Which Key Influences Shaped The Internet?

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Over the course of 1980s to 2000, the internet has been radically transformed from a research tool into a popular medium, influenced by fast-moving changes in technology, economy, and the politics of computing and communications. Its network proliferated from a national scale to a global [interconnected] network. Contrary to popular view, the internet was not developed in a straightforward[-linear] process as what many standard histories would suggest. They are rarely the outcome of a single vision of a group, but rather was a confluence of diverse visions. In this essay, I will show that the Internet is collectively shaped by social, commercial and public forces and examine which key influences shaped the internet beginning in the 1980s for …show more content…

In mid-1980s, Abbate (1999) observed that the Internet adopted the Domain Name System (DNS) to provide "a uniform and comprehensive system of host names and addresses that would allow each computer to be uniquely identified" (p.189). The ARPA designated six large domains for different types of network sites: edu (educational), gov (government), mil (military), com (commercial), org (organizations), as a scalable way of recording internet addresses (Boulton, 2014). [Moreover], In response to the network operators' goals to [minimize/limit/move away] from US domination (Abbate, 1999:208-11), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) subsequently promoted a country naming system that enabled national governments to assign lower-level domains as they saw fit (Abbate, 1999:211). This promotes an open architecture, giving freedom and symbolic equality to the nation. Its additional/ further [classification] made the internet more navigable [for nations], thus delegating responsibilities at a national level. The DNS was crucial to providing structure for the internet: because without directories, content in the internet were virtually inaccessible to many