History of the Internet & Information Age

Yesterday was the first day of MGSC 300. I think this will be an interesting class, although it might be a bit repetitive since I just finished ACTG 439 (Accounting Info Systems) over Interterm. I'm glad that I already have experience with using MS Access and Excel so hopefully the projects and cases we do in class won't be that difficult for me. I'm a little bit worried about the technology reports and the fact that I have to be prepared to present everyday, but I guess I'll just have to try my best.

We started talking about the history of the Internet and the Information Age. I have never really researched the Internet, even though I use it for several hours everyday. Prof. Tuggle talked about Packet Switching Networks - he used an example that when you send an e-mail from one place to another, your message is split up into tiny packets and sent separately on the Internet. The packets are put together and the e-mail is received; although packets may travel different paths. This was extremely interesting to me. E-mail is used so widely and frequently these days that no one really considers how their message is actually transmitted. I know that I take for granted how much work goes into creating an e-mail network. Technology has improved so much over the last few decades that this complicated process can be completed in just a few seconds.

Prof. Tuggle also talked about the birth of the Internet in 1969. One interesting fact that I picked up was that the first Internet connected only to a four-node network based within UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, UCSB and the University of Utah. Almost 30 years later, in 1996, there were over 6.5 million nodes and 100,000 websites! I still remember the days of dial-up connections and the early days of high-speed Internet, back when I was in elementary school! Today, the Internet is everywhere and people can connect to the Internet instantaneously through WiFi.