Like each of the Shocks, the Internet did not just show up on the global scene and change everything immediately. The Internet had been forming since the 1960s when the U.S. Department of Defense commissioned J.C.R. Licklider, a man who had for some time been a proponent of creating a global network, to research the possibility of doing just that. One of Licklider’s key ideas was his incorporation of the concept of using “packet switching” to move information rather than single fixed connection. Packet switching is a form of communicating on a network in which a data stream is broken down into individual pieces, or packets, to be transmitted in easier to manage sections than if the data was transmitted whole.
Once the packet switching concept began to be utilized successfully by ARPANET, different private networks sprung up around the world. One of the more successful network protocols to arise was X.25, which used packet switching but modeled its data transmission on the same formation as telephone communication, only using virtual circuits. Throughout the ’70s and early ’80s X.25 was used to start a number of networks, such as the British JANET, the International Packet Switched Service, Telenet, and CompuServe.
The fragmentation of networks called for some sort of common factor to bind them all, which led to the creation of TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol). It was a standard of sorts for all would be users of the Internet. It was the development of that protocol as well as the development of the World Wide Web in 1990 by Tim Berners-Lee that moved the Internet towards becoming an everyday part of life for so many people. The Web is a collection of information, documents, images, and other resources on the Internet that can be navigated using links. It made the Internet easier to navigate for everyday users.
With standard protocol defined for the back end of the Internet and the Web to help users on the front end, its popularity exploded in the 1990s. Now it is the way that business is conducted and that people connect around the world. The Internet is the connectivity forbear of mobility. Mobility technology is already in place. Standards will soon emerge for how people on different mobile networks will connect. Some company, whether it is Apple or Google or Blackberry or someone else, will develop the dominant user front end. After that mobility will explode in a way similar to the Internet, and the Fourth Shock – which like the others has already begun taking place – will become immediately evident to people and companies the world over. It will become the dominant avenue buy which companies interact with consumers, that companies interact with other companies and that people connect with each other.
