Term Papers on Social Impact Of The Internet Past And Present

Term Paper Title	Social Impact Of The Internet Past And Present
# of Words	1657
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	6.63

Social Impact of the Internet Past and Present

         Visionaries like the great Doctor Vannevar Bush once dreamed that knowledge shall be shared and communicated over large areas by a “memex” machine, and that this “memex” shall revolutionize the way we learn and interact with each other.  Doctor Bush in the year 1945 may have not predicted the actual computer or the Internet of today, but his startling predictions did point in one direction, society will change drastically by this invention.  The Internet is and will continue to become a great impact in our society from its feeble beginnings as a governmental project, to the amorphous network of millions of computers, it is an overriding force in all aspects of society from global politics to everyday affairs like grocery shopping.
         In order to predict where something is going to end up and where something is at the present moment one has to delve into the past in order to gain adequate knowledge of past trends. This notion holds true when discussing the Internet’s future. One must know the past if the future is to be found.
         The U.S. government, the father of the Internet was its main creator.  The U.S. had a problem during the cold war. They needed a foolproof way to communicate after a nuclear attack. Its current network, if destroyed at any point would be rendered useless after an attack (Mayr 3). The U.S. decided to contact the Rand Corporation which was headed by Paul Baran at the time to invent a network that will stay running after a nuclear attack.  What Rand came up with was a network with no central authority (4).  If one node of the network were to go down, it would have a web of other connections in it so that the network could still function.  This new network was called “Arpanet” and started its operation in 1969.
         By 1971 the success and popularity amongst intellectuals of Arpanet had risen, it had more than 23 sites on the network including international sites. These international sites were located in England and Norway. What made Arpanet so successful over just three short years was its capability to connect to it using any platform. Different computer operating systems could connect using the same network (Mayr 4-5).  Colleges and government institutions dominated Arpanet in  the sixties, seventies and eighties (Wright 24)  The main use of Arpanet was to save on costly computer time.  A person at a college could use a terminal on Arpanet to manipulate a computer thousands of miles away without paying, it saved computer time and plenty of money (Mayr 5). By 1982, Arpanet had began to decline, government funding for the project withered away and Arpa stopped managing the network. Arpanet was now its own entity away from the U.S. government, it then became to be known as the Internet (6). In 1986 the National Science Foundation wanted to use Arpanet to network super computers in universities from around the world for different research projects. When Arpa was approached with this plan the NSC became fettered with bureaucracy and staff shortages. The NSC decided to use their network that was identical to Arpanet.  In 1986 the original Arpanet died and the Internet, as we know it today was born (7).
         The first social interaction on the Internet started very early, around the year 1972 is when it really started to increase.  The reason professionals started to socialize on the Internet in the year 1972 is because this is the year that e-mail was invented.  E-mail was the only way in which a person can talk to another person through the Internet.  At first scientist used this as a way to exchange results of experiments but soon after they were using it mainly to gossip with their peers (7).  Next to follow were Newsgroups, IRC, and FTP.  Newsgroups are a type of message board, in which people can post their opinion in a pubic forum, and get responses from others.  IRC (Internet Relay Chat) is a real time conversation. One person types a line of text and the other person responds in an instant, there is no message p...

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