The Internet was conceptualized mainly by three men with ideas at a research conference. Vannevar Bush was the visionary who wrote his description of the possible uses of information technology with the “memex” automated library system. Norbert Wiener invented Cybernetics and inspired researchers of the future to look at technology as a means of expanding human capabilities. The third man was Marshall McLuhan. He expressed the idea of a global village that could be connected electronically.
The men presented their ideas at the 1956 Dartmouth Artificial Intelligence Conference. This research conference proved that technology was growing exponentially, and people began to consider the consequences of this.
When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik I in 1957, US President Dwight Eisenhower created the ARPA agency to try to gain the lead in the arms race. J.C.R. Licklider, part of the ARPA agency, was passionate about the possible advantages of a nationwide communications network.
His successors employed Lawrence Roberts to bring this possibility to fruition. A few years later, Roberts created a computer named an Interface Message Processor. This led to the development of ARPANET in 1969. The initial interaction on ARPANET was between the research center at the University of California at Los Angeles and the center at the Stanford Research Institute.
The Network Control Program was the first networking protocol for ARPANET. TCP/IP replaced it in 1983 and became one of the most widely used network protocols on earth.
In 1990, ARPANET closed. Later, the technology would become the CSNET connecting universities in North America and the EUnet, which linked research centers in Europe. The use of the Internet boomed after this. The US Government handed over the management to independent organizations in 1995. Today, there are billions of Internet users all around the world who are taking advantage of the global village.