Growth

Growth

The network gained a public face in the 1990s. On August 6, 1991, CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland, publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after British scientist Tim Berners-Lee had begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few Web pages at CERN.

An early popular web browser was ViolaWWW based upon HyperCard. It was eventually replaced in popularity by the Mosaic web browser. In 1993 the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois released version 1.0 of Mosaic, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 usage of the word "Internet" had become commonplace, and consequently, so had its misusage as a reference to the World Wide Web.

Meanwhile, over the course of the decade, the Internet successfully accommodated the majority of previously existing public computer networks (although some networks, such as FidoNet, have remained separate). During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100% per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997.^[3] This growth is often attributed to the lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from exerting too much control over the network. ^{[citation needed]}

University Students Appreciation and Contributions

New findings in the field of communications during the 1960’s and 1970’s were quickly adopted by universities across the United States. Their openness for technology and new things saw many of them amongst the first to appreciate this new Cultural Revolution – in most cases seeking technological innovation for the pure joy of discovery, and seeing the potential for a tool of liberation.

Examples of early university internet communities are Cleveland FreeNet, Blacksburg Electronic Village and Nova Scotia. Students took up the opportunity of free communications and saw this new phenomenon as a tool of liberation. Personal computers and the internet would free them from corporations and governments (Nelson, Jennings, Stallman).

‘The culture of individual freedom sprouting in the university campuses of the 1960’s and 1970’s used computer networking to it’s own ends’ (Castells 2001)

The students appreciated it through a cultural revolutionary way of thinking, similar to that of Tim Nelson or Douglas Engelbart. Students agreed with the ideas of free software and cooperative use or resources, which was always the early hacker conduct. (Castells 2001)

Graduate students also played a huge part in the creation of ARPANET. In the 1960’s, the network working group, which did most of the design for ARPANET’s protocols was composed mainly or graduate students.

References

Castells, M. 1996. Rise of the Network Society. 3 vols. Vol. 1. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishers.

Castells, M. (2001), “Lessons from the History of Internet”, in “The Internet Galaxy”, Ch. 1, pp 9-35. Oxford Univ. Press