Page 138 - Communication Cultural and Media Studies The Key Concepts

INTERNET

mailing list) suggesting that symbols be used to indicate the intended
emotion of text messages – for example, :-) for indicating a smile.
Although he was ‘flamed’ at the time, emoticons (or ‘smilies’) are now
used widely to clarify the mood and intention of e-mail correspond-
ence using the confines of the keyboard.
By the mid-1970s a number of state-funded computer networks
had begun to appear. As these were intended for use by other research
disciplines there was little need for the networks to be compatible. It
was not until 1985 that the National Science Foundation network,
NSFNET, made a commitment to the creation of an infrastructure to
serve the entire academic community that the Internet began to take
the form in which it exists today – a global and relatively seamless
entity. Part of this process was the NSF’s decision to make the
Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) manda-
tory.
The early history of the Internet is characterised by state funding,
military interest and scientific research and, it has been argued, was
constructed by a predominantly male workforce out of a particular
ethos reflected in its architecture (Spender, 1995). A significant role
was also played by individuals, such as Jon Postel, who established a
team, the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) to take
responsibility for the assignment of Internet protocol parameters and,
later, domain names. This was then transformed into the Internet
Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) with a board
elected by Internet users worldwide. The voluntarist culture of the
Internet’s origins, often associated with community media ideals of
access, diversity and democratic communication, was thus a construct
of self-appointed, if publicly minded, individuals who played
significant roles in the design of the architecture of the Net.
The Internet changed dramatically during the decade from the
early 1980s to the early 1990s. Between 1981 and 1989, the number of
computers linked to the Internet rose from 300 to 90,000. Growth was
spurred on partly by consumer adoption of personal computers and
also through cooperation and collaboration between university and
private research bodies in the development of standardised commands
and software development.
One such collaboration arose out of Bell Laboratories (run by the
US telecommunications company AT&T), who explored the
networking potential of Unix protocol. Students at Duke University
in North Carolina subsequently developed a modified version of the
Unix Protocol that enabled computers to network over a telephone
line, leading to the creation of the USENET and bulletin board

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