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Founders of the Internet
Eavesy
Posts: 45 Forum Member
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Here I have an infographic from a Liverpool based web design company called Glow New Media all about the individuals who helped to make the internet:
http://www.glow-internet.com/infographics/founders-of-the-internet.aspx
Can you think of anyone they have forgotten? Is there somebody who should not be on there? Please let me know
http://www.glow-internet.com/infographics/founders-of-the-internet.aspx
Can you think of anyone they have forgotten? Is there somebody who should not be on there? Please let me know
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And your infographic has probably missed a whole bunch of more important people.
You need to include those who pioneered TCP/IP, Email, the various video protocols, Usenet, the founders of Compuserve and AOL, creators of DNS and a great many others.
In what way were the Google guys or Bezos there right at the start of what became the internet? If they're included because of their ubiquity, surely you also have to include Zuckerberg, Dorsey et al and many others?
In terms of people who made the internet what it is, I'd include Paul Mockapetris, who designed the DNS.
Wasn't he involved? I'll have a word next time I'm passing his office. Should see him through his big windows. He excels when it comes to computers. ;-)
Well given that some on that list had absolutely nothing to do with the creation of the internet which was some years old by the time the World Wide Web came along. There should be a place for Ray Tomlinson the person who implemented the first email system on ARPANET - the precursor to the internet.
many of them did nothing but exploit the work and inventiveness of others
I think you need to change the title
Aye one of my first thoughts looking at that list was that they missed out the guy who came up with the networking standard that is used pretty much all over, IIRC based it on a radio data system used in Hawaiian islands, but got it to be reliable (and much faster) over wired networks.
I think he worked for Xerox at the time and created the standard and prototype hardware in a small workshop and founded 3com.
Google's affect on the internet has been huge, but they've not really created anything massively new (search was around before them, web mail was around), they've been the ones to monetise it, and manage to avoid the business related pitfalls that affected the likes of Alta Vista and Yahoo.
Your portfolio is impressive.
Yeah, I think founders was the wrong word to choose. They should have said people who helped to bring the internet into people's homes.
Poor research, too. No recognition of Listserv, mailing lists, the Usenet, CompuServe, AOL, Netscape, NEC, IBM, MMOG/MUD, Oliveretti, Yamaha, Sharp, MySpace and all others that brought the Internet into the public's awareness and homes. How could the list leave off the likes of Sir Clive Sinclair as well?
Not in chronological order, either. Onsale existed before Ebay. The Usenet existed before Onsale and Ebay (I bought a guitar from an auction newsgroup, for instance). Veronica, Archie and Netscape existed before Google. Thomson Holidays (British) created and introduced an online shopping system before Amazon was even a gleam in Bezos's eye, but Michael Aldrich (British) was the one who invented the concept of online shopping system. So Aldrich is more significant as an e-commerce pioneer than Bezos. As for Jimmy Wales as an internet encyclopaedia pioneer? Nope. Rick Gates got there first, along with h2g2, created by the newsgroup of Douglas Adams.
The list seems to be designed for today's crowd who don't want to know about the old highway a.k.a. the wild west. It might be a good idea to change the title to reflect the list better.
Thanks for making me feel old, though, as I still remember witnessing the evolution of the Usenet, the WWW and the Internet.
And why none of the big porn companies?, after all it was they who pioneered online video and electronic commerce.
That's actually true.
Only because you stole it from me. >:(