-CHAPTER
1-
What the Internet IS
Did you know that the Internet and the World Wide
Web are NOT the same thing? Is knowing how the Internet came to be,
and how it has evolved, of ANY importance to folks like you and me, as
Internet marketers?
Well, yeah…yeah, I think it IS. I think that
knowing exactly what the Internet IS can better prepare us to
really understand what it is NOT.
And knowing what the
Internet is NOT, my friends, is vitally important to our success as
fellow Internet marketers. You see, my goal is to make YOU into
the Internet version of a Formula One racecar driver! And for you to
be in the winner’s circle you need to know at least something about
the machine you are driving.
It all began in 1957...
In October of that year, the former Soviet Union launched
"Sputnik," the
first artificial earth satellite. To say that the United States
panicked is putting it mildly! You see, up until that time, we
smug Americans just
ASSUMED that the United States was THE world leader in science and
technology. In fact, at the time, the Soviet Union was looked upon as
a powerful, but technologically backward country.
Now, for those of
you who did not live through the so-called "Cold-War" years,
it’s difficult to imagine what the launching of Sputnik did to the
mentality of the United States. Suddenly, we were a
"second-rate" country, and government leaders, as well as
the man and woman on the street, could only envision nuclear bombs
raining down on us from unreachable, untouchable Russian satellites!
It’s hard to believe, but a growth industry of the time was
companies that built bomb shelters in your back yard!
Something had to be done and done FAST!
So… the following year, the United States
Department of Defense formed "A.R.P.A." (the Advanced
Research Projects Agency) specifically to
re-establish the U.S. lead in science and technology, especially
in military matters.
In 1962 the RAND corporation, a government
"think tank," was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force to do a
study on how it could maintain command and control over it’s
missiles and bombers after an all-out nuclear war, when normal means
of communication would be wiped out. Sound a little paranoid? Remember
folks, this was during the Cold War. Both countries maintained huge
fleets of nuclear weapon laden bombers in the air 24 hours a day, in
addition to THOUSANDS of nuclear ICBM’s in bunkers and submarines.
It was in 1962 that the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, during which we
were actually expecting nuclear missiles to be launched at us at any
moment from the shores of Cuba.
The RAND Corporation study was finally made public
in 1964, and envisioned a decentralized network of
powerful computers that would link military command posts and relay
messages back and forth. Since it would be designed from the first to
have no "central" source, an enemy could not target one
specific area and knock out the whole system.
The first "node" (computer capable of
relaying information) was set up at the University of California at
Los Angeles (UCLA) in September of 1969, and by December of that year,
three additional "nodes" were set up at SRI, the University
of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. This
infant computer network of four interconnected computers was named the
"A.R.P.A.-NET," after it’s Defense Department sponsor.
It's almost hard to imagine, isn't it, that there was a time when what
we now call the Internet, consisted of just FOUR computers!?
Three years later, in 1972, there were still only 23 computers on this
"baby Internet," but something very important happened –
Ray Tomlinson of BBN created the very first email program.
Now, understand, the federally subsidized ARPANET
was designed to be a scientific and military communication system ONLY
– a means of transferring scientific data between top-level
scientists working at Universities, as well as communiqués between
military command posts during time of all-out nuclear war.
But
something VERY strange was happening!
The main traffic on ARPANET was
NOT long-distance computing and military communications – it was
news and personal messages! The researchers working on this project
had turned ARPANET into their very own, ultra high-speed "post
office!" Mailing lists were soon born, and the biggest was
named "SF-LOVERS" – it was a list for science fiction fans.
By 1973, just one year after the first email program
was developed, 75% of all ARPANET traffic was email! (Talk
about the shape of things to come, eh!?)
Although the term "Internet" was first
used in a scientific paper by Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn as early as 1974,
it was not until 1982 that the Internet as we know it was
really born. That was the year that Vint and Bob perfected the
computer language known as "TCP/IP." By January of the
following year every machine connected to ARPANET was required
to use TCP/IP and, for the first time, the loose connection of
networks that made up the ARPANET could be coherently and reliably
connected into a TRUE "Inter"-net.
In 1984 the science fiction author William Gibson
first coined the term "cyberspace" in his novel "Neuromancer."
That same year the number of Internet hosting computers exceeded 1,000
for the first time, and by 1987 the number jumped to over 28,000! It
was about this same period (the mid-80’s) that the proliferation of
relatively inexpensive personal computers gave REAL impetus to the
growth of the Internet. No longer was this exciting, new
communications medium the province of universities, the military, and
a few large companies – the average Joe-on-the-street (that’s you
and me!) was now able to "log on."
ARPANET was officially decommissioned in
1990, and guess what!? Nobody noticed! By that time the INTERNET
had taken over virtually all of the duties of "old-man
ARPANET."
Understand, though, that up until this time,
there was STILL no such thing as the World Wide Web.
You see, although the terms Internet and Web are almost always used to
mean the same thing, they are actually completely distinct. The
Internet is the global community of computers that makes the exchange
of information possible. The World Wide Web, on the other hand, is a
PART of the Internet.
In other words, the Net exists independently of
the Web, but the Web can’t exist without the Net.
In 1991, a physicist by the name of Dr. Timothy
Berners-Lee at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics in
Switzerland developed a new and unique technique for distributing
information on the Internet. This program allowed users to connect
from one document to another (or one website to another) by the use of
"hyperlinks." (Just think what the Internet would be
like today if we weren’t able to "click-and-go!")
AND!... this new program also made possible for the
first time
the transfer of not just words, but
pictures and sounds! We take this for granted now, but at the time it was pretty
exciting, cutting edge stuff!
However, as innovative as Dr. Berners-Lee's new program was,
even two years later the World Wide Web still only accounted for a
mere 1% of all Internet traffic. You see, there was still a piece of
the puzzle missing – there was as yet no easy-to-use way to navigate
your way around the now exploding Internet.
In other words, what was
needed was a "browser."
In 1993 Marc Andreesen and a group of student
programmers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications
developed the first user-friendly browser for the World Wide Web that
they called "Mosaic." (One year later, by the way, Marc left
the NCSA to form his own company which he called Netscape
Communications. Ever hear of it!?) This was also the year that the
National Science Foundation set up InterNIC, which, through Network
Solutions, until recently was solely responsible for assigning us our
"dotcom" domain names.
This new browser was the real "icing on the
cupcake" for the World Wide Web, which began to grow at the
astounding rate of 381 THOUSAND percent a YEAR! Within
just two more years WWW traffic was the dominant traffic on the
Internet, and you could order a pepperoni pizza from Pizza Hut over
the Internet. The era of e-commerce had arrived!
(Oh, yeah…and the
term "spam" comes into being.)
By 1996 45 million people worldwide were on the
Internet, with about 30 million of those (about 67%) in the United
States and Canada. By 1999 the number of world-wide "net-izens"
had increased to 150 million; it took only one more year for that
number to double to over 300 million. For the first time the
number of American homes with Internet access surpassed 50%, and by
2006 that number reached over 85%.
The Internet is based on a set of "rules," or
"protocols" for exchanging information.
This collection of
rules is known as "Hyper-Text Transfer
Protocol," or more familiarly, "HTTP."
We can go back and forth between pages on the Net because Web browsers
(like Marc Andreesen’s "Netscape," or Microsoft’s
"Internet Explorer") which actually READ the pages, and Web servers
(computers that STORE the pages) both understand HTTP.
Hmmm... Does "HTTP" ring any bells with
you? Yep! It's always the first part of a website
address. For example, the website address that you used to
purchase the "Secrets of the Big Dogs" ebook is...
http://www.bigdogsecrets.com
A website address - the location of a particular
website - is referred to as a "U.R.L." U.R.L.
stands for Uniform Resource Locator, and now you
know what that "http" at the beginning of every URL stands
for - Hyper-Text-Transfer-Protocol!
And I'll bet you can now guess what the "www" after
the double slashes stands for. That's right! It signifies
that portion of the Internet on which that website resides - in this
case, the World Wide Web.
After the "www" comes what is called the "domain
name." The domain name specifies exactly what computer
is "hosting" that website. And, finally, the suffix
".com" indicates that this is a top-level domain.
".Com" stands for "commercial." Other
top-level domain suffixes you may have seen include ".edu"
(education), ".mil" (military), ".gov"
(government), and ".org" (organization).
In other words, when you initially clicked on that
link to go to the "Secrets of the Big Dogs" purchase page,
THIS is what you were telling that little box on your desk to do...
"Computer! Use Hyper-Text-Transfer-Protocol
and take me to that portion of the Internet called the World-Wide-Web
where I can find the Domain Name bigdogsecrets which is a commercial,
top-level domain."
Congratulations! Not only are you now an
expert on the history of the Internet, but you are one of the few
people who know the parts of a URL, and what they are for. You
are bound to be the center of attention at the next cocktail party
you attend, and, boy, if you ever appear on Jeopardy!...
But seriously...
Within just 30 years the Internet has grown from a
Cold War idea for communicating among the remains of a society
devastated by all-out nuclear war, to the Information Superhighway
that we work and play on today.
Today, most folks look with awe upon the Internet,
as this all-encompassing, all-knowing, smoothly running behemoth that
makes anything and everything possible. And all too many folks think
that the Internet is a sure-fire road to riches requiring no
investment of time, effort, or money.
IS this an accurate
appraisal of the situation? In other words…
…IS THE INTERNET ALL THAT
IT’S CRACKED UP TO BE!?
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