user: Can you provide an overview of the history of the internet?

assistant: The internet is a global network of interconnected computers that communicate through a standardized way with set protocols. It is a fully distributed system of computing devices and it ensures end-to-end connectivity through every part of the network. The aim is for every device to be able to communicate with any other device. The internet is something we all use every day, and many of us can't imagine our lives without it. The internet and all the technological advances it offers have changed our society. It has changed our jobs, the way we consume news and share information, and the way we communicate with one another. It has also created so many opportunities and has helped humanity progress and has shaped our human experience.

The internet was originally created by the U.S. government during the Cold War. In 1958, President Eisenhower founded the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) to give a boost to the country’s military technology. Scientists and engineers developed a network of linked computers called ARPANET. ARPANET's original aim was to link two computers in different places, enabling them to share data. That dream became a reality in 1969, when the team linked dozens of computers together, and by the end of the 1980s, the network contained more than 30,000 machines.

No one person invented the internet. When networking technology was first developed, a number of scientists and engineers brought their research together to create the ARPANET. Later, other inventors’ creations paved the way for the web as we know it today. The internet has developed over time. It was at least 40 years in the making and kept (well, still keeps) on evolving.

In October 1995, the Federal Networking Council (FNC) unanimously passed a resolution defining the term internet. The internet has changed much in the two decades since it came into existence. It was conceived in the era of time-sharing but has survived into the era of personal computers, client-server and peer-to-peer computing, and the network computer. It was designed before LANs existed but has accommodated that new network technology, as well as the more recent ATM and frame switched services. It was envisioned as supporting a range of functions from file sharing and remote login to resource sharing and collaboration, and has spawned electronic mail and more recently the World Wide Web. But most important, it started as the creation of a small band of dedicated researchers and has grown to be a commercial success with billions of dollars of annual investment.

Today, terms like “email” and “website” trip lightly off the tongue of the random person on the street. The internet today is a widespread information infrastructure, the initial prototype of what is often called the National (or Global or Galactic) Information Infrastructure. Its history is complex and involves many aspects – technological, organizational, and community. And its influence reaches not only to the technical fields of computer communications but throughout society as we move toward increasing use of online tools to accomplish electronic commerce, information acquisition, and community operations.

The most pressing question for the future of the internet is not how the technology will change, but how the process of change and evolution itself will be managed. The form of the next social structure that will guide the internet in the future will be harder to find, given the large number of concerned stakeholders. At the same time, the industry struggles to find the economic rationale for the large investment needed for future growth, for example, to upgrade residential access to a more suitable technology. If the internet stumbles, it will not be because we lack for technology, vision, or motivation. It will be because we cannot set a direction and march collectively into the future.