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Read through the events in this timeline of the growth of the Internet:
1969: Arpanet network (the predecessor to the Internet) launched
1971: First email sent over Arpanet
1973: First trans-Atlantic connection set up
1974: Early versions of TCP/IP protocols developed
1977: First personal computer modem connected
1978: First spam sent
1982: First emoticon typed :-)
1984: Domain Name System (DNS) established
1986: Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) formed to manage standards
1987: Internet grew to 30,000 servers
1988: First major computer worm attack
1991: World Wide Web went public; first web page; first web browser for the public; first website search protocol; first webcam
1995: Internet became widely commercialized (Amazon.com, Craigslist, eBay, etc.)
1998: Google launched; ICANN (Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers) took responsibility for coordinating the Internet
1999: 282 million Internet users
2000: The dot-com bubble burst
2001: Wikipedia launched
2004: Facebook launched; 817 million Internet users
2005: YouTube launched
2006: Twitter launched
2009: 1.75 billion Internet users
2011: Snapchat released; Twitter and Facebook play role in Arab spring
2014: Major encryption vulnerability impacts accounts on millions of sites; the Internet's 45th Anniversary; 2.93 billion Internet users
2016: Internet includes 75 million servers; 3.52 billion Internet users
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Take a look at this graph from internetlivestats.com. Notice how dramatically the number of Internet users has increased in the last 20 years.
- What do you expect will happen to these numbers in the next 20 years?
- What kind of impact would you expect the rapid growth of the Internet to have on its speed and reliability?
Some people have made predictions about what may come next: The Future of the Internet - 7 Big Predictions of 2020