1990 - A happy victim of its own unplanned, unexpected success, the ARPANET is decommissioned, leaving only the vast network-of-networks called the Internet. The number of hosts exceeds 300,000.
1991 - The World Wide Web is born!
1991
- 1993
Corporations wishing to use the Internet face a serious problem:
commercial network traffic is banned from the National Science
Foundation's NSFNET, the backbone of the Internet.
In 1991 the NSF lifts the restriction on commercial use, clearing
the way for the age of electronic commerce.
At the University of Minnesota, a team led by computer programmer Mark MaCahill releases 'gopher', the first point-and-click way of navigating the files of the Internet in 1991.
Originally designed
to ease campus communications, gopher is freely distributed on
the Internet. MaCahill calls it "The first Internet application
my mom can use."
1991 is also the year in which Tim Berners-Lee,working at 'CERN'
in Switzerland,
posts the first computer code of the World Wide Web in a relatively
innocuous newsgroup:
'alt.hypertext.'
The ability to combine words, pictures, and sounds on Web pages
excites many computer programmers who see the potential for publishing
information on the Internet in a way that can be as easy as using
a word processor.
Marc Andreesen and a group of student programmers at NCSA (the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications) located on the campus of University
of Illinois at Urbana Champaign) will eventually develop a graphical
browser for the World Wide Web called 'Mosaic'.
1991 - Traffic on the NSF backbone network exceeds 1 trillion bytes per month.
1992 - One million hosts have multi-media access to the Internet over the 'MBONE'.
The first audio and video broadcasts take place over a portion of the Internet known as the 'MBONE.' More than 1,000,000 hosts are part of the Internet.
1993 - Mosaic, the first graphics-based Web browser, becomes available. Traffic on the Internet expands at a 341,634% annual growth rate.
1994 - 'The Rolling Stones' broadcast the 'Voodoo Lounge tour' over the 'M-Bone'.
Marc Andreesen and Jim Clark form:'Netscape Communications Corp'.
'Pizza Hut' accepts orders for a mushroom, pepperoni with extra cheese over the net.
The Japanese Prime Minister goes online at www.kantei.go.jp.
Backbone traffic exceeds 10 trillion bytes per month.
1995 - NSFNET reverts back to a research project, leaving the Internet in commercial hands.
The Web now comprises the bulk of Internet traffic.
The Vatican launches www.vatican.va .
James Gosling and a team of programmers at Sun Microsystems release an Internet programming language called 'Java', which radically alters the way applications and information can be retrieved, displayed, and used over the Internet.
1996 - Nearly 10 million hosts online. The Internet covers the globe
As the Internet celebrates its 25th anniversary, the military strategies that influenced its birth become historical footnotes.
Approximately 40 million people are connected to the Internet.
More than $1 billion per year changes hands at Internet shopping malls, and Internet related companies like 'Netscape' are the darlings of high-tech investors.
Users in almost 150 countries around the world are now connected to the Internet.
The number of computer hosts approaches 10 million.
1997
- 2000+ - Some people
telecommute over the Internet, allowing them to choose where to
live based on quality of life, not proximity to work.
Many cities view the Internet as a solution to their clogged highways
and fouled air.
Schools use the Internet as a vast electronic library,with untold
possibilities.
Doctors use the Internet to consult with colleagues half a world
away.
But even as the Internet offers a single Global Village, it threatens
to create a 2nd class citizenship among those without access.
Within 30 years, the Internet has grown from a Cold War concept for controlling the tattered remains of a post-nuclear society to the Information Superhighway.
Just as the railroads of the 19th century enabled the Machine Age, and revolutionised the society of the time, the Internet takes us into the Information Age, and profoundly affects the world in which we live.
As a new generation grows up as accustomed to communicating through a keyboard as in person, life on the Internet will become an increasingly important part of life on Earth.
The Age of the Internet has arrived.