For the Internet the humble beginnings on October 29, 1969 were marked with the simple word “Login”.

Actually, Charlie Kline only got so far as typing “l” and “o” before a memory buffer overflow crashed the system.  But after a few corrections the two computers, one at the Stanford Research Institute and one at U.C.L.A were officially connected together as the first two nodes on what would over the years become known as the Internet.

Back in those days the network was known as the ARPANET, named after the governments Advanced Research Projects Agency which was responsible for development of the network.

You wouldn’t have recognized it as the Internet of today.  There was no Web and no E-mail. It was just a couple of computers connected together so they could share resources.

The idea was simply to build a packet-switched network that allowed collaboration between computer systems at distant locations.  The ironic thing about the history of the Net is that engineers and managers at AT&T initially scoffed at the idea of a packet-switched network.  Now AT&T is heavily investing in the same technology it originally said wouldn’t work.

Through the years the little network grew, more universities connected, people started using it for personal communication but 1994 was the year that things really started happening.  At that time the National Science Foundation, which was responsible for operating the Internet Backbone, turned over its responsibilities to several commercial companies.  Thus the network that previously had been exempt from commercial activity was opened up for business, both figuratively and literally.

Today the Internet has become an integral part of our society.  Don’t believe me?  Just open up any magazine and you begin to notice the all pervasive dot com that has invaded our lifestyles.

What does the future hold for the little network that could?  With the coming of age of broadband access we are moving toward a future that holds unlimited bandwidth for everyone. With this comes the ability to decentralize computing and offer a greater array of services.  Need the latest copy of Microsoft Word, no need to purchase it just rent it for the time you need to use it.   Like Movies?  How about every movie ever produced whenever you want to view it?  The possibilities are virtually endless.

The coming world of technology will most likely see the convergence of voice, video and data to the extent that the blurring of lines between the services will make it hard for us to imagine a time when our homes weren’t connected with fiber optic cables, our e-mail and voice mail weren’t on our set-top boxes, and TV was just a few local channels that went off the air at 11pm.

Me, I just like living in the time in history when it is all coming together.  When folks ask me where I’ll be in the next few years I just tell them “I’ll see you on the Net”