The Index:
1. Internet Before World Wide Web
Internet before World Wide Web - The First 130 Years: Atlantic cable, Sputnick, ARPANET,"Information Superhighway", ...
2. World Wide Web as a Side Effect of Particle Physics Experiments.
World Wide Web was born in CERN: the most impressive results of large scale scientific efforts appeared far away from the main directions of those efforts
3. Next Crossroad of World Wide Web History
World Wide Web as a NextStep of PC Revolution ... from Steven P. Jobs to Tim Berners-Lee
4. Birth of the World Wide Web, Browser Wars, ...
Birth of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau, Marc Andreessen, Browser Wars, ...
5. Early History of Hypertext
Hypertext Foundation of the World Wide Web: Vannevar Bush's hyperlink concept, Ted Nelson coins the word Hypertext, ...
6. "Living History" of Hypertext.
Hypertext Saga of Theodor Holm Nelson: The Fate of Thinking Person in Silicon Valley ...
7. "Xanadu" Plan
The Nelson's Xanadu Plan to build a better World Wide Web
8. Growth of the Internet: Statistics
Statistics of the Internet & Worl Wide Web: Hosts, Domains, WebSites, Traffic, ...
9. Conclusion
What is the nature of World Wide Web?
10 Prehistory of the Internet
The Ancient Roads of Telecommunications & Computers
11 They said it ...
People Wrote About This Book

 

History of the Internet. We all need it. We all want it. But how did it happen in the first place? Gregory Gromov provides a ... comprehensive ... history of the Worldwide Web before it was the Net we all know and love. By Matthew Holt. 

 NetworkWorld. June, 1997

____ 

For a history of the Internet readers should consult Gregory Gromov's The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet's History.

Humanities Computing Unit of Oxford University,
Oxford University,  UK

___

The Roads and Crossroads of the Internet's History. By Gregory R. Gromov. A critically acclaimed site for a comprehensive history of the Internet.

The University of Texas, System Digital Library.

____

Gregory  Gromov provides an impressionistic overview in "The Roads and Crossroads of Internet's History," ... with a particular concentration on the development of  hypertext and the Web.

Current  literature of the online community   by Eron Main, Faculty of Information Studies, 

University of Toronto, Canada 

____

The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory Gromov ... can be a great resource where an informed ‘Net surfer can come and let hypertext do the walking and the inventors of the ‘Net themselves do the talking.

by Kelly Ward, Public Health Library, 
University of California, Berkeley

____

Gregory R. Gromov’s The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History is probably the history that most students will enjoy as it is sprinkled liberally with files that illustrate his points.

Commencing with Internet pre-history work your way through 9 sections to read about the web, browser wars, and Xanadu to name a few topics. It is a long essay but extremely interesting.

The Australian National University. Faculty of Art,  Canberra

____


... This is a hypertext ... It is written as a kind of mosaic rather than as a straight narrative, including email questions and answers, fragments of interviews, and the like. It focuses primarily on the Web and hypertext over the Internet.

by  M. C. Morgan  College of Arts and Letters, 

Bemidji State University, MN, USA

____

This is an entertaining (if potentially  confusing) account of Net history, part of a large on-line hyperbook ...  this site will provide some fascinating insights and connections between events and people.

Open Learning Agency : learning resources to support the K-12 education system in British Columbia, Canada

___

The Roads and Crossroads of Internet 's History by Gregory R. Gromov... is an excellent history of the internet and a good example of a "web document." ... You also should experience what "hypertext" is and why this experience is more like exploring than reading...

by Robert Melczarek  Introduction for EDU 606  School of Education
Troy State University, Dothan. USA

___

The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History - Gregory Gromov's comprehensive and fascinating overview of the philosophy and history of the Internet.

Cource  STS 3700B 6.0: “History of Computing and Information Technolog” by Luigi M Bianchi. School of Analitical Studies & Information Technology. Science and Technology Studies

York University, Canada

____


Finally, an entertaining and eye-catching approach to Internet history is Gregory R. Gromov's History of Internet and WWW: The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History. This site is worth visiting, as much for its unorthodox approach using dazzling visuals and hypertext style as its content. By Deborah Husted Koshinsky and Rick McRae, University Libraries

State University of New York at Buffalo

____

The Roads and Crossroads of Internet History by Gregory Gromov  ...  possibly not the first place in the pool where a non-swimmer should take the plunge, this colorful and quirky site can be a great resource where an informed ‘Net surfer can come and let hypertext do the walking and the inventors of the ‘Net themselves do the talking.

"Nettalk : A Brief History of the 'Net" by Kelly Ward

The Bulletin. Special Libraries Association, San Francisco Bay region. The School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) -- a graduate program at the University of California, Berkeley.

___


This is one of the Great Classic Websites. It's a history of the Internet and what led up to it, told in hypertext, both eloquently and chaotically, as strange in its own way as the Mel Brooks movie, History of the World, Part One. But it's one [REDACTED} of a lot more accurate than the Brooks movie. All Internet users, even those of you who just signed up for Web-TV or AOL last week and are still fumbling around, should check out this site.

When you jump into this online story, make sure you have a couple of hours free. It takes that long to read. Imagine a collaborative writing  project that tells you more than you ever wanted to know (and more than probably thought there was to tell) about the Internet, starting with the laying of the first telegraph cable across the Atlantic in 1858 (which was NOT a success, BTW).

You'll learn why the WWW Consortium [W3C] is based at a physics lab in Switzerland called CERN, instead of at a computer research center where you'd logically expect it to be, and why CERN doesn't even stand for the lab's real name -- in either English or French, along with lots of other neat factoids that'll come in handy if you ever find yourself playing Trivial Pursuit: The Internet Edition.

by  Robin Miller
Best High-Tech Sights on the Net

__

 For anyone who has ever wondered how and why the Internet was created comes this extensive essay,  "The Roads and Crossroads of Internet's History." With this document, users can follow the development of the Net from its early stages as a military communication system to the multimedia extravaganza we know today.

Cource Education 2751: "Power and Communication Technology" by Bridget A. Ricketts

Prince of Wales Collegiate, Newfoundland Canada

__

Gregory R. Gromov's version is a fun to read and thoughtful look into the history of the Internet and the WWW.

USM - Professional Development Center
The Maine Science and Technology Foundation. USA

___


an excellent 9-part review of the Internet's history and its relationship with the information revolution . Very informative and quite amusing at times too!

CADVision Development Corporation. USA

 
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Roads and Crossroads of the Internet History
            by Gregory Gromov

               Click here to download a mobile friendly .PDF version of this History.


 
prev     Chapter #8 - Growth of the Internet - Statisticsnext_

 

 

Net Statistics

 

Andy Grove, the boss of Intel, ... summed up the online pioneers’ attitude when asked about the return on investment (ROI) from his firm’s Internet ventures: “... This is Columbus in the New World. What was his ROI?”

by Christopher Anderson,  The Economist, 1997

 

Growth of the Internet: Statistics

The basic question: How many people are online worldwide as of August 2001... And the number is 513.41 million.

DATE NUMBER % POP SOURCE
August 2001 513.41 million 8.46 Nua Ltd
August 2000 368.54 million 6.07 Nua Ltd
August 1999 195.19 million 4.64 Nua Ltd
Sept 1998 147 million 3.6 Nua Ltd
November 1997 76 million 1.81 Reuters
December 1996 36 million .88 IDC
December 1995 16 million .39 IDC

World Total 513.41 million
Africa 4.15 million
Asia/Pacific 143.99 million
Europe 154.63 million
Middle East 4.65million
>Canada & USA 180.68 million
Latin America 25.33 million


Compiled from: Nua Internet Surveys


      Internet access (M) %'age world online pop. 2003 (est. in M) Total pop. (M) GDP ($B) %'age of world economy GDP per capita (K) Net Hosts
    English 228 40.2% 270 567 $13,812 33.4%    
    Non-English 339 59.8% 510 5633 $27,590 66.6%    
     
    European Languages
    (non-English)
    192.3 33.9% 259.3 1,218 $12,550 30.3%    
    Catalan 1.9   2.2 6.6        
    Czech 2.2   3 12 $53   $5.1 214
    Dutch 11.8 2.1% 13 23.6 $570   $24.2 2485
    Finnish 2.1   3.5 6 $127   $24.4 945
    French 22.0 3.9% 28 77 $1734 4.2% $21.5 2388
    German 38.6 6.8% 49 100 $2421 5.8% $24.9 3784
    Greek 1.6   3 12 $184   $16.9 182
    Hungarian 1.3   3 14.5 $96   $9.4 211
    Italian 20.2 3.6% 27 62 $1471 3.6% $24.7 2313
    Polish 6.7   8.5 44 $306   $7.8 654
    Portuguese 14.9 2.6% 26 176 $1472 3.6% $8.34 1909
    Romanian 0.8   1.2 26 $98   $4.4 69
    Russian 11.5 2.0% 15 167 $730 1.8% $5.0 415
         Danish 3.2     5.4 $176   $32.9 707
         Icelandic 0.2     .3 $6   $23.5 47
         Norwegian 2.5     5 $126   $27.7 630
         Swedish 6.2     9 $223   $22.3 1330
    Scandinavian languages (total) 12.0 2.1% 13 19.7 $525 1.3% 26.0 2714
    Slovak 0.7   1.5 5.6 $47   $8.7 69
    Slovenian 0.6   1 2 $22.9   $10.9 26
    Spanish 40.8 7.2% 53 350 $3684 8.9% $11.0 3241
    Turkish 3.9   7 67.4 $454   $6.7 140
    Ukranian 0.8   2 47 $115   $2.3 56
    TOTAL EUROPEAN LANGUAGES (excl. English) 192.3 33.9% 259 1,218 $14,112 33.9%   24,529
     
    ASIAN LANGUAGES                
    Arabic 4.4 0.8% 6 300 $678 1.6% $4.2 95
    Chinese 55.5 9.8% 125 874 $5370 13.0% $5.4 2388
    Hebrew 1.9   2.5 5.2 $132   $21.0 223
    Japanese 52.1 9.2% 75 125 $3,315 8.0% $26.1 7118
    Korean 25.2 4.4% 35 78 $835 2.0 $17.3 440
    Malay 4.8   7 229 $835 2.0% $3.7 95
    Thai 2.3   3 46 $453   $7.3 81
    TOTAL ASIAN LANGUAGES 146.2 26.1% 254        

    10,440

     
    TOTAL WORLD 560   762 6,200 $41,400      
    Source: Global Reach

    ISP Sources of Revenue: early beginning ...

1996

1997

1998

Internet Access

1.21

1.21

5.53

Web Hosting & Security

0.17

0.17

0.99

Electronic Commerce

0.01

0.01

0.24

        Revenue above:   In billions of dollars.    Source: Forrester Research,    Riggs, B (April 28, 1997) Hard Times for the Small ISP, LanTimes. 55-58 Online quote: The Internet: from Backbone to End-Use

 

Great AmeriNet Dream ... as it was just a couple of years ago:

... e-commerce sales could balloon to $37.5 billion this (1998 - ed.) year, according to market researcher Jupiter Communications in New York.
by   Jon Swartz, Jamie Beckett,  SF Chronicle, November 25, 1998

Projections for the year 2002 from Forrester and Jupiter currently range between USD200 to USD300 billion .

CEO of Cisco Systems, John Chambers   reckons that figure will be closer to 1 trillion . At Networld 98, industry analyst Nicholas Lippis announced that online commerce would generate USD1.5 trillion of US GDP by 2002.

Paradigm Shifts, Nua Internet Surveys,November 2nd 1998

 

and what happened in real life:

E-Commerce Growth Rates
and 2001 Monthly Spending
(U.S.)
Month Yearly
Growth
(2000-2001)
2001 Monthly
Spending
(billions)
April 73.1% $4.5
May 103.5% $5.4
June 71.2% $5.3
July 39.0% $4.9
August 57.2% $5.6
September 53.7% $4.7
October 25.0% $4.6
November 10.1% $5.3
Source: Nielsen//NetRatings and Harris Interactive

$13.8 billion spent online during the 2001 holiday season

New York and Rochester, NY, January 7, 2002—Over the eight weeks of November and December, Americans spent $13.8 billion online. A Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive SM, and Nielsen//NetRatings (www.nielsen-netratings.com) eSpending report revealed this latest economic information. In comparison, $12 billion was spent during the 2000 holiday season

“Online holiday spending continued its growth, despite pressures from the slowing U.S. economy.

Source: Business Channels

 

Number of the Web pages in July 1998:   300 millions,
1.5 Million Web Pages Born Daily,
50% of all traffic goes to the top 900 Web sites currently available.
     by Alexa Internet, InternetWorld online, 31-Aug-1998 10:08:46 EDT, 

Percentage increase in Internet traffic, per month: 30

- Number of security incidents reported to the Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center in 1995:   2412
- Number reported in 1988:   6

Number of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the U.S. and Canada, in August, 1997: 4,133

Number of ISP, worldwide in July, 1996: 3,054

Average number of customers at an ISP: 1,850
         
Data source: Win Trees

 

The Stats Map of Net History

Simplicity almost never happens by itself; it must be designed. Ted Nelson

 

30 Years of theNet History:   Brief Stats Story

Date  Hosts Domains* WebSites WHR(%)**
Jul 01 126,000,000 30,000,000 28.200,000 22.0
Jul 98 37,000,000     4,300,000 4,270,000 12.0
Jul 97 19,540,000   1,301,000 1,200,000 6.2
Jul 96 12,881,000       488,000  300,000 2.3
Jul 95 6,642,000      120,000 25,000 0.4
Jul 94 3,212,000         46,000 3,000 0.1
Jul 93 1,776,000          26,000 150 0.01
Jul 92 992,000         16,300 50 0.005
Jul 89 130,000           3,900 -
Jul 81 210
1969 4

© Gregory Gromov 1996-2002

Data sources: Network Wizards (US), Dr A D Marshall (UK) and some of the Netvalley estimations

*/ The total number of the all types of Domains (commercial -- com.; non-profit organizations -- org.; educational ... --- edu.; ... etc.)
**/The WebSites to Hosts Ratio (WHR):
WHR estimates the percent  of content active  part of Net community.  By other words, WHR reflects what is the percent of Web surfing people that are trying to  become the  Web authors by creating their own Web sites. So we ( - G.R.G) consider the WHR as a creative temperature of  Web

 



"...40 percent of global Internet traffic either originated or terminating in California."
Pacific Bell - December, 1995



 ... traffic over the Internet
  doubling every 100 days

By Frances Hong, Internet Capacity Major Theme For 1999 - Study, NEW YORK (Reuters), December 6, 1998
      Net traffic will quadruple in   2001  Larry Roberts, Forbes, December 10, 2001
Internet traffic grew more than 100% in 2001
from 48 PB/month to 100 PB/month
(PB = Petabyte or 1,000,000,000,000,000 bytes).
This growth continues in 2002.

Majority of users -- 84%, according to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's report: A Nation Online, Feb 2002 -- connecting to the Internet for email or instant messaging services...
- by John Ryan of RHK, Inc. 2002


Internet Traffic Growth, by Larry Roberts 

web-trafic-!!!-1117-2.JPG (34281   bytes)

-Traffic is for US backbone network, not including local calls, for both Internet and PSTN;
-Traffic growth is higher than host growth because the traffic/host ratio growth at 14 percentage per year

larry11gif.GIF (8546 bytes) One of the leading founders of the basic technical basement of Internet - packet network: "... was responsible for the design, initiation, planning and development of ARPANET, the world’s first major packet network, the predecessor to Internet, while the Director of Information Processing Techniques for DARPA. After ARPA, ... founded the world’s first packet data comm carrier, Telenet, and was the CEO from 1973 to 1980. Telenet was sold to GTE in 1979 and subsequently became the data division of Sprint..."
Lawrence G. Roberts

 

... more data than voice conversations now take place daily on British Telecommunications Plc's domestic network ...   traditional telephone calls were being replaced by electronic mail (e-mail) ... ... increased use of e-mail, electronic commerce (e-commerce) and multimedia services in addition to conventional and mobile telephony would double the size of the British communications market from its current $49.62 billion within five years ...

Yahoo! News: Technology Headlines, November 5, 1998

 

Internet Hosts by Tony Rutkowski
The Host means iniquely reachable Internet connected computer
Hosts

 

 

... global enterprise strategist, public official, organization leader, consultant, lecturer, and author in both the Internet and telecom worlds ...

Anthony M. Rutkowski

 

Why Hosts?

Because there is not any other ways to count the Internet populations at all: "No one has any clue how many users there are, but most people would agree that there is at least one user per host."

    Internet Domain Survey. The Nua Ltd. and others's quote.

     

    You might want to take a look on some  of the illustrations of the above suggestion:

    Estimated number of web users in the U.S.: 57,037,000  by  Win Treese , May 1998

        ...the active number of Internet users in the United States is only 37 million, well below the widely reported range of 50 million to 70 million seen in most published reports.
        Bits & Bytes, by Michael Bush , July, 1998. 

        ... about 15 million of the total 23 million U.S. households on the Internet receive their online service through AOL.
        AOL Eyes Half Of All New Online Users, September, 1998

    So, according to " Irresponsible Internet Statistics...",
    ... there is no absolute way to measure any statistic regarding the growth of the Internet. As John Quarterman of MIDS says:

        The Internet is distributed by nature. This is its strongest feature, since no single entity is in control, and its pieces run themselves, cooperating to form the network of networks that is the Internet. However, because no single entity is control, nobody knows everything about the Internet. Measuring it is especially hard because some parts choose to limit access to themselves to various degrees. So, instead of measurement, we have various forms of surveying and estimation.


    So all the statistics presented here are based on estimates and conjecture. And even if they were absolutely true, growth rates change. I (Robert Orenstein) read somewhere (if you know where I saw this, please tell me) that there is only one conclusion that can possibly be drawn from such vague data:

    The Internet is getting big,
    and it's happening fast.

"The Internet is getting big, ...".   
Do we still believe that the bigger is   better?

  Percentage of U.S. public schools connected to the Internet
1994 35
1996 65

Data source: WinTrees

      "In a poll taken early last year (1996 -ed.) U.S. teachers ranked computer skills and media technology as more "essential" than the study of European history, biology, chemistry, and physics; than dealing with social problems such as drugs and family breakdown; than learning practical job skills; and than reading modern American writers such as Steinbeck and Hemingway or classic ones such as Plato and Shakespeare.

       


      ... The Kittridge Street Elementary School, in Los Angeles, killed its music program last year to hire a technology coordinator; ... Mansfield, Massachusetts, administrators dropped proposed teaching positions in art, music, and physical education, and then spent $333,000 on computers;  in one Virginia school the art room was turned into a computer laboratory. (Ironically, a half dozen preliminary studies recently suggested that music and art classes may build the physical size of a child's brain, and its powers for subjects such as language, math, science, and engineering -- in one case far more than computer work did.) ...

      The Computer Delusion ,  by Todd Oppenheimer,
      The Atlantic Monthly; July 1997

       

       

"Subjects." There are no subjects." Everything is deeply intertwingled. Ted Nelson

Check your knowledge!
Warning! This is a special kind of test for the very small group of Web surfing people. The members of this group should be able to provide us with local ISP's offically proven certificates concerning  their top IQ level. We also accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, MS InterDev and some of the Novell, Sun, IBM and Oracle, (we are constantly expanding the List) basic products certificates of Net proficiency.

Who coined the  phrases:

Web might be better than sex

information superhighway WorldWideWeb Hypertext
Sylvester Stallone
Bob Metcalfe
Al Gore
Ted Nelson
Tim Berners-Lee
Mark Andressen

 First of all you might want to check the boxes in some of the table's cells according to your personal feelings or Net History knowledge based choices. After the most hard working "check-box" step of this test will be successfully completed, you would be able ... relax for a couple of minutes and than... take a look on the   real version   of above mentioned table to compare the real Net History facts with your recent feelings and choices.

 
 
prev      Chapter #8 - Growth of the Internet - Statistics next_
The Index:
1. Internet Before World Wide Web
Internet before World Wide Web - The First 130 Years: Atlantic cable, Sputnick, ARPANET,"Information Superhighway", ...
2. World Wide Web as a Side Effect of Particle Physics Experiments.
World Wide Web was born in CERN: the most impressive results of large scale scientific efforts appeared far away from the main directions of those efforts
3. Next Crossroad of World Wide Web History
World Wide Web as a NextStep of PC Revolution ... from Steven P. Jobs to Tim Berners-Lee
4. Birth of the World Wide Web, Browser Wars, ...
Birth of the Web, Tim Berners-Lee, R. Cailliau, Marc Andreessen, Browser Wars, ...
5. Early History of Hypertext
Hypertext Foundation of the World Wide Web: Vannevar Bush's hyperlink concept, Ted Nelson coins the word Hypertext, ...
6. "Living History" of Hypertext.
Hypertext Saga of Theodor Holm Nelson: The Fate of Thinking Person in Silicon Valley ...
7. "Xanadu" Plan
The Nelson's Xanadu Plan to build a better World Wide Web
8. Growth of the Internet: Statistics
Statistics of the Internet & Worl Wide Web: Hosts, Domains, WebSites, Traffic, ...
9. Conclusion
What is the nature of World Wide Web?
10 Prehistory of the Internet
The Ancient Roads of Telecommunications & Computers
11 They said it ...
People Wrote About This Book

Silicon Valley News


  Internet History & World Wide Web, Chapter # 8 http://www.netvalley.com/cgi-bin/intval/net_history.pl?chapter=8

Copyright © 1995-2011 Gregory Gromov
 
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