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The Internet age turns 25
Posted by
Marine59
,
22 March 2010
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The online revolution began and continues largely without government “help”.
Who could have imagined how life would be changed by the Internet? There weren’t many testing the waters 25 years ago when, on March 15, the first dotcom Internet domain name – symbolic.com – was registered by a Cambridge, Mass., computer manufacturer. The flood gates didn’t exactly fly open. Only five more domains were registered that year.
The pace has picked up a bit since. Twenty-one million domains were registered over the next 15 years, and 57 million more in the past 10 years. Nearly 22,000 new dotcom Web sites are registered every day. People who track these things say there now are more than 200 million Web sites, including dotcoms dotnets, dotgov, etc.
To put the newness of all this in perspective, consider that apple didn’t register its dotcom until 1987. It took Microsoft four more years to join the party. But it’s a young phenomenon that’s already weathered a monumental bust. March also marked the 10th anniversary of the Internet stock bubble burst. Government’s top-down inclination to force one-size-fits-all “solutions” onto life is nowhere more revealed as foolhardy effort than when it comes to the Internet. In just 10 years, for example, broadband Internet access has been provided to more than two-thirds of Americans. Yet the government is seriously entertaining the idea it can force similar access for most of those who don’t yet have it – and estimates that will take only another 10 years.
Who could have imagined how life would be changed by the Internet? There weren’t many testing the waters 25 years ago when, on March 15, the first dotcom Internet domain name – symbolic.com – was registered by a Cambridge, Mass., computer manufacturer. The flood gates didn’t exactly fly open. Only five more domains were registered that year.
The pace has picked up a bit since. Twenty-one million domains were registered over the next 15 years, and 57 million more in the past 10 years. Nearly 22,000 new dotcom Web sites are registered every day. People who track these things say there now are more than 200 million Web sites, including dotcoms dotnets, dotgov, etc.
To put the newness of all this in perspective, consider that apple didn’t register its dotcom until 1987. It took Microsoft four more years to join the party. But it’s a young phenomenon that’s already weathered a monumental bust. March also marked the 10th anniversary of the Internet stock bubble burst. Government’s top-down inclination to force one-size-fits-all “solutions” onto life is nowhere more revealed as foolhardy effort than when it comes to the Internet. In just 10 years, for example, broadband Internet access has been provided to more than two-thirds of Americans. Yet the government is seriously entertaining the idea it can force similar access for most of those who don’t yet have it – and estimates that will take only another 10 years.
