International Internet Day : History, Significance and All you need to Know

International Internet Day is celebrated on 29th October and staring back at AOL’s whimsical “You’ve received mail” advertisements circa 1997, some could imagine what the Internet would mean over the years later.

We enjoyed this new thing known as “email,” but could we imagine booking whole foreign holidays on our mobiles at 2 am? Or something called Facebook? Let’s take some time to view back at how it all occurred — and what’s arriving next.

History of International Internet Day

29th October 1969. Charley Kline, a young graduate student at the UCLA college, tries to transfer the first internet message to his partner, Bill Duvall, at Stanford.

They’re operating on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). This U.S. Defense Department-funded network-attached four terminals at UCLA, the University of Utah, Stanford, and UC Santa Barbara.

They succeeded — sort of — in their effort to send the message “Login.”

Kline: “So I’m on the mobile, and I write the L and say, ‘Okay, I press in L, you received this?’ Bill Duvall, the colleague at Stanford, is seeing his monitor, and he got the L. I write the O. Got the O. Typed the G.’ Wait a minute,’ Bill states, ‘my system crashed. I will call you back.'”

An hour later, under the keen eye of UCLA computer science professor Leonard Kleinrock, Kline sent the entire “LOGIN” message.

Another guy, a computer expert named Joseph Licklider, also deserves praise for being an internet explorer with an initial idea of a global computer network long before it was made. Presently he’s recognized as “computing’s Johnny Appleseed.”

It’s difficult to determine the impact of the Internet on society as a whole. That’s like attempting to figure out how the phone and printing press transformed the world.

We began with email programs, chat rooms, and a few primary websites and turned up during a cultural revolution. Now we’ve got mail — along with endless possibilities — in our back pockets, indeed!

International Internet Day Activities

1.     Mix up your passwords

It might look like a tedious way to observe, but the following time a large bank gets hacked, you’ll be capable of resting just as comfortably, probably!

2.   Make your own memes.

Whether you’re a computer klutz or a photoshop wizard, creating a meme is simple. Get a funny image that you’d wish to annotate (or begin with a trending meme picture), and get creative.

3.   Unplug! Just for a day.

You wouldn’t avoid pizza on National Pizza Day, so why refrain from the network on International Internet Day? Well, because we can! Most of us practice the web every day, and it can be easy to ignore how much we rely on it. By getting a day off, we can thank the offline life as well.

International Internet Day Significance

●     It unites us like never before

Several technologies promised to unite the world — telegraph, the mail service, and the phone, to name some — but neither of them succeeded with such speed and range as the web.

A message that once could have taken several days to get can now be sent all over the world (and the solar system!) in little time.

●     It’s a global equalizer.

Thirty years ago, only the earth’s richest peoples and companies had access to a library of data compared with current online.

While it’s still not a completely free method, the cost of information access has dropped dramatically with the growth of the Internet, placing endless information into the pockets of billions over the world.

●     Cats, cats, and more cats.

For a medium that multiple people practice so differently, there’s one piece of the Internet that looks constant: cats. From large cats to Grouchy cats, our cunning friends have become active stars on the Internet, and as history shows us, we’re constantly seeking a new star. The Internet offers every day!