Although the internet was invented in the 70s, it took until the mid-90s before the internet became available to ordinary people. From the 90s until today, the internet has developed enormously, much thanks to the fact that the slow telephone-connected modems have been replaced by super-fast fiber connections.
Internet in the 90s
In the mid-90s, the internet broke through in the west, and the concept of “surfing the internet” quickly became a buzzword. Web agencies were opened and the internet operator Algonet opened its doors. In 1995, an Internet cable was laid to the United States, across the Atlantic, which allowed a speed of 34 Mbit / s, which was the fastest data connection at the time. The previous record corresponded to 6 Mbit / s.
In 1996, the infrastructure of the internet was expanded in many places which would lead to more and more people opening their eyes to the benefits the internet offers.
The advancement of the Internet is growing further in the years to come, with more and more people and companies getting their own personal computers.
Internet in the 00s
The concern about the infamous “millennium bug”, which would crash all the world’s computers, turned out to be greatly exaggerated. Confidence in IT-related stocks, however, began to falter between 2000 and 2003. During this time period, many IT companies’ stocks fell heavily and sites like Boo.com and Letsbuyit.com fell sharply in value.
But not everything is pitch black. Encyclopedias like Wikipedia open their doors, and the computer game Counter Strike is becoming increasingly popular.
Technology shifts and piracy
About 30 years after the invention of the internet, the CDs were phased out in favor of mp3 players. But the mp3 format quickly became closely linked to piracy, which the then newly founded lobby organization Antipiratbyrån noticed.
During the beginning of the 00’s, people mainly downloaded music from Kazaa and Napster, but after the FBI shut down these services, Bittorrent became even more popular. The torrent site The Pirate Bay, which still eludes the copyright lobby, was founded shortly after the above p2p services closed down.
In 2003, Niklas Zennström created the voice call service Skype, which allows anyone to talk and chat with strangers online. In addition, everyone who thought that the internet was just a fad was really ashamed, as the entire internet had to be expanded as the number of available IP addresses was not enough to cope with the influx of new internet users.
In the middle of the 00’s, iconic social media networks were also founded, like Youtube and Twitter.
Internet in the 10s
At the beginning of the 10s, a vast majority of people in the west had access to the internet. As a consequence of the internet’s growing popularity, as well as the fact that broadband expansion was progressing at a high pace, many new streaming services were founded and flourished.
In 2011, Darknet was founded, which can be described as a closed network that mainly consists of shady websites where drug and arms trafficking exists. But Darknet also serves as a place where whistleblowers can publish sensitive material anonymously, which should be seen as positive.
In the late 10’s, many big IT giants, like Google, Apple and Facebook, tried to lock their users in closed ecosystems. Whether this lock-in, or fragmentation of the internet will continue, we will find out later in the 20s.