a timeline of content (WIP)
for desktop viewing
academic
factoid
launch
event
merger/acquisition
1889
John Muirhead (Baedeker) observes, "A guidebook is not made, it grows."
1944
Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer write "The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception"
1962
MIT researcher J. C. R. Licklider conceives the idea of a ‘Galactic Network’ which is eventually funded by DARPA
1969
ARPANET is launched at four universities (Stanford, University of Utah, UCLA, UCSB)
29 Oct - first message sent over the internet: “Lo”
1971
April - 15 nodes connected to the ARPANET
1973
June - the internet is international as NORSAR (Norway) is connected to the ARPANET
July - University College London connected to ARPANET
1979
CompuServe (MicroNET at the time) launches - one of the first customer-facing dial-up online information services (text only)
1981
CSNET Launches
1984
CSNET has 180 universities connected globally
1986
NSFNET (National Science Foundation) launches
1987
1988
2 Nov - Morris Worm pushed as the first major internet virus
FidoNET launches and allows the general public to connect to the internet
1989
CompuServe offers ordinary internet users to email other people outside CompuServe
1990
Prodigy (CompuServe competitor) launches; bringing interaction through graphical interfaces
1992
23% of American households have a computer
1993
23 Jan - Mosaic (web browser) launches; bringing the internet to the masses
Howard Rheingold (co-founder WELL) publishes "The Virtual Community"
Dec - 600 sites online postmodern culture
first webcam stream launched - Cambridge University coffee stream
1994
Mosaic creates cookies
web’s first chat room “Bianca’s Smut Shack” is created
Mosaic is rebranded and launched as Netscape Navigator - University of Illinois
Microsoft begins developing a web browser competitor off of code from Mosaic (bought)
1995
GeoCities launches
NSFNET is decomissioned, the internet is in the hands of the open market
14% of Americans use the internet (~37m people)
Aug - Microsoft launches Internet Explorer as a part of Windows 95
1996
Internet Fast Forward launched - first ad-blocker created
1997
Dec - Jorn Barger coins ‘weblog”
1998
Google launches
personal blog ‘the Drudge Report’ speculates on Bill Clinton’s sexual deviance in the Oval Office, indicating the influence of personal blogs on culture
1999
Blogger launches
elance launches (remote hiring)
Live-Journal launches
Pew Research Center study finds
half of US adults are online,
but 3% have broadband, 97% on dial-up
Jan - Yahoo acquires GeoCities for $3.57b
2000
46% of American households use the internet
Quebecois high schooler Michael ‘mafiaboy’ Calce launches the first major DDoS attack, taking Yahoo offline for 1 hour
Microsoft declared guilty of anti-competitive practices for the packaging of internet explorer
2001
Google Images is launched in response to user demand for JLo’s green dress
2003
ODesk launches (remote hiring)
MySpace launches
Google launches AdSense
del.icio.us launches (social bookmarking site)
2004
Flickr launches (image hosting)
FaceBook launches
2005
YouTube launches
Writely launches
2006
Twitter launches
McKenzie Wark publishes “A Hacker Manifesto”
Google acquires Writely to make Google Docs (2009)
Henry Jenkins publishes his book “Convergence Culture”
2007
Tumblr launches (microblogging)
2008
Sept - Google launches Chrome
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
Michael Bhaskar writes “The Content Machine: Towards a Theory of Publishing from the Printing Press to the Internet”
elance and ODesk merge forming elance-ODesk to become Upwork (2015)
Christian Fuchs publishes “Class and Exploitation on the Internet”
2014
Heartbleed revealed an OpenSSL vulnerability which leads to BigTech funding volunteer-led internet organizations
2015
2016
2017
2018
2019
2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
sources
Content - Kate Eichhorn