutual interest and intellect. And this culture of internet is what we call “popular culture”. Internet has become a platform where people share their ideas to the rest of the world. And since an “Idea is the most contagious disease”,(Inception, 2011) internet with the help of social networking sites can bring political revolutions and cause mass mobilization of people to such an extent that is unprecedented in the history of mankind. So it can be concluded that internet started off with a simple idea and along with the help of advancements in technology, this idea was realized. Today internet has become a force never before seen in the history of mankind. It has the power to create new cultures and transform the political landscape. What shape it might take in future is uncertain but we can say one thing for sure is that internet will play a great role in all the future advancements of human species. Bibliography CBC. (n.d.). How the internet transforms scientific discovery. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2011/12/14/spark-open-science.html Howe, W. (n.d.). A Brief History of the Internet. Retrieved from http://www.walthowe.com/navnet/history.html Inception (2011). [Motion Picture]. Nieslen, M. Reinventing Discovery: The New Era of Networked Science. Peter, I. (n.d.). The beginnings of the Internet. Project, P. I. Project, P. I. (n.d.). Pew Internet & American Life Project . Semper, D. R. How We Use the Internet for Science Research. SES Conference & Expo. Sherman, C. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2067343/How-We-Use-the-Internet-for-Science-Research Slater, D. M. (2000). The Internet An Ethnographic View. oxford. Read More