Our best friend or worst enemy: the internet. While most kids today never knew a time without it, a majority of the population grew up while the internet slowly made its way into our lives and made many things easier. If you think the internet is as fascinating as I do, then keep reading to find out five interesting facts about it!
- The Internet turned 40 this year
Officially the internet exists since January 1st 1983. Since that day, thanks to the communication protocol “Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol”, computers connected to different networks are able to communicate with each other. This created opportunities for all networks across the world to be connected with each other. Prior to this, information stored on a computer could only be used if connected to the same network, so be very close, or by receiving magnetic computer tapes via the post. - Over half of the population uses the internet
To be exact 59.5% of the world’s population uses the internet which is around 5.07 billion people. Just nine years ago this number was nineteen percent lower than it is today! This big number can be divided into different parts of Earth to be able to visualize it better. While 98% of the population in Northern Europe has access to the Internet, that number only goes up to 25% in Middle Africa. Even though Europe has higher access, Asia is in the first place when it comes to active internet users which count 2.7 billion, with China making up 1 billion. - Not only computers can connect to the internet
While we all know that devices like mobile phones, laptops or TVs have access to the Internet, there are a lot more in the “Internet of Things” that you might not expect. I will just list a few that shocked me the most; Diapers that contain a chip which sends SMS alerts when it gets wet, shoes that can connect to social media or talk to the person wearing them, or sidewalks literally emitting Wi-Fi called iPavement. - There are more internet searches a day than people on the planet
Most of you probably read this article via the search engine Google and use it as a main source of information, just like 91.9% of people. This probably explains why there are over 99.000 searches carried out every single second. This adds up to 8.5 billion searches a day, which is more than we are humans! - The first email was sent over 50 years ago
Even though most of us only use Emails to communicate in official situations, it is still the most important medium of communication on the internet. Over 2.6 billion people use it regularly and it is all thanks to ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) which was implemented by the US Department of Defense. On October 29th 1969 the very first message was sent from one computer to another and then two years later Ray Tomlinson invented the Email as we use it today
I hoped you learned something new from this article and enjoyed reading it!
Sources:
https://bluespan.com/blog/20-interesting-facts-about-the-internet
https://www.fing.com/news/21-incredibly-interesting-internet-facts
https://www.makeuseof.com/surprising-facts-internet-history/
https://www.usg.edu/galileo/skills/unit07/internet07_02.phtml#:~:text=January%201%2C%201983%20is%20considered,to%20communicate%20with%20each%20other.
https://www.demandsage.com/internet-user-statistics/#:~:text=The%20Internet%20is%20the%20most,world%20as%20of%20March%202023
https://www.infoworld.com/article/2613707/25-weirdest-things-in-the–internet-of-things-.html
https://phrasee.co/news/a-brief-history-of-email/#:~:text=On%20October%2029th%201969%2C%20the,computer%20to%20computer%20on%20ARPANET.&text=It%20was%201971%20when%20Ray,creating%20ARPANET’s%20networked%20email%20system
https://www.oberlo.com/blog/google-search-statistics#:~:text=We%20know%20that%20there%20are,Internet%20Live%20Stats%2C%202022)