When you were a baby, life was simple, but now that you've grown up things have become much more complicated!

1957 US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) within the Department of Defense (DoD) to establish US lead in science and technology 1961 Leonard Kleinrock, writes first paper on packet-switching (PS) theory 1969 Kleinrock hooks up switch and 1st network 1971 ARPAnet has 15 nodes (23 hosts): UCLA, SRI, UCSB, Univ of Utah, BBN, MIT, RAND, SDC, Harvard, Lincoln Lab, Stanford, UIU(C), CWRU, CMU, NASA/Ames Ray Tomlinson of BBN invents email program 1972 First use of @ sign in email First computer to computer chat 1973 ARPANET goes international with connections to University College in London, England and the Royal Radar Establishment in Norway. 1983 Name server developed at Univ of Wisconsin, no longer requiring users to know the exact path to other Systems Desktop workstations come into being, many with Berkeley UNIX which includes IP networking software 1984 Domain Name System (DNS) introduced Moderated newsgroups introduced on USENET 1987 Number of hosts breaks 10,000 1988 Internet worm burrows through the Net, affecting less than 6,000 of the 60,000 Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed 1989 The first effort to index the Internet as Peter Deutsch and his crew at McGill University in Montreal, created an archiver for ftp sites, which they named Archie. Number of hosts breaks 100,000 1990 ARPANET ceases to exist The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access 1991 World-Wide Web (WWW) released by CERN Gopher - simple menu system to access files and information .developed at the University of Minnesota 1992 Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000 The term "surfing the Internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly 1993 InterNIC created by NSF to provide specific Internet services: Mosaic (First Graphical browser and originally Netscape) takes the Internet by storm WWW proliferates at a 341,634% annual growth rate of service traffic. Gopher's growth is 997%. 1994 Shopping malls arrive on the Internet 1995 Sun launches JAVA on May 23 RealAudio, an audio streaming technology, lets the Net hear in near real-time Traditional online dial-up systems (Compuserve, America Online, Prodigy) begin to provide Internet access A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value Technologies of the Year: WWW, Search engines 1996 The controversial US Communications Decency Act (CDA) becomes law in the US in order to prohibit distribution of indecent materials over the Net. A few months later a three-judge panel imposes an injunction against its enforcement. Supreme Court unanimously rules most of it unconstitutional in 1997. Various ISPs suffer extended service outages, bringing into question whether they will be able to handle the growing number of users. AOL (19 hours), Netcom (13 hours), AT&T WorldNet (28 hours - email only) The WWW browser war, fought primarily between Netscape and Microsoft, has rushed in a new age in software development, whereby new releases are made quarterly with the help of Internet users eager to test upcoming (beta) versions. Technologies of the Year: Search engines, JAVA, Internet Phone 1997 The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) is established to handle administration and registration of IP numbers to the geographical areas currently handled by Network Solutions (InterNIC), starting March 1998. Technologies of the Year: Push, Multicasting 1998 US Dept of Commerce (DoC) releases the Green Paper outlining its plan to privatize DNS on 30 January Web size estimates range between 275 (Digital) and 320 (NEC) million pages for 1Q Network Solutions registers its 2 millionth domain on 4 May Technologies of the Year: E-Commerce, E-Auctions, Portals 1999 IBM becomes the first Corporate partner to be approved for Internet2 access First large-scale Cyberwar takes place simultaneously with the war in Serbia/Kosovo Free computers are all the rage (as long as you sign a long term contract for Net service) Technologies of the Year: E-Trade, Online Banking Source Hobbes' Internet Timeline http://www.isoc.org/zakon/Internet/ History/HIT.html

ARPA was formed after the Soviet Union's 1957 launch of Sputnik, the first manmade satellite to orbit the Earth. Officials wanted a fast and efficient way of sharing information between research centers. The network needed to be decentralized so that that one failure would not kill the system. And the computers needed to speak a common language of data chopped into packets, each labeled with instructions on where to go and how to be reassembled.

What was to become the Internet was designed in part to provide a communications network that would work even if some of the sites were destroyed by nuclear attack. If the most direct route was not available, routers would direct traffic around the network via alternate routes. After the first test, the network quickly grew. By the end of 1969, four sites had been connected: UCLA, the Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara and the University of Utah. The number increased to 10 within seven months. Applications like e-mail and file transfer utilities emerged in subsequent years, but it was not until the late 1980s, when the World Wide Web appeared, the network became a force not only in research but also in commerce and culture. Kleinrock and his team could not have foreseen the impact of the Internet on our lives as we approach the millennium. Still a professor at UCLA, he's since said they viewed their creation of ARPAnet as a technological challenge not an ethical one.

Indeed, now in the late 90s, the cultural and ethnical effect of the Internet on our lives has grown almost faster than the breakneck technological advances. The news is now filled with stories about how the Internet and technology are effecting our lives.

The dreams of the past seem to bring the new problems of the future. The dream of unlimited information, instantly accessible, brings up many issues. Should kids be able to access unlimited information? Should we limit what they or others can see, or is that censorship? Can we control hate literature or prevent detailed bomb instructions from being publicly viewed?

Can off-shore gambling circumvent our laws? Can clever con artists swindle us over the Internet? Will our email be filled with never ending spam? Will hackers turn lose viruses that will wreck our computers?

Will your wife spend too much money online? Will you spend too much time alone with your computer? How many will meet their future spouse in a chat room?

These Internet issues and many others cut to the core of our legal and moral values.

Not surprisingly, the upcoming presidential elections are already starting to address some of these issues as candidates incorporate their views of the Internet and technology into their platforms.

Of course, one candidate would have you believe HE invented the Internet. AL Gore, in his infamous interview of March 99 proudly stated, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

That's funny? History has no record of Mr.Gore's presence at Kleinrock's lab at the University of California that day in 1969. In fact, Gore was still a law student at the time and it would be another eight more years before he would be elected to the US House of Representatives.

Since 1993, Gore has become one of the most prominent people in the Clinton administration on issues related to high technology. However, the Internet today is not like the government-managed "Information Highway" run by Supercomputers that Gore originally imagined. Critics contend that the Internet has done just fine without government intervention and regulation.

Although Bush doesn't have the same long-term record of technology appreciation that Gore has, he's certainly aware of the political importance of Internet technology. Gore speaks of the government's ability to promote technology access for all Americans, while Bush urges the government to create an environment in which tech industries can flourish on their own.

It will be interesting to listen to the debate, and see if our politicians will be able to effectively lead us through the challenges of Internet technology and it's growing social and economic implications. As we move into the next millennium we can only dream of what the next 30 years will bring.

Happy 30th birthday Internet! When you were a baby life was simple, but now that you've grown up things have become much more complicated!