37.6: Globalization

37.6.1: The Development of the Internet

The change from mechanical and analog electronic technology to digital electronics with the adoption and proliferation of digital computers and information is known as the Digital Revolution. Implicitly, the term refers to the sweeping changes brought about by digital computing and communication technology during and after the latter half of the 20th century. Analogous to the Agricultural Revolution and Industrial Revolution, the Digital Revolution marked the beginning of the Information Age.

Rise of the Global Internet and the World Wide Web

Internet Map: Partial map of the Internet based on the January 15, 2005, data found on opte.org. Each line is drawn between two nodes each representing an IP address. The length of the lines are indicative of the delay between those two nodes. This graph represents less than 30% of the Class C networks reachable by the data collection program in early 2005.

Initially, as with its predecessor networks, the system that would evolve into the Internet was primarily for government use. However, interest in commercial use of the Internet quickly grew. Although commercial use was initially forbidden, the exact definition of commercial use was unclear and subjective. As a result, during the late 1980s, the first Internet service provider (ISP) companies were formed. The first commercial dial-up ISP in the United States was The World, which opened in 1989.

The World Wide Web (sometimes abbreviated “www” or “W3”) is an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by URIs, interlinked by hypertext links, and accessed via the Internet using a web browser and, more recently, web-based applications. It has become known simply as “the Web.” As of the 2010s, the World Wide Web is the primary tool billions use to interact on the Internet, and it has changed people’s lives immeasurably. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with inventing the World Wide Web in 1989 and developing in 1990 both the first web server and the first web browser, called WorldWideWeb (no spaces) and later renamed Nexus. Many others were soon developed, with Marc Andreessen’s 1993 Mosaic (later Netscape) often credited with sparking the internet boom of the 1990s.

A boost in web users was triggered in September 1993 by NCSA Mosaic, a graphic browser that eventually ran on several popular office and home computers. It was the first web browser aimed at bringing multimedia content to non-technical users, and included images and text on the same page, unlike previous browser designs. Andreessen was head of the company that released Netscape Navigator in 1994, resulted in one of the early browser wars with Microsoft Windows’ Internet Explorer (a competition Netscape Navigator eventually lost). When commercial use restrictions were lifted in 1995, online service America Online (AOL) offered users connection to the Internet via their own internal browser.

Web 1.0: 1990s to Early 2000s

In terms of providing context for this period, mobile cellular devices, which today provide near-universal access, were used for business but were not a routine household item. Modern social media did not exist, laptops were bulky, and most households did not have computers. Data rates were slow and most people lacked means to video or digitize video, so websites such as YouTube did not yet exist. Media storage was transitioning slowly from analog tape to digital optical discs (DVD) and from floppy disc to CD. Technologies that would enable and simplify web development, such as PHP, modern Javascript and Java, AJAX, HTML 4 (and its emphasis on CSS), and various software frameworks, awaited invention and widespread adoption.

From 1997 to 2001, the first speculative investment bubble related to the Internet took place, in which “dot-com” companies (referring to the “.com” top level domain used by businesses) were propelled to exceedingly high valuations as investors rapidly stoked stock values. This dot-com bubble was followed by a market crash; however, this only temporarily slowed growth.

The changes that would propel the Internet into its place as a social system took place during a relatively short period of about five years, starting from around 2004. They included:

• Accelerating adoption of and familiarity with the necessary hardware (such as computers).
• Accelerating storage technology and data access speeds. Hard drives emerged, eclipsed smaller, slower floppy discs, and grew from megabytes to gigabytes (and by around 2010, terabytes). Typical system RAM grew from hundreds of kilobytes to gigabytes. Ethernet, the enabling technology for TCP/IP, moved from common speeds of kilobits to tens of megabits per second to gigabits per second.
• High speed Internet and wider coverage of data connections at lower prices allowed for larger traffic rates, more reliable traffic, and traffic from more locations.
• The gradually accelerating perception of the ability of computers to create new means and approaches to communication, the emergence of social media and websites such as Twitter and Facebook, and global collaborations such as Wikipedia (which existed before but gained prominence as a result).

Web 2.0

The term “Web 2.0” describes websites that emphasize user-generated content (including user-to-user interaction), usability, and interoperability. It first appeared in a January 1999 article called “Fragmented Future” written by Darcy DiNucci, a consultant on electronic information design. The term resurfaced around 2002 to 2004 and gained prominence following the first Web 2.0 Conference. In their opening remarks, John Battelle and Tim O’Reilly outlined their definition of the “Web as Platform”, where software applications are built upon the Web as opposed to the desktop. The unique aspect of this migration, they argued, is that “customers are building your business for you.” They argued that the activities of users generating content (in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures) could be harnessed to create value.

Web 2.0 does not refer to an update to any technical specification, but rather to cumulative changes in the way webpages are made and used. Web 2.0 describes an approach in which sites focus substantially on user interaction and collaboration in a social media dialogue. Customers create content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where people are limited to the passive viewing of content. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, folksonomies, video sharing sites, hosted services, Web applications, and mashups. This era saw several household names gain prominence through their community-oriented operation, including YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and Wikipedia.

The Mobile Revolution

The process of change generally described as “Web 2.0” was itself greatly accelerated and transformed by the increasing growth in mobile devices. This mobile revolution meant that computers in the form of smartphones became ubiquitous. People now bring devices everywhere and use them to communicate, shop, seek information, and take and instantly share photos and video. Location-based services and crowd-sourcing became common, with posts tagged by location and websites and services becoming location aware. Mobile-targeted websites (such as “m.website.com”) are increasingly designed especially for these new devices. Netbooks, ultrabooks, widespread 4G and Wi-Fi, and mobile chips capable or running at nearly the power of desktops on far less power enabled this stage of Internet development. The term “App” emerged (short for “Application program” or “Program”) as did the “App store”.

Attributions

• The Development of the Internet
  • “Digital Revolution.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Revolution. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “History of the Internet: Rise of the global Internet.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet#Rise_of_the_global_Internet_.28late_1980s.2Fearly_1990s_onward.29. Wikipedia CC BY-SA 3.0.
  • “Internet_map_1024.jpg.” https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_map_1024.jpg. Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 2.5.