Business today is a
combination of communication, computer, and
software systems. Despite the fact that the Internet has
only been
popular in the past few years, it is difficult for us to
imagine a world
without its presence. We now consider the Internet part of
our desktop
for the most part and have to negotiate how to deal with
it. We want
our kids to use it for research, but are wary of the
consequences of
them traveling to unplanned or undesired destinations. In
an instant it
seems that the Internet has become a center for commerce
and global
swindles.The US Government
started the process, as they laid the framework
for the Internet in the 1960s. A decision was made to fund
a network
of computers that would all talk the same language. This
connected
researchers, government workers, and contractors
(providing systems
and data to the government agencies) using common
protocols. Most
computers at this time had very different communication
systems to
talk to each other, known as protocols, and a new system
was also
developed. The network was known as ARPAnet. and it
incorporated
the now very popular TCP/1P networking protocol. The
standards in
this protocol permitted reliable transmission of data from
one computer
to another, and the networked communication of data
between each
computer connected to the ARPAnet This provided the
foundation for
the Internet as we know it today.
Another major US Government requirement was that the
system
should be secure and allow continued communication between
sites
and computers in the case of nuclear attack. Thus the
serious requirement for redundancy was built into the
Internet system from the word
go.
As the Internet evolved from a military
focus towards non-military use, the first "killer
application" of the Internet was born, electronic
mail. Despite the fact that the ARPAnet had been built for
the transfer of
data between computers, electronic communication became
the first
wave of adoption. Over this same period of time, office
productivity
applications were developing and firms such as Wang were
making
millions from specialized computers providing office
functions across a
proprietary network. These networks were very useful for
medium to
large-scale organizations, but still not affordable to
smaller businesses.
|
