The 'story' behind the posits

Posit #1, that the Internet is an epochal shift for civilization

James Fellows, an erudite Atlantic Monthly contributor, conducted a survey of "The 50 Greatest Breakthroughs since the Wheel," published in the November 2013 Atlantic Monthly, pp. 56-68

His panel of a dozen experts included Leslie Berlin, John Doerr, George Dyson, Walt Isaacson, Joi Ito, and Padmasree Warrior--indeed a prestigious grouping.

They concluded that the Internet ranked 9th, behind (in order) vaccination, the internal combustion engine, paper, optical lenses, semiconductor technology, penicillin, electricity, and the printing press.

It was well ahead of airplanes, refrigeration, the personal computer, the automobile, making steel, nuclear fusion, the telephone, radio or television.

Hummn, quite a list of what makes our society work, huh?

NO ARGUMENT THAT IT IS A BIG DEAL, RIGHT?


Posit #2, it happened OVERNIGHT

November 17, 1988 was the date of the first contact from America to Europe via 'an Internet'

The Internet Society says in 1991, there were 900 operational networks in the world on the Internet.

Tim Berners-Lee released the WWW URL definitions in 1993 from CERN

Internet Society founded in 1993

Netscape went public in August 1995

October 24, 1995, the Federal Networking Council (USA) defined "Internet" as the official name

The Internet Society says that in 1996, there were 50,000 operational networks WW on the Internet

According to the Internet Society, January 1, 1999, there were 50,000,000 operational networks in 206 of the 248 countries of the world on the Internet

Dec 31, 2000:  360 Million users, one-third in the USA

Dec 31, 2012: 2.406 Billion users, one-eighth in the USA (80% of population); Europe has 63%, Asia 27%, and Africa 16% penetration.  Overall, 34% of the world's population is using the Internet

NO ARGUMENT THAT IT HAPPENED "OVERNIGHT", RIGHT?

Compare this to television in America, for example.  Demonstrated in 1927, offered for sale in 1937, 2,000 sets sold by 1940; 9 TV stations in 8 cities by 1945; 3.6 M sets by 1950; first national broadcast October 1951; 21 M sets end of 1953.