12 The Internet
IN THE EARLY 1990s the Internet became big news. In the fall of 1990 there were just 313,000 computers attached to the Internet; five years later the number was approaching 10 million, and by the end of 2000 the number had exceeded 100 million. Although computer technology is at the heart of the Internet, its importance is economic and social: the Internet gives computer users the ability to communicate, to gain access to information sources, to express themselves, and to conduct business.
The Internet sprang from a confluence of three desires, two that emerged in the 1960s and one that originated much further back in time. First, there was the rather utilitarian desire for an efficient, fault-tolerant ...
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