Let’s Celebrate National Internet Day!

How many hours a day do you spend on the Internet? If you’re like most people, it’s a lot. So, since today is National Internet Day, let’s celebrate the history of something that has become so important to our daily lives, the Internet.

According to InternetDay.com, “On October 29th, we celebrate the most important invention in human history. While the internet may not  have been possible without a million other monumental inventions that came before it, it’s hard to find any other invention that has had such a monumental impact on mankind. That’s why, since October 29, 2005, we’ve been celebrating the anniversary of the first internet transmission. It is a chance to celebrate the people who helped build the internet, while also giving us a moment to reflect on all the ways that it has changed our lives forever.

The Internet, defined as a remote connection between two computers, was first achieved on October 29, 1969 (just a few months after Neil Armstrong took the first steps on the moon). In the glow of a green monochrome screen deep in the bowels of the computer science department at UCLA, a young graduate student picked up his phone and called the computer lab at Stanford. He was preparing to send the first message over an Internet connection. The men on either end of the phone are Charley Kline and Bill Duvall.

While not as famous as Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldren, Leonard Kleinrock, Charley Kline and Bill Duvall were the key players in the first Internet connection. Working on the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), a network funded by the United States Defense Department, that connected four independent  terminals installed at ULCA, Stanford, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah, Charley Kline attempted to send login information from UCLA to Bill Duvall at Stanford.

It’s impossible to calculate the effect of the Internet on society as a whole. That’s like trying to figure out how the telephone and printing press changed the world. We started with chat rooms, email programs, and some basic websites and wound up in the midst of a cultural revolution.”

The marketing arena has also changed exponentially with the advent of the Internet – with ads on websites, cobranding campaigns, and more. In addition, consider all the social media channels that have impacted marketing and advertising in the last couple of decades.

How will you celebrate the Internet today?

Image Credit: The Hans India.

To read more about ARPANET:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ARPANET# 

To read about the Information Superhighway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_superhighway 

To read about an important woman in the history of the Internet:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_J._Feinler