The internet has been part of our lives for so long that we often don't even realize it exists. Because it's already part of our everyday life. But do you know all Internet History?

Probably every day you communicate using messaging apps, check your email inbox, maybe play online, pay bills online too, and even share your thoughts on your blog if you have one. As you can see, all these activities have one thing in common, which is the internet.

And it's about her that we're going to talk about today, we're going to address her whole story, which is certainly one of the most revolutionary and important inventions in all of history until the present moment. Let's learn more!

Context of internet history:

I don't know if you know, but the whole history of the internet began shortly after the end of World War II. With the victory of the Allies (Soviet Union, United States and United Kingdom) over the Axis group that they were (Japan, Germany and Italy).

This in 1945 caused a huge worldwide disruption in the way many countries would henceforth conduct their political, economic and social systems.

In the allied group, which were capitalists, and in the Axis group, then communists, which at the time were the great world superpowers. Then they got into a huge economic and political opposition that became known as the Cold War. So this moment of intense disputes was responsible for a huge development both in terms of weapons, but also in terms of technology.

In 1957, the Soviet Union launched the Sputnik satellite into space, the first project in the artificial satellite program. And in response, the United States decided to invest in information technology. And it was in this way that in 1963, the Department of Defense of the country then launched ARPA, which was the Advanced Research Projects Agency.

The main objective of this agency would be to create an internal communication system that was efficient and also reliable. So that the research centers could communicate much more quickly, safely, and without suffering from external interference.

The origin:

So, over time, this ARPA communication system had to be misaligned so that the information could pass, without the need to be redirected from one center to another, and without the need for human intervention.

After all, if anything were to happen to any of the scientific bases due to constant nuclear threats. So the information could never stop circulating in the United States. What mattered most even here was security, and of course also curbing the influence of the Soviets around the world.

And it was in 1969 that some local researchers at the University of California began testing communication protocols. And so they were able to connect local computers in a private local network.

This network became known as the ARPAnet (Advanced Research Agency Network). Even though it was somewhat primitive, this was the first indication of the emergence of the internet as we know it today.

In its first moments of existence, ARPAnet was used to carry out communication between research centers, but mainly it was used for military purposes.

At first, the idea was to link the strategic bases and thus speed up the process of exchanging confidential information. Mainly about weapons technologies, and combat plans, in addition to identifying threats.

Soon in the following years, then the ARPAnet became a great inspiration for the creation of a great world network, which would allow to make all the interconnection of computers in any place of the planet.

This idea was known in the beginning as Internetworking, and it was fundamental for the appearance of the internet, and also of a future world Wide Web.

How was the creation of the internet with the WWW and IP/TCP protocols?

With the passage of time and with the development of communication between computers only via local area network, the need to expand this reach was felt. Because that would make it much easier for people to communicate on a much grander scale, so the story doesn't end here.

In 1974, the Americans Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn created the Internet Protocol (IP) and also the Transfer Control Protocol (TCP).

So with that, these 2 network protocols formed the basis of the internet's communication structure, by sending and receiving packets of information and data. And in case you didn't know, that's exactly how it works even today.

In the coming years, then, the patent for the creation of the protocols became public, in this way many more academics, research centers, large laboratories, programmers and developers gained full access to this new way of communicating.

One of the great scientists who gave rise to the WWW (World Wide Web) project in 1990 was the British Tim BernersLee. So the concept of the WWW was an immense web of information intertwined by text links that were accessed by the user from any location he was connected to a virtual network server.

These accesses, in turn, were made through the first internet browser, in this case the WWW. The same name as the immense web and also the creation of Berners Lee. But after a while, this browser had its name changed to Nexus, in order to avoid confusion.

Transformation in the 90s:

It was in the 90's that it really caused a real transformation in people's lives. The day-to-day was then completely perfected in the speed of how people started to communicate.

Not to mention the amount of information they consumed on the web, of all kinds such as: products, services, knowledge, entertainment and also culture.

And the first e-mail providers at the time were Hotmail, this in 1996, today it is Outlook. Bol, also from 1996. Yahoo came in 1997 and ZipMail in 1998. All these providers were responsible for this whole revolution, as G-Mail only arrived in 2004.

We don't know if you remember that, the chat rooms, they also started around that time. Uol became very famous in 1996, making part of the history of the internet here in Brazil.

That's when they inaugurated the windows for conversation and also the online communities, which in turn were organized and divided by age group, topics and themes. And the news did not stop arriving, inspired by the online chat rooms, several instant messaging programs (like chat) were emerging.

Of all the most popular and used here was mIRC in 1995, then came ICQ in 1997 and the famous Msn Messenger in 1999. And still in the 90s we couldn't fail to mention GeoCities from 1994.

Know that it was practically the first service of website hosting, offering its users free tools to create web pages. The service reached a total of 38 million users. And if you think it ends here, you're wrong, because there's still more, which was the explosion of social media.

The explosion of social media:

And it was in the 90s that the internet underwent a huge revolution, change and transformation, which was the emergence of social networks. And that way thousands of people from all over the world could interact with each other regardless of geographic barriers, time zone differences, among other things.

Social networks are nothing more than online communication environments where the user then creates his profile, being able to post photos, texts, videos. So that other users registered in the media can also see it. But know that the entire communication structure at that time was very limited and still with incomplete resources. Completely different from today.

Perhaps you have never heard of it, but the first social network in the world was ClassMates, it was created in the United States by Randy Conrads in 1995.

And its main objective was to bring together university students on the platform, with various school activities. The social network ClassMates has reached the number of 50 million users, but today it only has around 250 thousand active users.

As social networks are certainly part of this story, we decided to list the main ones for you, along with their foundation year and some characteristics, check it out:

• Fotolog (2002): Created especially for sharing everyday photos;
• MySpace (2003): Practically the first online mini blog capable of receiving texts, images and videos;
• LinkedIN (2003): A platform aimed more at professionals and job openings;
• Flickr (2004): Ideal place to host drawings, photos, illustrations and also videos;
• Orkut (2004): Here began the explosion of social networks. A platform with friends, feed, shares, testimonials, communities and more. However discontinued in the year 2014;
• Facebook (2004): It is the biggest social network of all. It sucked up all of Orkut and spread across the world quickly with its amazing features;
• YouTube (2005): The world's largest video platform and the second largest search engine on the web;
• Twitter (2006): Microblog style with publications of shorter and more objective texts;
• Tumblr (2007): Very popular because it allowed sharing videos, photos, gifs and other files;
• Instagram (2010): It started with a focus on photos, but soon videos were introduced, and today it already has more than 1 billion active users on the network;
• Google+ (2011): This was Google's social network, then came to try to overthrow Facebook, but after a data leak the network was extinguished;
• Snapchat (2011): Main focus on mobile devices for exchanging messages with photos, videos and funny effects;
• TikTok (2016): Allowing the user to create, share and also access videos quickly, it is the network responsible for the emergence of great memes and viral videos.

Current stats:

There's nowhere to run, it's already everywhere, and know that nowadays according to website statistics WeareSocial we are more than 4.3 billion users accessing various online networks across the planet.

It doesn't matter where you are, and regardless of the activity you do at work or at home, it is there. Helping us with its simplicity in doing things.

Even with a wireless connection, nowadays you can accomplish many tasks, such as paying bills online using apps on your cell phone. Respond to emails, order food, and more. What did not exist a long time ago, when the net was still in its infancy.

Just so you can have an idea of its dimension in our lives, below we made a point of putting some usability statistics, these data refer to the year 2019 and only 1 single minute:

• 41.6 million messages sent in the WhatsApp application;
• 188 million emails sent;
• 3.8 million searches performed on Google;
• 1 million logins on the social network Facebook;
• 4.5 million videos watched on YouTube channels;
• 694,000 hours of streaming on Netflix;
• 390,000 app downloads from app stores;
• 347 thousand swipes (finger scrolling on the screen) on Instagram;
• 350,000 messages posted on Twitter.

Huge numbers, isn't it? But know that your tendency is to increase more and more over time. All this due to the development of technologies and also of society, which allows the internet to reach many more places and people, reaching even greater amounts of data.

Conclusion:

We don't know if you agree, but it is certainly one of the greatest technological inventions in all of human history, and could even save lives. Because the format of this type of instant communication ends up influencing everyday activities and also the relationship of billions of people on a daily basis. Today it can be found and accessed at:

• Computers in general;
• Mobile devices;
• television sets;
• Video game console and also in games;
• smart watches;
• Vehicles;
• Security and monitoring equipment;
• Aerospace technologies such as rockets and satellites;
• Modern cities inhabited by internet of things;
• Internet banking and much more.

So now stop a little and reflect on what your life would be like, a week, or even a month without the internet. Have you ever thought about how many activities, tasks and commitments would be damaged. Would it really be possible to live in a world without her? What do you think?

And that's it folks, we're done here, we hope you enjoyed learning more about this story that is so important. And as we already know, it will never stop here. Until next time, a big hug to all, and success ?