Networking history

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Definition

This article will summarize a few milestones in computer network history. Special attention will be paid to:

• Uses in education
• Uses that change people's lifestyle
• Work habits

Some Milestones

1960

Licklider (1960) wrote "Man-Computer Symbiosis": “Man-computer symbiosis is an expected development in cooperative interaction between men and electronic computers. It will involve very close coupling between the human and the electronic members of the partnership. The main aims are 1) to let computers facilitate formulative thinking as they now facilitate the solution of formulated problems, and 2) to enable men and computers to cooperate in making decisions and controlling complex situations without inflexible dependence on predetermined programs.”

1962

• J.C.R. Licklider & W. Clark On-Line Man Computer Communication coined the Galactic Network concept encompassing distributed social interactions

• Packet switching was invented (the basis of all modern computer networks). A message can be broken down into packets like:

sender - reciver - message

When a package is lost, it can be sent again.

1968

Licklider &Tailer (19968) wrote The Computer as a Communication Device. In this paper the authors argue that the computer's main role will be an interactor, i.e. a device that augments man-to-man communication, i.e. bring together distributed intellectual resources as online interactive communities.

At a project meeting held through a computer, you can thumb through the speaker's primary data without interrupting him to substantiate or explain. (reproduced by permission of the Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation)

• “In a few years, men will be able to communicate more effectively through a machine than face to face.”
• “What will on-line interactive communities be like?" ..."In most fields they will consist of geographically separated members, sometimes grouped in small clusters and sometimes working individually. They will be communities not of common location, but of common interest..."”
• “What will go on inside? Eventually, every informational transaction of sufficient consequence to warrant the cost. Each secretarys typewriter, each data-gathering instrument, conceivably each dictation microphone, will feed into the network.”

A communication system should make a positive contribution to the discovery and arousal of interests. (reproduced by permission of the Systems Research Center of Digital Equipment Corporation)

1969

In december 1969, the first version of Arpanet (Internet) went online. It connected four computers from four universities (UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB, and the University of Utah). The project leader was Bob Kahn from BBN (Cambridge,MA).

Drawing of the first ARPA Network

1972

Ray Tomlinson (BBN) created the first e-mail program. A few years later it became current to insult people with "he/she can't even read her email...

• UUCP (Unix-to-Unix CoPy), the first Unix specific "networking framework" was developed at AT&T Bell. One year later it was included with UNIX.

1978

• TCP/IP emerged in mid-late 1978 in nearly final form and was finalized in 1991. TCP/IP is one of the technical pillars. “The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implements the protocol stack on which the Internet and many commercial networks run. It is part of the TCP/IP protocol suite, which is named after two of the most important protocols in it: the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), which were also the first two networking protocols defined. (Wikipedia, retrieved 17:16, 27 March 2007 (MEST))”

• The first MUD, an adventure game with multiple players, was developed by Roy Trubshaw and Richard Bartle at Essex University in England in 1978. MUDs predate modern MMORPGs by 2 decades. The principle is almost the same :)

1979

• Usenet (based on UUCP), the first decentalized forum system was created by Steve Bellovin. It became hugely popular in the nineties.

• Bitnet by IBM (and later also adopted by DEC) was created. It was used for email and listservs. It was adopted universities (in particular humanity departments without Unix access) and companies.

1985

• Digitized communication and networking in education started in the mid 80's (e.g. Hiltz, 1988) using other protocols than Internet and became popular by the mid-90's, in particular through the World-Wide Web (WWW), eMail and Forums.

• Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link (WELL) started (see next item)

1988

Howard Rheinhold (1988), "Virtual Communities, Whole Earth Review:

• “The network of communications that constitutes a virtual community can include the exchange of information as a kind of commodity, and the economic implications of this phenomenon are significant; the ultimate social potential of the network, however, lies not solely in its utility as an information market , but in the individual and group relationships that can happen over time.”

1989

Peter Deutsch et al. (McGill University in Montreal) created the Archie an index machine for public ftp sites. Something like the grandfather of Google. This service allowed people to find software and texts.

1991

The University of Minnesota developper gopher named after a mascot but also means "go fer". Gopher was a userfriendly server that allowed administrators to build menus to access local or remote files and services (e.g. phone directories, library interfaces). Gopher became quite popular: Within a few years there were thousands of servers (TECFA had one too) but after a few years it couldn't stand up to the World-Wide Web. Like Archie for FTP archives, Veronica (Very Easy Rodent-Oriented Netwide Index to Computerized Archives) made an index of the world's gopher menus

1990

MOOs, a MUD variant that allows users to perform object oriented programming within the server, i.e. having the users participate in ultimately expanding and changing how the server behaves to everyone. MOOs became somewhat popular in the early nineties in education.

1992

Tim Berners-Lee et al. invented the World-Wide Web with its two main components: HTTP and HTML.

“Pick up your pen, mouse or favorite pointing device and press it on a reference in this document - perhaps to the author s name, or organization, or some related work. Suppose you are directly presented with the background material - other papers, the author s coordinates, the organization s address and its entire telephone directory. Suppose each of these documents has the same property of being linked to other original documents all over the world. You would have at your fingertips all you need to know about electronic publishing, high-energy physics or for that matter Asian culture. [....] (Tim Berners-Lee, et al (1992-94) World-Wide Web: The Information Universe)”

Q: What did you have in mind when you first developed the Web? (http://www.w3.org/People/Berners-Lee/FAQ.html) R: The dream behind the Web is of a common information space in which we communicate by sharing information. Its universality is essential: the fact that a hypertext link can point to anything, be it personal, local or global, be it draft or highly polished. There was a second part of the dream, too, dependent on the Web being so generally used that it became a realistic mirror (or in fact the primary embodiment) of the ways in which we work and play and socialize . That was that once the state of our interactions was on line, we could then use computers to help us analyze it, make sense of what we are doing, where we individually fit in, and how we can better work together.

W3 is a "distributed heterogeneous collaborative multimedia information system (WorldWide Web Seminar, 1993). Daniel K. Schneider was there :)

1993

• The first graphical multi-platform browsers appeared, in particular Mosaic (whose main developper later founded Netscape)

• Educators pereive the Web as a chance to renew pedagogies. Computer-mediated communication becomes the buzzword. But there also are first interactive contents (based on CGI/server-side computing).

1995

• Microsoft enters the games. Internet goes commercial

• Internet/WWW technologies diversify: Search engines (e.g. Alta Vista), clientside scripting (e.g. JavaScript), streaming formats like RealAudio, VRML.

• First Learning mangement systems appear. The CBT empire strikes back.

1998

XML is born, a basis for standardization of Internet representation and communication formats.

2000

• Standardized learning objects. IMS and american defense department's SCORM initiative start imposing standards for content-driven e-learning.

2007

• 500 million computers connected to the Internet

Links

General Internet History Indexes

• Internet History and WWW History: Internet Resources (Jesper Vissing Laurensen).

• Histories of the Internet at Internet Society.

General Internet History

• Hobbes' Internet Timeline (best timeline)

• A brief History of the Internet (Walt Howe)

• Living Internet. In-depth reference about the Internet, prepared to provide livingperspective to this most technological of human inventions.

References

• Licklider, J.C.R. (1960). Man-Computer Symbiosis, IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, volume HFE-1, pages 4-11, March 1960. (Reprinted in In Memoriam: J.C.R Licklider 1915-1990, Digital, August 7, 1990 PDF Reprint)

• Licklider, J.C.R. & Robert W. Taylor (1968). The Computer as a Communication Device, Science and Technology, April 1968. (Reprinted in In Memoriam: J.C.R Licklider 1915-1990, Digital, August 7, 1990 PDF Reprint)