Because It's There:
1979 - 1984
On January 1 the ARPAnet -- and every network attached to the ARPAnet -- officially adopts the TCP/IP networking protocol, developed in the 1970s by pioneering network engineers Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn. From then on, all networks that use TCP/IP are collectively known as the Internet. The standardization of TCP/IP allows the number of Internet sites and users to grow exponentially.
When the ARPAnet had begun operating in 1969, its programmers had instituted an early version of Network Control Protocol (NCP). TCP (Transfer Control Protocol), outlined in a 1974 paper by Kahn and Cerf, was introduced in 1977 for cross-network connections, and it slowly began to replace NCP within the original ARPAnet. TCP was faster, easier to use, and less expensive to implement than NCP. In 1978 IP (Internet Protocol) is added to TCP and takes over the routing of messages.
As other networks (radio, satellite, local area networks, Usenet, BITnet, etc.) established connections to the ARPAnet in the late 1970s and 1980s, experts realized that the adoption of a single networking protocol would be an important step toward maintaining order within this growing community. They chose TCP/IP. TCP/IP provides a technological bridge for small networks to connect to the Internet much more readily than before. The links branch in every direction, hugely increasing the number of people connected within a single, broad system of information and communication.
As 1983 dawns, every site within or connected to the ARPAnet is supposed to switch to TCP/IP. Some sites are given a grace period of a few months, but by the spring any system that has not converted is bumped off the network. Although the event plays out with few problems for most networkers, buttons circulate that boast "I survived the TCP/IP transition." The networking community has already begun to call the ARPAnet and affiliated networks the "Internet," and in 1983 this evolution in language is made official.
The Internet's exploding frontiers create the need for order and subdivision. The government's Defense Communications Agency, which has authority over the network, splits it into MILNET, for military-related sites, and the regular Internet, for other sites.
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Long before cyberspace was part of the average American's life, Europeans were experimenting with telephone-based information systems called videotext. As early as 1981 -- a decade before the World Wide Web -- the French were working and playing on the world's first mass-market online information service: Minitel.
It began in the 1970s, when the French government declared its state of telecommunications a national crisis. In Virtual Communities, Howard Rheingold states that as late as 1968, only 60 percent of French homes had telephones -- "nearly a third-world state of telecommunications." The French government decided that it was not enough to merely upgrade existing phone systems. Instead, they launched a national phone information system called Telematique -- combining the words telecommunications and informatique. Throughout France, volunteers received terminals, complete with a small screen, a keyboard, and a phone jack. The public nicknamed the system Minitel, after the terminals. To fund Minitel, the government eliminated paper phone directories, listing the information on the teletex service instead. The system began with basic information: directory listings, weather reports, bank statements, and stock exchange information. Later, "smart cards" -- credit card-sized cards with embedded computer chips -- allowed consumers to use Minitel to order train tickets and pay some bills online. But like ARPAnet, what people really liked to do on Minitel was talk, which they could do through a messaging system not unlike Internet Relay Chat. Among the many types of chat lines, the sex-chat services called messageries roses ("pink messages") remain the most popular -- and the most controversial. Conservatives have campaigned against messageries roses, denouncing them as "electronic urinals." Minitel enthusiasts have long resisted getting connected to the Internet, suspicious of what they view as an American cultural invasion -- only 2 percent of French homes currently have Web access. But times are changing. Recently, French Telecom and IBM announced a joint venture to provide an open-platform, Net-surfable version of Minitel called "Britany," available as early as 1999. There are plans to market Britany to countries where computer costs make widespread Internet use unlikely. |
