Essay on How Technology Via the Internet Controls Our Everyday Lives

When television became popular in the 1950s, it provided a window to the world, but it also encouraged people to spend less time outside visiting with neighbors. The automobile furnished people with mobility, but it also created pollution and led to the creation of suburban sprawl. Today, the Internet allows people to access unlimited amounts of information and connect with people around the world, but some experts believe it has also led to social isolation and loss of privacy.

“Technology is making life more convenient and enjoyable, and many of us healthier, wealthier and wiser. But it is also affecting work, family, and the economy in unpredictable ways, introducing new forms of tension and distraction, and posing new threats to the cohesion of our
physical communities.”(Brockman,1996) The Internet has already precipitated far-reaching social and economic changes, yet in its present form, the Net is just over ten years old.

The Internet seemed to appear suddenly in the early 1990s, but its development really began twenty years earlier. In 1969, the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) was asked to create a communications network that would survive a nuclear attack. The research team linked four university computers in a network—called ARPAnet—so that if one of the computers in the network was destroyed, the other three could continue to exchange data. ARPAnet was utilized primarily by engineers and scientists.

ARPAnet continued to attract the interest of academicians, but—since it required complex commands to operate—it was difficult to use. In an effort to make a computer network that would be easier to operate, computer experts continued to explore different protocols—the computer standards that enable different computers to communicate with one another.

The protocol Unix—developed in 1978—made newsgroups possible for the first time.................

ESSAYS ON TECHNOLOGY