Development of the Internet Institutional Contributions to Internet

Question:-

discuss the ways in which the development of the Internet. Identify and explain the significance of two institutional contributions to the Internet.

Answer:-

The role of government in the development of the internet has been around since its inception when US Government undertook research projects to develop the web. As the government does not own the internet systems anywhere, the contributions are generally restricted to funding researches and facilities but the impact of these contributions have been experienced on the very forefront of internet development. This role has led to significant turns in internet development but how far this role would continue is questionable. When the Advanced Research Project Agency founded ARPANET was in use the government invested in the research and development works by lease and purchase of essential components. The government contributions also include the facilities of awarding contracts. From the 1980s internet use became a part of government functioning. One important contribution was the development of various protocols for the basic and the advanced networks. The basic contribution of the government has always been the investments in and funding of research projects that led to modern developments in technology and this role would remain unchanged in the near future. Other contributions by the government include the conflict resolution due to the independent decisions of countries and organizations regarding infrastructure development, removing hindrances to internet development by facilitating policies that ease the mechanism and process of development. No matter how much research studies or great ideas have come about for the internet, none would have been realized unless the government provided the necessary infrastructure. Hence the two important contributions of the government in development of the internet has been research funding and infrastructure development.

The role of colleges and higher education has resulted in enabling the students to become versatile through the access of educational tools. The role of higher education has been indispensable in the development of computer technology and this has been established as a fact through the instances of major scientific discoveries. The earliest of these contributions are the predictions by Arthur Clarke about the geostationary satellites (Robinson, et al., 2015). The Syncom project at NASA also reflected the importance of technical knowledge which can only come from proper education. In fact, the two big educational institutes, Stanford and UCLA has been part of pioneering discoveries as they were the first to host internet connections for satellites. In institutions such as Harvard and MIT the use of ARPANET was also an important step that led to the foundation of interface message processor. These contributions have social impacts and have helped in connectivity within the institute. The contributions of the educational institutes is somewhat cyclical and related to the government contributions, i.e. the government funds research programs and infrastructure developments at colleges which enables them to provide higher education to students who learn the technology and make significant contributions to the development of technology using the internet that in turn, helps the colleges to establish interconnectivity and more advanced level of technology education. Another significant example is the discovery of email by Ray Tomlinson. He was an eminent student of the MIT. Similarly, John Vittal from University of Southern California introduced the reply and forward features of email. One of the biggest examples of the contribution of colleges in imparting higher education is the modern-day internet platforms such as Facebook. This application expanded the public access to the internet like no other platforms before.