What impact did the internet have on people’s lives in the old days?
We all recognize mobile technology as the real game-changer in the creation of the world as we experience it today. The hidden truth, though, is that there would be no smartphone without the Internet revolution. We are the result of this revolution. We can start with one simple question: Can you imagine your life without the Internet? Just close your eyes for a moment and think about what life was before the web. You can barely remember that time if you were born and grew up before the Internet. If you are a digital native, this task is simply impossible.
Research into packet switching by Paul Baran and Donald Davies emerged in the early to mid-1960s, and packet switched networks such as the NPL network, ARPANET, Tymnet, the Merit Network, Telenet, and CYCLADES, were developed in the late 1960s and 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET project led to the development of protocols for internetworking, by which multiple separate networks could be joined into a single network of networks.
ARPANET development began with two network nodes which were interconnected between the Network Measurement Center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science directed by Leonard Kleinrock, and the NLS system at SRI International (SRI) by Douglas Engelbart in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October 1969.
The third site was the Culler-Fried Interactive Mathematics Center at the University of California, Santa Barbara, followed by the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of future growth, fifteen sites were connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of Resource Sharing.
Early international collaborations on the ARPANET were rare. European developers were concerned with developing the X.25 networks. Notable exceptions were the Norwegian Seismic Array (NORSAR) in June 1973, followed in 1973 by Sweden with satellite links to the Tanum Earth Station and Peter T. Kirstein's research group in the United Kingdom, initially at the Institute of Computer Science, University of London and later at University College London.
In December 1974, RFC 675 (Specification of Internet Transmission Control Program), by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the term internet as a shorthand for internetworking and later RFCs repeated this use. Access to the ARPANET was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF) funded the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized, which permitted worldwide proliferation of interconnected networks.
The reformation of internet
The Internet Reformation is just as profound as the thought revolution caused by the Gutenberg press and is having an equally significant impact. Predictably, elites have fought back. They have tried to slow the circulation of information via copyright, just as they have before. Copyright has been vehemently expanded and enforced; wars have been expanded and prosecuted, as well; economic disasters are growing. The idea is to damp down the rate of social change.
Nonetheless, convulsive changes are occurring around the world and in the US where the Tea Party and the 2016’s political season are in the process of destroying the current two party system. Europe, too, has seen the rise of forces opposed to both the status quo and the EU. A vote on Britain’s potential Brexit, its possible exit from the EU, may soon be mimicked by other countries. Recently, we came upon a blurb authored by the controversial economic analyst Martin Armstrong. We don’t have any position on Mr. Armstrong’s financial theories or professional difficulties, but he certainly is known for his economic insights.
Internet in the industrial revolution
Long established workplace conventions - from defined office hours to physical office space - are being tossed out the window. Success was once defined by a suit and the ‘9 to 5’; now it can achieved by working in pajamas and starting at noon after a morning at the gym and leisurely latte. The very definition of ‘success’ is now drastically changing. It once meant a “keeping up with the Joneses” lifestyle your neighbors would be envious of; now it’s about making personal, intimate choices about how to live your life. Of course some still associate it purely with wealth, but for many, success is being measured in other ways –happiness, freedom, health, more time for travel and family.
Interconnected societies are the global engine that transforms people from employees to micro entrepreneurs. Anyone now has the opportunity to monetize their skills, from the full-time worker looking for additional income to the once hobbyist building their very own business. True change affects both young and old, and while 15-year old hedge fund managers may capture the imagination, we've got 80-year old entrepreneurs grabbing headlines too. It's truly an uncontested market where talent, skills and experience become commodities outside the narrow boundaries of traditional employment (if such a thing as “traditional” even exists anymore).
As we engage in a century where everyone is not only a global citizen, but a valuable “Brand in Waiting,” we begin to understand that the Internet Revolution IS in fact the Industrial Revolution of our time. It’s a sweeping social disruption that brings with it not only new inventions and scientific advances, but perhaps most importantly revolutionizes both the methods of work and we the workers ourselves.
It’s the return of personal choice and personal definitions of value, as we increasingly define ourselves by the work we produce rather than being defined only by the work available.
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