The history of the internet, from ARPANET to the rise of social media

During the late 1950s, several American research organisations began to explore how computers could share resources across distance.

Paul Baran, who worked at RAND Corporation in the early 1960s, proposed a spread-out network model that could survive physical damage, and it routed messages along multiple paths.

His ideas took hold after the Soviet Union had launched Sputnik in 1957, which led the United States to fund advanced research through the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) in 1958.

In the mid-1960s, British scientist Donald Davies, who worked at the National Physical Laboratory, independently developed the concept of packet switching and created the term "packet."

To address national security concerns, ARPA primarily focused on communication systems that did not rely on central hubs that were easy to disrupt.

At research centres like MIT and UCLA, scientists developed early time-sharing systems that allowed multiple users to operate a single computer at once.

MIT’s Compatible Time-Sharing System (CTSS) began development in 1961, and researchers had first demonstrated it in 1962, before it became publicly available in 1963.

At the same time, engineers explored how digital data could be sent in small pieces, or packets, that moved independently between machines before being put back together upon arrival. 

By 1969, ARPA launched ARPANET, an early network that connected computers at four universities: UCLA, the Stanford Research Institute, UC Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah.

Each site received an Interface Message Processor (IMP), which managed data flow and provided a common way for machines to communicate.

Unlike traditional telephone lines, ARPANET used packet switching, which allowed data to travel without needing a dedicated circuit.

On 29 October 1969, the first test of this system attempted to send the word “LOGIN” from UCLA to Stanford.

The receiving computer registered the letters “L” and “O” before crashing, but those characters successfully arrived.

Even with this early setback, the success of the network’s design became more apparent as it grew.

Leonard Kleinrock had worked extensively on queuing theory and had helped develop ARPANET’s communication protocols, and he supervised the test.

By 1971, the network expanded to fifteen nodes, and it reached Harvard and MIT, along with Carnegie Mellon.

During the 1970s, Vinton Cerf and Robert Kahn developed the TCP/IP set of rules, which defined how different networks could reliably exchange information.

This standard eventually allowed networks to interconnect, which created the possibility of a single, global system of communication.

Engineers had first tested TCP/IP in 1975, and it became the backbone of connecting networks, and it became the standard for ARPANET on 1 January 1983. 

By 1983, ARPANET adopted TCP/IP as its protocol standard, which enabled machines from different manufacturers and organisations to work together more easily.

At the same time, the development of the Domain Name System (DNS) introduced easy-to-read website names that replaced the need to remember numeric IP addresses.

Paul Mockapetris created the DNS in 1984, which helped make the system easier for the public to use.

To expand access outside military and defence organisations, the National Science Foundation created NSFNET in 1985, which connected universities and research centres.

Although business traffic was initially restricted, growing demand led to the creation of private internet service providers during the late 1980s, including UUNET and PSINet.

By 1989, the wider internet had connected well over 100,000 host computers. As new connections multiplied, ARPANET was formally shut down in 1990, but it had already laid the foundation for the next phase of development.

At that point, public interest in the internet began to increase more quickly.

Businesses and educational organisations recognised its usefulness for communication, research, and commerce, and individual users recognised it as well, which encouraged further investment in systems and software. 

In 1989, Tim Berners-Lee was a British computer scientist who worked at CERN, and he proposed a system to organise information with hypertext connections.

He created three essential components: URLs, plus HTML and HTTP, which allowed users to navigate between documents stored on different servers.

His proposal, titled "Information Management: A Proposal," laid the groundwork for the web.

By 6 August 1991, the first website had gone live at CERN. To make the system more accessible, Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina, who worked at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, developed Mosaic in 1993.

This browser introduced a graphical interface that could display text and images together, which attracted non-technical users.

Soon after, Andreessen co-founded Netscape Communications and released Netscape Navigator, a browser that dominated the early commercial web market.

During the 1990s, many governments and corporations invested heavily in fibre-optic networks and server farms, plus satellite systems, which increased capacity and speed.

As speeds increased, many users began adopting search engines, shopping platforms, and digital publishing tools.

Companies such as Yahoo! (1994), Amazon (1994), and eBay (1995) helped turn into business use the internet.

At the same time, new software allowed websites to update content in real time, which enabled real-time interaction between users and services.

In 1998, Google introduced its PageRank algorithm, which significantly improved the relevance of search results. 

In the early 2000s, the web shifted toward content made by users and real-time sharing in many online spaces.

New platforms such as Friendster (2003), MySpace (2003), Facebook (2004), and YouTube (2005), which allowed users to upload photos and comment on posts, then form communities based on personal interests.

As more people contributed content, the internet became increasingly interactive and central to everyday life.

By 2010, Facebook had reached over 500 million users, and YouTube received more than two billion daily views, according to figures released by the company.

During this period, mobile phones also changed quickly. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone, which combined phone capabilities with internet access and touch-screen navigation.

Developers quickly created apps that allowed users to browse websites and watch videos, then send messages on the move.

The Apple App Store launched in 2008 and reached 100,000 apps by November 2009.

To meet this demand, phone companies expanded their 3G and 4G networks, which allowed for fast mobile connections in cities and regional areas.

In parallel, large technology companies introduced cloud services that shifted storage and computing power to remote servers.

Amazon Web Services launched in 2006, followed by Google Cloud in 2008 and Microsoft Azure in 2010.

These platforms hosted websites, stored documents, and ran applications, which reduced the need for local hardware.

For many users, everyday activities such as file sharing and video conferencing now took place on remote systems, and photo backups took place there as well. 

As internet usage expanded, new challenges emerged. Online criminals developed phishing scams and ransomware, along with data breaches that targeted individuals, banks and hospitals, along with governments.

In response, security researchers developed encryption tools and firewalls, along with systems that detected break-ins, though attackers continued to evolve their methods, and a major breach in 2017 affected Equifax and exposed sensitive data of approximately 147 million people.

Meanwhile, state surveillance activities expanded in several countries. In 2013, former NSA contractor Edward Snowden leaked classified documents showing that the United States and its partners conducted collection of large amounts of data on internet users.

These documents revealed programs such as PRISM and XKeyscore, which led to widespread concern about the use of personal data and the limits of government authority in digital spaces.

To address these concerns, lawmakers in the European Union introduced the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) in 2018.

This law required companies to obtain explicit user consent before they collected data and to report breaches quickly, and it also gave users the right to delete stored information.

GDPR came into force on 25 May 2018 and applied across all EU member states.

Elsewhere, many governments began implementing their own rules, such as China's Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL), which came into effect in 2021 and which set limits on how companies handled personal data.

Debates continued over how best to regulate internet content, enforce fair competition, and protect democratic organisations from misleading campaigns on social media.