10 Evolving Technologies that Shaped Today's Internet

The problem with writing about the subject of technological events that changed the world is that it is hard to narrow down to any 100, let alone only ten. While you could say the Internet changed the world, it's a little like saying the wheel or language changed the world. If you think about it, is there any part of technology that didn't have a hand in changing the world? Therefore, with that in mind I have attempted to come up with a list of 10 technologies that changed us, 10 technologies that have changed how we interact with technology, as well. While the Internet may be a great and grand thing, it is non-existent if we have no way to connect to it, to use it in some meaningful way. The highway (whether Information Super or Asphalt) is a useless object without the vehicle to travel upon it and a map to get somewhere.

Microsoft Exchange

Does anybody remember what email was like before Microsoft Exchange? Some of you might, but others, the tech junkies my age or younger may not. Was there email before Exchange? Well yes, there was but you didn't get to use it. Exchange was born in 1993 and it was crawling around by 1995 with 500 users. One year later, there where 32,000, and as of last year there where 200,000,000 using Exchange. Most will know this system as Outlook, or Outlook Express, which is the Exchange email client. Although many use it or Outlook Express, its little sister for their other email. So for most of you, your email either comes from an exchange server or arrives into your Microsoft Outlook or Outlook express inbox. Now that's impact.

Microsoft Windows

Does anybody remember anything before Microsoft Windows? Yes, I know that there are many out there that proudly declare themselves to be actual MS DOS users. They do so with a certain "I can prove that I'm one of the originals!" pride, too. The first independent version of Microsoft Windows, version 1.0, released on 20 November 1985, achieved little popularity, making the OS just over 24 years old, while the Macintosh is just slightly older and was, in the beginning, superior to Windows. Windows won the game by tacking the package to the business market on the strength of the success of the Windows NT platform the first real server OS that broke the market. With the launch of Windows 95 on August 24th, 1995, code named "Chicago" fate was sealed. Windows took over the PC market and never looked back since. And the PC market left the Macintosh market far, far behind. Without windows, most of the modern technological world wouldn't even look the way it does much less exist for so many.

Microsoft Office

This was the world's first successful, commercial, office suite for mass distribution. Yes, there were others but they died off. Office was born on August 30, 1992 as Office 3.0 and the name was later changed to Office 92. The one we all remember is Office 95 and its launch coincided with the launch of Windows 95. It was then that a number of substantial changes occurred that solidified it as THE office suite. While there where other word processors and spreadsheets, Microsoft welded them together as a single application. That was the "coup de tat" and the rest is, as they say, "history." Oddly enough, one of the first platforms that it was released for was Macintosh.

Google Search

This was the biggest revolution on the Internet; it has driven the entire SEO industry to new heights, amongst other achievements, such as PageRank and the ability to find what's on the Internet. Yahoo is older and there was another service called "Rankdex" that was experimenting with a similar Idea. However, in March 1996, the very first Google spider started crawling the Internet from Larry Brinn's home page at Stanford University. Prior to that, the concept of a website's rank or importance was vague at best. Now, it is the way that capital is measured on the Internet. Google's search index is so powerful that they have stopped sharing the top 100 search phrases and cut it down to the top 20 to prevent the information from being used maliciously.

Google Gmail

The successor to Exchange, it gave birth to Google Docs and Sheets, and then Ajax for the Cloud. Why? Well considering when Gmail was first released, it was by invitation only. Until Google started giving out invitations in large numbers, there was a vigorous EBay trade in Invites with the market rate reaching $150 apiece. People where dropping 150 bucks just for a Gmail account-that was free at the time to certain people. Before the madness ended on June 7th, 2005, just over 1.2 million invitations had been given out. There are now just over 150,000,000 Gmail users, and that number has grown by 64% in the last year alone. In spite of the fact that Hotmail and Yahoo mail are bigger, they are not growing as fast. To the best of my knowledge no one every PAID for a Hotmail account or a Yahoo mail account... .

Apple Macintosh

Before this, computers were bookkeeping devices only. Then we learned to play music, make art and click a mouse. Apple officially launched the Macintosh 25 years ago, Jan. 24, 1984. You all know the story, right? Apple started with a single commercial, which was aired during the Super Bowl and thematically captured the classic book turned movie, "1984." Apple would change the world of computing, the commercial promised, and that it did. It was like the world was in color for the first time again. This was the computer for the rest of us, the ones who dreamed of using this amazing technology to do something interesting and creative. It felt like a revolution, and it was.

Apple IPhone

Not the first, but the birth of the "smartphone" as we know it and a whole new way to access the world's data. The iPhone hit the United States on June 29, 2007, and since then 42,482,000 have been sold. Smartphone have been around for a long time. The first smartphone was called Simon; it was designed by IBM in 1992 and shown as a concept at COMDEX, the computer industry trade show held in Las Vegas, Nevada. It was released to the public in 1993 and sold by BellSouth. Besides being a mobile phone, it also contained a calendar, address book, world clock, calculator, note pad, e-mail, send and receive fax, and games. As amazing as that may seem, it unfortunately went nowhere. Even the Nokia 9000, made popular by the movie "The Saint," with everyone itching to get their hands on this "do all" pocket phone, went nowhere. The iPhone succeeded where they could not because Apple created a populist, breakout technology and sold it to the "real world." The focus was to change the way we share and interact with information and that they did.

Linux Open Source

The wild hinterlands that became the digital frontiers where upon new empires are carved out, and anyone can go a stake a claim. Linux was first released in 1991. it was a free version of the Unix Operating System. Currently Linux operates 4 of the 5 fastest supercomputers in the world. Most of the world's scientific work is done on Linux. Its significance comes from the fact that you can download it free and do what you like with it. Technology was born in the back yards, garages and barns of those who tinkered around making new things. Linux is the open door to that creativity in the 21st century. Without it, you would only be looking in through the windows.

Linux Apache

Apache IS the internet... Or at least 2/3 of it anyway and generally, the other 1/3 is giving way all the time in favor of it. Since April 1996, Apache has been the most popular HTTP server software in use. As of February 2010, Apache served over 54.46% of all websites and over 66% of the million busiest of them. This quiet and powerful package was instrumental in the explosive growth of the Internet in its earlier years. Apache is Open Source and available to all. You can, if you have the ability and wish to do so, rewrite the source code and make it your own. Most importantly, it was the reason that the internet grew so fast. Where did the name come from? Well, one legend states the original project formed from a number of patches to an older server called NCSA HTTPd. After combining them together, they declared that they had "a patchy server."

Dot Com 25 years old today

The creation of the "Dot Com" heralded in the greatest single impact of the Internet on human civilization, shopping. The oldest Dot com domain is symbolics.com, which was the very first registered. There are 250,000,000 websites on the internet, 80,000,000 or 1/3, which are Dot Com. This momentous event took place on March 15th, 1985. Until then the internet was an academic experience. Now money drives the internet and its growth. This makes it the birth of the Internet's real energy system.

There you have it, the top 10 computer and Internet technologies that, in my opinion, shaped computers and the Internet into what we know it as today. These technologies are the basis of everything we have done and everything we will continue to do for the future generations of those who witnessed and helped with the birth of the Internet. From here is will only get stronger, eventually taking over every aspect of our lives, if it hasn't already.

References & Resources
Google: Corporate Information
Google Corporate: History & Overview
Nethistory: Dot Com Bubble
NetFiles UIUC: History of Linux
HTTPd Apache: About the Apache HTTPd Server project
Microsoft: Windows Overview & history
Google Timeline: Microsoft history Timeline
LowEndMac: 1984, The First Macs
LowEndMac: Overview & history
iPhoneAle: iPhone History