29th October: International Internet Day

International Internet Day on October 29th celebrates what many consider the most important invention in human history.

It’s hard to fathom a world without the Internet. The Internet provides instant access to information. Search engines make this information easy to attain. Besides gaining knowledge, internet users have an endless supply of entertainment. The internet makes it possible to do banking and shopping from the comfort of your own home. The internet is also a great way to make donations and raise funds. Thanks to the internet, many people are able to work remotely from anywhere in the world. Many use the internet to find a love connection, and many have had success. What in the world would we do without the internet?

• In 2019, there were 4.39 billion internet users in the world
• About 4 billion people use the internet via a mobile device
• Fifty-seven percent of the global population uses the internet
• There are one million new internet users every day
• Google is the world’s most visited website on the internet
• YouTube and Facebook rank 2nd and 3rd for most visited sites

One of the reasons the internet is so widely used is because of the World Wide Web. The WWW became publically available in 1991.

The internet is defined as a remote connection between two computers. The first internet connection was made on October 29th, 1969. Charley Kline, working under the supervision of Professor Leonard Kleinrock, transmitted a message from the computer housed at the UCLA to a computer positioned at the Stanford Research Institute’s computer. The two computers, one at the UCLA was the SDS Sigma 7 Host computer and the receiver was the SDS 940 Host at the Stanford Research Institute. Interestingly enough the message was a text message comprising the word ‘login’. But as it would transpire only the letter L and O could be transmitted across, because following the initial transmission the system collapsed and the transmission crashed.

Hashtag: #InternationalInternetDay #SaferInternetDay