Lessons from the History of the Internet
Manuel Castells · Oxford University Press eBooks · 2002
This chapter focuses on the critical lessons that can be derived from the building of the ARPANET in the 1960s to the outburst of the World Wide Web in the 1990s. It notes that the historical production of a given technology shapes its content and uses in ways that last beyond its original inception. It explains that the history of the Internet helps people understand the path of its future history-making. This chapter also provides a summary of events that led to the constitution of the Internet in its current form, that is, as a global network of computer networks made user-friendly by the World Wide Web, an application running on top of the Internet. It then discusses the procedures to ensure communication and coordination functions in the network — the shared protocol development, agreements on standards, and assignment of Internet names and addresses.