History of technology
How the Internet got its rules
It is amazing that the gargantuan Internet of today is still using pretty much the same rules and methods that were devised at its beginning 40 years ago. It is a tribute to those pioneers who put together the original structure. The New York Times has an article by one of those pioneers about how [...]
For computing history buffs
If you are like me and occasionally have nostalgic moments thinking about operating systems of days past, Computerworld has an article, Gone but not forgotten: 10 operating systems the world left behind. There is also a photo gallery accompanying the article.
Unix, which is still going strong, is approaching its 40th birthday and so Computerworld has [...]
Internet history at the Wayback Machine
The Wayback Machine is an archive of old Web pages. (The name comes from a time-travel machine in the 1960’s TV cartoon series, The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, specifically the segment, Peabody’s Improbable History.) The archive is a place to go if you want to see what Google looked like ten years ago. It has [...]
Is the WIMP interface obsolete?
WIMP stands for windows, icons, menus, pointing device. It is the way computer interfaces have been constructed since the Alto system was first packaged at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. First Apple and then Microsoft adopted WIMP and it is the way we are still doing things nearly four decades later. It is a [...]
How the Web began
The concept of what became the World Wide Web was in a paper dated 20 years ago today that was written by Tim Berners-Lee. As a scientist, Berners-Lee made his ideas freely available to all. Imagine where we would be if Bill Gates had come up with the same ideas and, true to his credo [...]
The good old days
Do you have fond memories of the good old days? Take a step back in time and recall how the Internet was in the year 1996 with this post from Slate. AOL? Compuserve? Dialup? Maybe the good old days were not that good after all. Actually, people didn’t spend that much time on the Internet [...]
Another computer magazine goes down
Another venerable print magazine has bitten the dust. Computer Shopper will be online only after its April issue. PaidContent reports:
You’re reading it here first … paidContent has learned that Computer Shopper will cease print publication with its April issue, due off the press next week, and become online only at ComputerShopper.com.
At Technologizer, Harry McCracken comments:
Shopper’s [...]
The burgeoning Internet
PC World has an extensive presentation showing how the Internet has evolved and mushroomed in the past few years. There are some revealing charts and statistics. For example, the figure below shows that email is now almost all spam.
Another very interesting chart shows the growth in Internet users.
Video clip on the history of the Internet
I previously mentioned the National Science Foundation show on the history of the Internet. Here’s another presentation; It’s an 8-minute video. There isn’t a lot of detail and it omits some things I think should be included but it’s worth a quick look.
Anniversary of the Apple Mac
The Macintosh computer is 25 years old and Macworld has an article giving us a little of the history of the Mac:
In 1977, Apple made a splash on the world stage by introducing the Apple II, one of the world’s first personal computers. In the time between the Apple II’s release and IBM’s introduction of [...]
History of the Internet
As you probably know, the Internet began as a US Defense Department project and was later turned over to the civilian research agency, the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF, in turn relinquished control to the loose administrative setup that exists today. The NSF has prepared a presentation about the history of the Internet. Navigation [...]