Outline the social and technological development of the Internet Introduction We live in an age of constant changes but the technologies that change the way we live are rare. Looking back through this century, I can point to the telephone, the television, the automobile, and the computer. These and a handful of other innovations have changes how we interact with the rest of the world.
Ten years ago, the idea that we could own a personal computer was just beginning to take hold. Today, personal computers are so common that many young people will learn how to use them while still in elementary school.
Today's world is also becoming more and more interconnected. This means that we can use a car phone to dial a friend halfway around the globe. We can watch live television coverage of athletes breaking Olympic and world records on other countries. We can invest in all the world's economies, because stock markets in Tokyo, London, and New York are linked electronically to form a huge 24-hour-a-day business opportunity.
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Internet!
A data visualization of Wikipedia as part of the W...One of the most exciting manifestations of this interconnectedness and the significant technologies is the Internet. The Internet is a global collection of people and computers, all linked together by many miles of cables and telephone lines, all able to communicate because they share a common language. One of the beauties of the Internet is that it's constantly changing and growing. It's part of a new electronic frontier for communicating and exchanging ideas and resources. It promises to change how we buy things, and how we communicate with other people. In the future, it will determine where we go for our entertainment, news, and weather, and where we work.
Quantitatively, the success of the Internet is obvious. Less obvious is that the growth has been fairly stable.