Online Journalism Notes - Introduction

Chapter I - Internet

Internet began in 1969 as an experimental network of 4 computers, set up by US Department of Defense. It was called 'ARPANET' and was designed to help defense officials to share information safely between themselves.

By 1971, ARPANET had grown to link 23 university and government computers. Soon after, 1972, E-mail was invented and government officials, university researchers and scientists took advantage of this new way of communicating to send documents and messages back and forth.

Though personal computers were available as early as 1975, those didn't sell widely until mid-1980's when technology got easier to use with inventions like mouse, modem and graphical user interfaces like Windows. Still most people used their computers at work for typing up documents and few people used Internet.

That all changed in 1990's, when World Wide Web was created. Web allowed words and images from different documents to be linked using hypertext. Because it was so easy to use, people surged onto Internet. At the same time, media started to head online too.

Media experimented early on with computer technology, generally using it to archive their newspapers and to sell these archives commercially. 'The Globe & Mail' was the first to do this in 1977.

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