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A Historical Overview of the creation of the Internet and World Wide Web

Can you imagine a world without the Internet? The Internet is a great communication tool that connects people from around the globe through a network of connections between computers. It creates a virtual world that allows people to share news, stories, pictures, and information with each other. I personally use this technology on a daily basis. It would be almost strange to not have it. I constantly email myself important files and email both business and personal associates. But this technology did not just fall out of the sky; rather the US Government created it.

DARPA creates ARPANET, predecessor to the Internet.

After the Soviets launched the satellite Sputnik in 1957, the US government decided to establish DARPA (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) whose main goal was to create a better way to communicate. In 1969 DARPA succeeded by creating the Advanced Research Projects Agency network (ARPANET), the first national computer network. It was first used as a way to connect universities and military to connect geographically far researchers as a way to share information. This was a major breakthrough because it was the beginning of online communications. However, there is a major distinction between today’s Internet and yesterday’s ARPANET; ARPANET lacked protocol or a common language that would be used by computers to easily interpret messages and information sent by other computers.

The creation of Email, a way for people to easily stay connected.

Ray Tomlinson(Above) is credited for creating email and
the distinguishing email symbol @, a way to
distinguish between the sender and the machine

            Email was the next big step and today is a major part of people’s lives. Without this technology you would have to send all of your messages through actual letters and mail. Actually, according to the book Converging Media, today more messages are sent through email than through the US Postal Service. That is a shocking statistic considering how major a role the US Postal Service had before this innovation. This is all thanks to the work of Ray Tomlinson, who in 1971 created email, a way for messages to be sent from one computer to another. He also can be credited for the beginning of language between computers when he decided to use @ to distinguish the name of the sender from the machine he/she was working on, he used this because any other letter would be confusing and would not separate the two bits of information as cleanly. This innovation highlighted the necessity for a common language between computers.

The Creation of an Internet protocol and The World Wide Web.

In 1991, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn were the first to use the term “internet” and created the transmission control protocol (TCP), which allowed computers to easily communicate with each other over a network. Originally the Internet was only used in academia and the government until Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. Contrary to popular belief, the World Wide Web (WWW) is not synonymous with the Internet, rather it uses the Internet to show and transmit information. These major innovations along with the creation of hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) which allowed for hyperlinks, and hypertext markup language (HTML) which describes how information should look on the website are the reason the internet looks and acts the way it does today.

Misuse of the Internet today.

The Internet is a major part in our lives and truly helps to make the world a smaller place and can be used as a way to easily share information. Unfortunately, not everyone has access to the Internet due to poor economic means or even worse government regulation. At first it was thought that the Internet could not be regulated but that is not true. In countries like China, the government puts censorship on what people say and do on the Internet and has even been known to throw people in jail. It is sad that such a great invention that could be used to spread positive knowledge and freedom through the world could be censored. Hopefully, someday the Internet will be free and used by everyone.

Consolidation: The Future of Media

Our World is in a constant state of technological change. People want their information fast and information is now easier than ever to access due to the multitude of media types. These technological advances have started to hurt the wallets of most media companies. As people begin to ask themselves, why get a magazine subscription when I can just go online and read the same news? Or why watch advertisements when I can DVR/TiVo it and fast-forward through them? Media outlets continue to lose money in both their actual product and in advertisement revenue and have turned to consolidation as a way to continue to make money and strive for new innovations. 

Media Consolidation, the process of large companies merging with each other or absorbing other companies, is the future of media.

In 1983, 50 companies controlled 90% of our media; today 6 companies own that same percentage.  GE/Comcast, The Walt Disney Company, News Corporation, Time Warner, Viacom, and CBS make up the big six of American media making almost every TV channel you turn to, magazine or newspaper you read, or movie you watch, made and distributed by these corporations. For example, Time Warner by itself owns TNT, HBO, Cinemax, TBS, CNN, Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. Pictures, New Line Cinema, and more than 150 magazines including Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune, and People. All of these large media outlets being under the same corporate umbrella can lead to some conflict of interest. If the parent company didn’t want a certain aspect of their business displayed or if they were trying to advertise for a movie made by one of their studios all of these news outlets would react in the best interest of the parent company; either by showing special interest towards the new movie or being silent on company issues. This has actually already happened with Time Warner, according to the textbook, Converging Media, when the Stanley Kubrick movie Eyes Wide Shut was being released by Warner Brother Studios, it got both a cover story in Time magazine and mentioned frequently on CNN’s Larry King Live.

In just the past 30 years, fifty major media companies turned to six and I believe this trend will continue.

I would even go as far as to say that eventually all media will be controlled by no more than three companies. The societal debate will center on whether or not this convergence is positive or negative. By buying more companies, these corporations have more control over what we see, hear, and believe, which is a scary thought. The idea that we are streamlining all of our news through such few points of view is a terrible occurrence. However, by keeping the revenue stream going they can continue to make innovations in media. They also have the ability to pool resources in order to cover stories more efficiently and correctly. If something were going on in a remote part of the world each parent company would only have to send out a few reporters to get the news for all of their subsidiaries, this would be incredibly costly if they were all separate companies. Whether it is good or not, media consolidation is the way of the future.

Mitchell's Brief Introduction

Hey, I am Mitchell Newman, a Sophomore Letters and Sciences major at the University of Maryland. I plan on applying to the business school at the end of the semester and I would like to pursue something in either Supply Chain Management, Accounting, or Finance. My personal interests include basketball, football, politics, and movies. I am really looking forward to taking this class to see how I can implement social media into my future career and also learn how to use twitter since I do not currently have a personal twitter account.