Home > Blogs > Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent > Seattle Real Estate Blog ~ Seattle's Urban Villages ~ Deborah Burns

Curious about the History of the Internet? Check out this Program....

By Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Real Estate Agent with Realty Executives -BRIO

March 22, 2008 12:55 PM

Hey all of you ActiveRainiers curious about the history of the Internet. The Discovery Channel has a four part series called "Download: The True Story of the Internet ", hosted by technology journalist John Heileman. Heileman (former "Wired" editor and writer) witnessed much of the story first hand and tells the story as exciting wild, wild west stuff...although you may have to have Geek-like tendencies to really get into the story!

It was originally broadcast earlier in March on The Science Channel (Discovery Channel's Premium cable chanel). It is now being broadcast on The Discovery Channel on Saturday evenings at 7 and 11 PM, part 3 of the 4 part series is tonight. I missed part 1 two weeks ago, but happened on part 2 last week. Part 2 was called "Search" and was about the development of Google, a topic that I find endlessly interesting.

Part 3, tonight, is called "Bubble" and to quote the program description: "In an astonishing journalistic coup, the founders of Amazon and e-Bay, Jeff Bezos and Pierre Omidyar, tell the stories of how their businesses grew from nothing to dominate the global economy. These companies have changed the way Americans live."

Part 4 is next Saturday, March 29th and is a topic near and dear to all of us here at ActiveRain "People Power" and how: "The internet has changed society and a new breed of entrepreneurs is shaping the digital future. Find out how it all started with Napster, a way of swapping music dreamt up by the teenaged Shawn Fanning".

The program will be repeating in April on The Science Channel, and I hope also on The Discovery Channel so I can catch part 1 which I missed. If you are interested in the development of the Internet, you will find this interesting, so tune in!

UPDATE:

The program was really interesting, try and watch it if you get a chance. I am going to watch the 11PM broadcast too. The Host John Heileman, made some interesting observations about the .com bubble burst, and how that kind of financial feeding frenzy and wall street losses has repeated again and again. Sound familiar? Check it out if you can!

Comments(19)

Comment

Show All Comments Sort:

Lane Bailey

Century 21 Results Realty - Suwanee, GA

Realtor & Car Guy

I thought Al Gore invented it... That's what he said...

Mar 22, 2008 12:59 PM

Brian Keller

Brian Keller Realty - Newport, TN

Realtor

I thought Al Gore invented it??????

Mar 22, 2008 12:59 PM

Bob & Carolin Benjamin

Benjamin Realty LLC - Gold Canyon, AZ

East Phoenix Arizona Homes

Thanks for the heads up on this. Interesting stuff to say the least. And what will they be saying that we do not have any idea about 5 years from now.

Mar 22, 2008 01:02 PM

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Lane and Brian, I think the Al Gore story may be an urban legend. This is actually the history of how the Internet developed, and the people who were the visionaries to make it happen, and reaped heaps of moola for doing so! And in part 4 I think, will be the part where we come in....with web 2.0, social media, blogging and niche marketing...we are part of the developing history of the Internet!

Hi Bob & Carolin, you are so right, that is why the members of ActiveRain, and those participating in web 2.0 conversations are part of the developing story!

Mar 22, 2008 01:37 PM

Courtney Cooper

Cooper Jacobs - Seattle, WA

206-850-8841

Pretty amazing stuff - I will have to check it out!

Mar 22, 2008 02:02 PM

Mark Organek

And the United States of America - Mesa, AZ

It's not a game, it's your life.

Deborah, thank you for the heads up on this evening's segment. Of all things, I found out about it on the internet!

Mar 22, 2008 02:53 PM

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Courtney, I watched the 7PM broadcast and it was so good, I am going to watch the 11PM one too! The show ended with the .com bubble burst and an interesting POV of how the .com frenzy and the subsequence wall street financial losses leading to a lot of common good for the economy...sound familiar....?

Hi Mark, LOL! I hope you get the opportunity to watch it!

Mar 22, 2008 04:10 PM

Chuck Willman

Chuck Willman - Alpine, UT

NewHouseUtah.com

OK... is this your way of outing all the nerd? Even so... I'll admit it... I'm all over this one!

Mar 25, 2008 05:49 PM

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Deborah, I find watching (and participating) as the history of the Internet unfolds absolutely fascinating!

Hi Chuck, LOL...My name is Deborah and I am a Internet History Geek! We are watching (and as bloggers participating) in what I think amounts to the story of the paradigm shift that occured when the printing press was invented....only at Mach 10 speeds!

Mar 25, 2008 06:20 PM

Jessica Horton Jessica Horton Realty

Jessica Horton - Jessica Horton & Associates - Griffin, GA

Jessica Horton: I'm not #1... You Are!

Thanks Deborah! I've got my Tivo set because I've got something else planned. Something you will get to hear about on Monday. =]

Mar 26, 2008 06:57 PM

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Jessica! The 4th episode this Saturday should be the most interesting to bloggers, so I am glad that you have Tivo. Hmmmmm, now I can't wait for Monday!

Mar 26, 2008 07:34 PM

Paul Howard

Cherry Hill, NJ

Paul Howard Realty, 856-488-8444

Regarding Al Gore and the inventing the internet story: It riles me when people keep repeating that. Kind of like when you say something and people with bad motives take it and twist it out of context. Which is what was done. Here is some context for that:

" People eager to lie about him continue to portray him as a liar. First lie, that he claims to have "invented" the Internet. Second lie, that he claims to have "discovered" the pollution of Love Canal. Third lie, that he falsely claims to be the model for Oliver Barrett IV, hero of Love Story.

Gore never claimed that he "invented" the Internet, which implies that he engineered the technology. The invention occurred in the seventies and allowed scientists in the Defense Department to communicate with each other. In a March 1999 interview with Wolf Blitzer, Gore said, "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."

Taken in context, the sentence, despite some initial ambiguity, means that as a congressman Gore promoted the system we enjoy today, not that he could patent the science, though that's how the quotation has been manipulated. Hence the disingenuous substitution of "inventing" for the actual language....

.....But the real question is what, if anything, did Gore actually do to create the modern Internet? According to Vincent Cerf, a senior vice president with MCI Worldcom who's been called the Father of the Internet, "The Internet would not be where it is in the United States without the strong support given to it and related research areas by the Vice President in his current role and in his earlier role as Senator."

The inventor of the Mosaic Browser, Marc Andreesen, credits Gore with making his work possible. He received a federal grant through Gore's High Performance Computing Act. The University of Pennsylvania's Dave Ferber says that without Gore the Internet "would not be where it is today."

Joseph E. Traub, a computer science professor at Columbia University, claims that Gore "was perhaps the first political leader to grasp the importance of networking the country. Could we perhaps see an end to cheap shots from politicians and pundits about inventing the Internet?"

Mar 31, 2008 01:10 AM

Tara Colquitt

Tara Colquitt, The Credit Woman, LLC - Philadelphia, PA

Credit Counselor

Deborah: I just saw the 'Google' show, but will look for the whole series. Thanks Paul for the facts on Al Gore. I didn't know what the hubbub was all about.

Apr 03, 2008 09:39 PM

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Tara, I am glad you got to see part of the serise, the history of the Internet is really interesting!

Hi Paul, thanks for all the interesting information, I have heard of another man (whose name I cannot remember) as being the "father of the Internet". One of the programs I have watched had a brief interview with him, he is a fairly lowkey man. Of course, I am sure there are many people who could be considered the reason the Internet came into being.

Apr 04, 2008 03:27 PM

Anonymous

Randy Havener

Hi Deborah!

Are you speaking of Sir Tim Brenners-Lee? He is credited as being the founder of the World Wide Web.
Prior to 1989, looking up info on the ARPAnet relied upon some rather esoteric methods such as Gopher servers, Telnet sessions, and so forth. Each one of them had their own piece of client software to work with a particular server/service. The user had to learn commands specific to each piece of software and service, in order to use them. Graphics (other than simple ASCII artwork) were unheard of, and any type of animation wasn't even considered possible. All-in-all, the whole thing wasn't what we might regard as very user-friendly. I know some "old hands" out there would disagree with me on that statement, but I'm speaking from the home user perspective.

Brenners-Lee envisioned a medium of electronic pages connected together (e.g. a website). Navigating these pages was done by clicking links to different pages (e.g hyperlinks). These links could also be used to lead the user to different websites (outside of the one at the user's immediate location), again by simply clicking a link to that location. If you could take this new system of interconnected pages and diagram it out on a piece of paper, it would look a lot like a spider's web.

Thus, the World Wide Web was born and the new piece of software to get around on it - the Web Browser.
Since Web Browsers were so much easier to use than the previous client software, the defacto medium for the Internet as we know it today is the World Wide Web.

Thanks for posting your info on Download: The True Story of the Internet.
I really appreciated reading what you have on this page.

I only had the opportunity to catch the Bubble episode and am dying to see the rest of them.

Randy

Apr 06, 2008 07:52 PM

#17

Steve Homer

The HBH Group (Keller Williams affiliate) - Round Rock, TX

Actually, I invented it... Al Gore was my assistant! ;-) LOL Steve

Apr 06, 2008 11:47 PM

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Randy! Wow, that is a lot of information I had not heard before (maybe I did but it went over my head!) I really don't remember the name I had heard of in connection to the development of the WWWeb, but it's possible that could have been who I had heard of. As I said he was rather low-key, although John Heiliman did interview him in one of the episodes, I think #2.

I am glad that you enjoyed episode #3 "Bubble", is was a really dynamic program, I think that one was my favorite, although I have not yet seen episode #1. When I see the serise on the Discovery Channel again, I will post it as an update at the bottom of my post.

Hi Steve, LOL!

Apr 07, 2008 09:19 AM

Anonymous

Randy Havener

Hi Steve, LOL from me too!! You did a GREAT job!!

Hi Deborah, Thanks a bunch!!!
I'll be looking forward to it!

RRH

Apr 13, 2008 06:49 AM

#20

Deborah Burns ~ Seattle Real Estate Agent

Realty Executives -BRIO - Seattle, WA

Hi Randy, you're welcome! You will really enjoy it when you see it...very interesting stuff!

Apr 14, 2008 05:32 AM