and the Ongoing Struggles of

Controversy, Accessibility, and Control

A presentation by Rory Mallette

1957The United States of Americacreates the Advanced ResearchProjects Agency in response to theUSSR’s Sputnik launch.

HINT: Click or press →, ↓,

or SPACE to advance!

1968ARPANET is launched as a datapacket sharing network forARPA projects.

1972Ray Tomlinson creates the world’sfirst email system as a subset ofARPANET.

1973Work begins on TCP/IP, the next stepfrom ARPANET, which allows fordifferent computers and networks tocommunicate with each other.

1974The term “Internet” is first used todescribe the TCP/IP, in a paper byVint Cerf and Bob Kahn (two of the“Fathers of the Internet”).

1984Now more developed, a newsection of APARNET is created formilitary usage, called MILNET.NSFNET follows shortly thereafter,for the National Science Foundation.

1990Advanced Network & Services, anon-profit corporation, was foundedto progress research anddevelopment of high-speednetworking.

1992The “World-Wide Web” is released,soon followed by an internetdirectory for the hundreds ofthousands of new domains thatwere added within the next fewyears. 1996

Sprint, AT&T, and various other ISPshave begun carrying the majority ofinternet traffic.

1998

launches, soon becoming theworld’s most popular online searchengine, surpassing Yahoo! (launchedin 1995)

1999802.11b, commonly known today asWi-Fi, is introduced and soonbecomes a standard feature ofportable computers and handhelds.

2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007

Present-Day Statistics:

• ~800,000,000 active Facebook users

• ~170,000,000 active Twitter users

• ~34,000 Google searches per second

• ~8 years of content uploaded to YouTube per day

• 4,110,045 English-language articles on Wikipedia

Global Digital DivideInternet availability differs greatly across the globe, fromcountry to country.

Source: International Telecommunications Union

Canada

Internet users: 27,757,450

% of population: 81.6%

United States of America

Internet users: 245,203,319

% of population: 78.3%

Mexico

Internet users: ~42,000,000

% of population: 36.5%

Falkland Islands

Internet users: 2,908

% of population: 96.4%

Sweden

Internet users: 8,270,742

% of population: 91.0%

China

Internet users: ~513,100,000

% of population: 38.4%

Internet CensorshipA serious social justice issue, internet censorship is thesuppression of publication or access to the internet.

This can be done through a variety of different means,such as IP blocking (preventing access to specificwebsites), URL filtering, and connection resets – all ofwhich are used as part of the “Great Firewall of China,”the colloquial name for the government of China’s strictcontrol over internet censorship.

Other notable examples of internet censorship includeits usage by the Egyptian government during the ArabSpring movement and its current employment by theSyrian government.

LEARN MORE ABOUT RECENT INTERNET CONTROVERSIES

Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/01/17/why-is-there-going-to-be-a-wikipedia-blackout-and-what-is-sopa/

HINT: Click the hyperlinks for more information.

Internet Service Blackout in Syriahttp://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-11-29/world/35585439_1_syrian-people-hama-opposition-coalition

United Nations Control over the Internethttp://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/271153-house-approves-resolution-to-keep-internet-control-out-of-un-hands

REFERENCES AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/ict/statistics/material/excel/Individuals%20using%20the%20Internet2000-2011.xls“Percentage of Individuals using the Internet 2000-2011”, International Telecommunication Union

http://www.investintech.com/content/historyinternet/“The History of the Internet”, Investintech PDF Solutions

Dutton, William H.; Dopatka, Anna; Law, Ginette; Nash, Victoria. (2011). Freedom of connection, freedom of expression: the changing legal and regulatory ecology shaping the internet. 1-103. UNESCO, Paris, France.

Wells, John; Lewis, Laurie. (2006). Internet access in U.S. public schools and classrooms: 1994-2005. 1-83. Westat, Inc., Rockville, MD.