The term “Internet” first
arose when people started talking about communication between other computer
networks that were all interconnected. In
the early stages of the Internet, there were three different approaches which
became the foundations of the Internet we know today: the military network, which was the Rand
Corporation in America; the scientific network, which was Cyclades, in France;
and the commercial network, which was NPL in England. When the TCP/IP standard was finally invented
in February of 1990, it ensured compatibility between different types of networks
and merged them together. The basic definition of the Internet today is a
worldwide computer network that uses the TCP/IP protocol to connect all types
of different computers to each other.
My first memories of the
Internet began in 1995, when I started working at Ingram Micro. This is when I first became familiar with the
term TCP/IP, which was unknown to me until then. I can remember days of going to a library and
researching topics by looking up information in encyclopedias and other reference
books. Now, with Internet access on
computers today, it just makes finding information about anyone or anything, at
any time, much more accessible and convenient.
My children, who are all college age, can’t even fathom a world without
Internet access. With the development of
social media within the last few years, and the availability of it on cell
phones, it seems like we’re always connected to each other at all times. The Internet has become a huge and important,
and often necessary, part of our lives, and it’s hard to imagine a world where
we would not have access to the Internet.
