Communication: Before and After the Internet

Communicating with friends, family, and others hasn’t always been as easy as going online and chatting or sending an email. Before the Internet was around, people had to write letters make phone calls, and visit with each other face to face. Communication is different now.

Before the internet was available everywhere, and before almost everyone had a phone in their homes, whenever people needed to contact someone else, they would have to write a letter and send it in the mail to the person they needed to communicate with. Not only was snail mail slow, but it wasn’t very reliable.

After phones were available, sending a letter was no longer the easiest way to communicate with others. By simply dialing a number, people could contact their friends and family. However, phones were not always reliable either. Some people didn’t have access to a phone while others chose not to have one. Once the Internet was accessible, social networking became the easiest and most reliable way to communicate with others.

Social networking happens when people gather into groups online with others who share common interests or friends. Although social networking is possible in person at school or at work, it is most commonly done online. Social networking sites allow people to contact others even when they live on the other side of the world. Social networking sites make communication faster and easier.

Over time, communicating with others has become faster, easier, and more dependable. With the creation of the Internet and other advances in technology, contacting people, even if they live far away, is not a hassle and can be done by almost everyone.

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Remember Netscape?

Image representing Netscape as depicted in Cru...

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Netscape was an internet company as well as a popular web browser in the late 1990s and early 2000s. After enjoying popularity as the most used internet browser on personal computers, it lost out to Microsoft’s internet explorer. By the end of 2006 less than 1% of people were using the Netscape internet browser.

Along with their internet browser, the folks at Netscape Communications developed the Secure Sockets Layer Protocol (SSSL) and JavaScript; one of the most widely used programming languages still to this day. So although the web browser is virtually extinct, a lot of the technological backbone still exists today.

In 1998, Netscape communications was acquired by America On Line (AOL). Instead of a monetary amount, a 4.2 billion dollar stock swap occurred. This made it a tax free deal. Unfortunately the subsequent releases of unstable version of Netscape explorer by AOL further drove users away and into the arms of Microsoft internet explorer.

In May 2003, after Microsoft was found guilty of monopolizing the market, AOL was awarded $750 million. They were also given the right to distribute Microsoft internet explorer for free to all its users for seven years. This part of the deal meant the demise of Netscape explorer. Netscape was officially disbanded in July 2003.

In 2004 Red Hat announced the acquisition of a large amount of the Netscape Suite. The company announced its plans to release the browsers code as an open source. A final version of the Netscape browser was released in 2008 however at it only occupied 0.6% of the user market. No further versions are expected to be released.

 

 

 

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MySpace – the Place for Everyone!

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Before Facebook took over the world of social networking, MySpace was all the rage with those wanting to connect with friends, family and even strangers across the World Wide Web. Through 2006, 2007, and 2008 it enjoyed success as the most popular social networking site on the internet. It was then superseded by its fiercely competitive rival Facebook.

MySpace began as a place for artists, such as musicians and actors to have a space to promote themselves and their work. The first version was launched in 2003 with the project overseen by Brad Greenspan, Chris DeWolfe, Josh Berman, and Tom Anderson. Tom Anderson has widely been attributed with the creation of MySpace and indeed is a very prominent user on the site; however this has encountered much debate over the years. Upon signing up for an account, Tom is the new member’s first friend.

In recent years, although MySpace remains popular, its traffic has suffered a decline. Many believe that the continued falling in membership numbers was attributed to the sites heavy focus as a portal for music and entertainment. This stood in stark contrast to it competitor sites who focused primarily on providing users with a very interactive social networking experience. The platform of music and entertainment only peaks the interest of so many people, whereas socializing involves almost everyone.

In early 2011, MySpace was announced as being up for sale. Its loss of membership and revenue from advertisers rendered the site a burden rather than a viable social networking option. With a hefty price tag of around $100 million it will be interesting to see who buys it.

 

 

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Who Invented the Internet?

ARPANET logical map circa 1977

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Unlike most other great inventions of our time, there is not one person in particular that invented the internet. Instead, the internet was invented slowly over two decades by a group of American government researchers and scientists. These scientists and researchers formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). This agency then went on to be known as ARPANET, which is where the world internet is derived from.

Although there were similar research groups formed around the time of ARPANET. The researchers and scientists of ARPA led the way in developing protocols for internetworking. This refers to a series of separate networks being joined together to form a network of networks. It is this protocol that the internet is based upon.

The new concept of packet switching formed the core of the ARPA network. This was a way in which more than one machine could communicate with one another by collecting data into things called datagrams. These datagrams were transmitted as packets onto a network link and then routed to its destination. The innovative factor of packet sharing was that networks link could be shared amongst data packets, thus enabling the transfer of many different datagrams at one time. This enabled the birth of the internet.

This concept of packet switching, so new and innovative half a century ago, is now the basis for nearly all worldwide data communications. The work of ARPA and its associated governmental departments has enabled the world with a method of communication that, at the time of its conception, had only been written about in science fiction books and comics. What once was fiction is now reality.

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