The Internet: From Experimental Network to Global Infrastructure
A visualization of Internet connections. Wikimedia Commons.
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The Internet did not emerge from a single invention or a solitary visionary. It developed through decades of research into how computers could exchange information across heterogeneous networks. In the late 1960s, ARPANET, funded by the United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency, connected research institutions using packet switching—a method that divides data into units that can travel independently through a network. Other experimental networks followed. A central challenge was enabling different networks to communicate reliably with one another. During the 1970s, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed key principles that evolved into TCP/IP, the protocol suite adopted by ARPANET in 1983 and still fundamental to Internet communication. The World Wide Web arrived later. In 1989, while working at CERN, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a system using hypertext to link documents across the Internet. He developed core technologies including HTML, HTTP and the URL, and the first website became publicly accessible in the early 1990s. The distinction matters: the Internet is the underlying network infrastructure, while the Web is one service operating on it. Commercialisation and widespread household access transformed the Internet during the 1990s and 2000s. Its decentralised architecture enabled extraordinary innovation, but also generated problems its pioneers could not fully anticipate, including mass surveillance, cybercrime, misinformation and the concentration of power in a small number of platforms. The Internet's history is therefore not merely a story of technical progress; it is an ongoing negotiation over who controls information, infrastructure and public life.
Comprehension questions
What networking method did ARPANET use?
Who developed key principles behind TCP/IP?
What happened in 1983?
How does the passage distinguish the Web from the Internet?
