Why the internet is arguably the most important invention of the modern era — Peter Zieve

First developed in 1973 by the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency or ARPA, the internet was initially aimed to provide a communication network among various educational institutions and research laboratories in the U.S. Over time, it would be expanded and coincide with the rise of the World Wide Web, drastically improving the ease by which we communicate with one another today, notes inventor and innovator Peter Zieve.

One of the common misconceptions about the internet is that it’s synonymous with the World Wide Web. One has to keep in mind that the two are different innovations: the internet refers to the system that runs the pages we view online, while the World Wide Web is comprised of the interlinked documents that we find across the internet.

Needless to say, improvements and infrastructure developments for both the internet and the World Wide Web have since made them easily the most revolutionary coupling of inventions of the 20th century. Their rise is so unprecedentedly quick that by 1996, there were already over 25 million computers across 180 countries connected to the internet.

Today, in the era of social media, many of the youth tend to take for granted the impact of this global innovation. But most people in their 40s who lived in the 1980s didn’t even have access to such a convenient way to communicate with others, nor had information literally at their fingertips. But with this growth of connectivity comes a flood of data and the proliferation of fake news. Thus, even as the internet is now a fixture in daily lives, people have to be more responsible users, cautions Peter Zieve. This entails developing better information discernment and ensuring our privacy is protected.

Inventor Peter Zieve is the founder and CEO of aerospace automation company Electroimpact, Inc. Electroimpact launched a STEM program that continues to this day, donating equipment and space to students who are welcome to stop by after school to refine their science and math skills. More reads on inventions and modern innovations here.

Originally published at https://sites.google.com.