Why?

• "The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting." ~Dave Barry
  
  
  
  
• "The Internet is a shallow and unreliable electronic repository of dirty pictures, inaccurate rumours, bad spelling and worse grammar, inhabited largely by people with no demonstrable social skills." ~Chronicle of Higher Education, 1997
  
  
  
  
• "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." ~Carl Sagan
  
  
  
  
• "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur Clarke's 3rd 'law'
  
  
  
  
• "I have an almost religious zeal - not for technology per se, but for the Internet which is for me, the nervous system of mother Earth, which I see as a living creature, linking up." ~Dan Millman
  
  
  
  

What is the Internet?

• global system of interconnected networks (wired/wireless routers, switches, ...) of devices (servers, computers, phones, ...)
  
  
  
  
• network protocols (TCP/IP, email, http,...) and web standards (HTML,...)
  
  
  
  
• services, applications;
  the Web is not the Internet -- it is one of the services that runs on the Internet
  
  
  
  
• metaphors: information superhighway/infobahn, pipes/tubes, utility grid, library, global village, cloud, surfing, global brain, cyberspace, 'God', ...
  
  
  
  

(nano) History

• "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system." ~Al Gore, 1999. 'invented' myth; Al Gore and the Internet (Kahn&Cerf)
  
  
  
  
• "The day I made that statement," [about inventing the internet] "I was tired because I'd been up all night inventing the Camcorder." ~Al Gore; "If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check." ~Dan Quayle
  
  
  
  
• 1969: ARPAnet
  
  
• 1991: World Wide Web
  
  
• present: Map of Online Communities; Submarine Cable Map
• Web 2.0 Map; Backbone map; US Radio Frequency Allocations
  
  
• "A disruptive technology... is an innovation that helps create a new market and value network, and eventually goes on to disrupt an existing market and value network (over a few years or decades), displacing an earlier technology there." ~Wikipedia
• Reading the Writing on the Envelope (post office)
  
  
  
  
• "In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: 'cutting out the middleman'. Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate (such as a distributor, wholesaler, broker, or agent), companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet." ~Wikipedia
• No, The Internet Doesn't Do Away With Middlemen -- It Just Changes Their Role (gatekeepers to enablers)
• E-books: publishers, libraries, bookstores, authors
  
  
  
  
• future?: e.g., "Internet of Things"; Singularity; ...
  
  
  
  

For more info: Evolution of the Internet: History; Network Access

[updated: 04-Oct-2011] [.pdf]