The World Wide Web, The Internet and The Cloud

The World Wide Web, The Internet and The Cloud

In 1983 ARPANET adopted the TCP/IP protocol for what was then called the ‘network of networks.’  Seven years later, computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, or what we would later refer to as the Internet.

As a backbone for connectivity, the Internet initially allowed stand-alone PC’s to share data.  This sharing required users to define themselves and on-line security protocols to be developed.  With this base of identity, control and access, what came next was a equivalent to an digital terraform, where entire societies of virtual personalities began to interact without geographical or societal constraints.  The Internet provided the third component of the Intelligence Age: Collaboration.

Commercial use of the Internet quickly took hold in the early 1990’s, initially with static promotion sites that evolved into today’s on-line marketing, underground and non-traditional communication that later became on-line media and basic transactioning that became grew into what we call today’s eCommerce.  Corporations later adopted Intranets, secured web sites with limited access for internal communications while individual users found new ways to interact via social networking.

In August 2006, internal and external usage collided into the current version of the Internet.  During an Internet industry conference, Google CEO Eric Schmidt dusted off a 1960’s telephony term to describe a vision of unexpurgated access to information, processing and collaboration by both consumers and business on any mobile device of their choosing.  Thus “the Cloud” was born as both a web-based architecture and a global Internet marketing term.