Saturday, January 22, 2011

Com125: History to the Internet


Welcome To My Very 1st Com125 Blog

Hi there, this is my very first blog topic on the internet so let's have a funny introduction to it. Here is a hilarious video I found on Youtube (well...at least I thought it was funny...), enjoy XDXDXDXD



During the first Com125 lesson, I got the rough idea about how the internet was formed and its development from a limited communication network to our current widespread inter-networking system through the next couple of decades.

Now we do know the very famous word "internet" and the joys and benefits it brought us, however, we know very little about the key personals who set the foundations which led to the creation of the effective and efficient World Wide Web.


So let's begin with an introduction of the key players who made the internet happen; they are Herbet Simon, J.C.R Licklider, Robert Taylor, as well as Larry Roberts.

Herbet Simon (1916-2001):An American professor and founding father of important scientific domains such as artificial intelligence, information processing, complex systems, attention economics, and so on. He create the Logic Theory Machine and the General Problem Solver (GPS) by developing the Information Processing Language (IPL).

J.C.R Licklider (1915-1990): An American computer scientist who outlined the need for simpler interaction between computer and its users. He was very different from most of his peers as he felt that men would never be replaced by computer-based beings; computers would do their routine jobs as programmed by man.


Robert W. Taylor (1932-present): A Head Researcher at NASA, Taylor co-authored Licklider's paper on "The Computer as a Communication Device", developed the Xerox Alto System (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xerox_Alto) which provided an alternative to time-sharing, and also funded many other projects.


Lawrence G. Roberts (1937-present): A Chief scientist at the Advanced Research Projects Agency who developed packet-switching (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packet_switching) which led to the creation ARPANET.


Now, here's my quick summarized version on the history on the progression towards the internet, and how this group of brilliant scientists participated in it. I understand that this is a big topic with a wide scope, and I don't want to bore anyone reading this to tears. Therefore, I will be brief, and concentrate on the vital period from 1940s to the early 60s.

1946: Basis of the internet was initiated by Project RAND which was previously instrumental in defining US Military Strategy under the contract to the Douglas Aircraft Company.

May 1948: RAND separated itself from the company, and became an independent non-profit organisation to further promote scientific, educational, and charitable purposes for the security and public welfare of the United States of America.

1950s: RAND successfully achieved its development in system analysis which consisted of Computing & Artificial Intelligence.

This led to further research under the leadership of Herbet Simon from Carnegie Mellon University, ultimately resulting in the Central Mainframe Method.

It merely allowed communication between stations on the network through lease lines.

1960: J.C.R. Licklider wrote a paper entitled "Man-Computer Symbosis"; it was published by Welden Clark in August in the same year.

This paper acted as the springboard that catapulted the need for more research to improve the "old" network system.

"A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [which provided] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions."

—J.C.R. Licklider

1962: Licklider was hired by Jack Ruina to be part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

He proceeded to identify and describe the need for inter-networking to the Information Processing Techniques Office (IPTO)staff- by having 3 different sets of user commands, a lot of valuable resources will be wasted.

Licklider's idea inspired Robert Taylor, the new Head of DARPA,
and Larry Roberts from MIT to start up a project to create the inter-connected network.

1969: The first ARPANET link grew in popularity with an increasing number of hosts by 1981.


For the years after 1969, here is a video which explains it all.





Should you be extremely interested in the history of the internet, and think that my brief summarized version is just too insufficient, do give this site a check as it explores many areas (those that I mentioned and others)...http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/index.shtml



Well,thats all for this week's blog...Thanks for Reading