Sameer Baxi
CS 312
The Real Heroes of the Internet
The Internet has revolutionized the computer and communications world like nothing before. With the emergence of the internet and recent high speed connections becoming available to the public, the Internet has altered the way many people work in significant ways. The Internet has also been a major source of leisure with the advent of the World Wide Web. The Internet represents one of the most successful examples of the benefits of sustained investment and commitment to research and development of information infrastructure.
Even though a precursor to today’s
Internet existed way back in the 1960s with the likes of ARPA and DARPANet (both initiatives of the US Dept of Defense), and
a TCP/IP network with limited public nodes went operational in the 1980s, this complex, hetrogenous network only
gained a public face in the 1990s.
In
August 1991 CERN, which straddles the border between France and Switzerland
publicized the new World Wide Web project, two years after Tim Berners-Lee had
begun creating HTML, HTTP and the first few web pages at CERN (which was set up
by international treaty and not bound by the laws of either France or
Switzerland). In 1993 the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign released the Mosaic web browser
version 1.0, and by late 1994 there was growing public interest in the
previously academic/technical Internet. By 1996 the word "Internet"
was common public currency, but it referred almost entirely to the World Wide
Web.[1]
Many
brilliant minds and erudite hands were responsible in creating and enhancing to
what is today a very integral part of our lives. Many of these heroes remain
unsung and may be lost in the passage of time. Their contributions have been
enormous and have in many ways exponential to the development of the Internet,
enabliing it to touch more and more humans across the globe. Dedicating even a
single line to them would require a volume. However, for the sake of naming a
few, I take personal liberty in naming three individuals, whose contribution
have been so profound and far-fetched, and moresoever the impact of their
contribution remains the core the way the Internet functions and how we use it.
Tim
Berners Lee a.k.a. Sir
Timothy "Tim" John Berners-Lee, KBE, FRS (TimBL or TBL)
(born June 8, 1955 in London) is the inventor of the World Wide Web and
director of the World Wide Web Consortium, which oversees its continued
development. In 1980, while an independent contractor at CERN from June to
December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of
hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. He
used similar ideas to those underlying the Enquire system to create the World
Wide Web(WWW). Lee’s WWW changed the face of the Internet. It is the WWW that
shrinked the globle from random islands to a global information superhighway,
forever changing the way we will work and conduct business.
Marc
Andreessen worked at the
National Center for Supercomputing Applications, where he became familiar with
Tim Berners-Lee's open standards for the World Wide Web. worked on creating a
user-friendly browser with integrated graphics that would work on a wide range
of computers. The resulting code was the Mosaic web browser. Andreessen was
fastidious in monitoring and responding to all user comments for suggestions
and improvements to the browser, which fueled its accessibility and its
popularity. The Mosaic browser realized the full potential of Lee’s WWW making
it the default engine for connecting to and exploring the endless potential of
the WWW. Andressen’s browser was later amalgamated with more functionality as
the Netscape browser and gave way to a plethora of browsers for the WWW,
including the likes of Microsoft’s now famous Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s
Firefoz to name a few.[2]
During
his tenure, from 1976 to 1982, at the
United States Department of Defense's Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA), Vint Cerf, played a key
role in leading the development of the TCP/IP protocols and the Internet.
TCP/IP is now the
Internet’s de facto standard for
transmitting data over networks guaranteeing its reliability and in-order
delivery. [3]
Many a hands have spent countless hours on varied
keystrokes and switches adding bits and bytes to today’s version of the
Internet, making it what is one of the most important means of communication,
information and entertainment, and without doubt one of mankind’s greatest scientific
achievement, touching the lives of millions around the globe. But it is the
WWW, browser and TCP/IP that has added form and content to what was otherwise
just a connection of networks. Lee, Andreessen and Cerf are truly the heroes of
the Internet.
Refereces:
[1] Tim Berners
Lee. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet
[2] Marc Andreessen
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Andreesen
[3] Vint Cerf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vint_Cerf