How did I find the link?

Using Netscape, I clicked on Net Directory and it showed Yahoo's directory. Yahoo offers a list of links to various topics such as social science, government, art, business and economy, education and more. I chose social science and the new window offered various social science domains such as anthropology and archeology, psychology, languages, Asian studies, economics, etc. It also offers a search engine which I decided to use. My query was the "history of the Internet" since our team explores topics on the Internet itself (e.g. from history to Internet societies and conferences, Internet branches and services such as commercial, government, institutional and more). Yahoo's search engine can search by title, URL, etc. After clicking on the button Search a screen appeared and it gave me the number of matches to my search (5 matches were found). Each match included annotated linkages. I chose Business and the Internet, a sub-categorical link to Business and Economy: Electronic Commerce, since it offered a more focused overview on the history of the Internet.

How did the tone/style appear to me?

The document was very informative. It discusses the history and future of the interaction between business and the Internet. It aims to inform people in business about the Internet itself. Yet, a lay person can enjoy reading it with no difficulties.

Content?

The document was written, as part of a project, by Randy Reitz, M.S. Accounting and Information System and Will Lewis, M.B.A. candidate from the University of Kansas Graduate School of Business. The document gives an overview of the Internet itself. It plainly defines the Internet as "the interconnection of many different networks." In its overview, the document explains the meanings of TCP/IP, DNS and URL, the use of Telnet, FTP, Gopher, Archie, Veronica, and WAIS. It provides information on Usenet News, WWW, HTP and E-Mail. If supplementary information about each of these items is wanted, some helpful URL addresses can be found there.

Next, the document covers some interesting information about the evolution of the Internet. The Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), an agency that developed the United States' first successful satellite, was headed by Dr. J.C.R. Licklider in 1962. ARPA's aim was to improve the military's use of computer technology and make it more interactive. Thus, the agency moved its contracts from the private sector to universities and laid the foundations to what would become the ARPANET. In 1969 the United States Department of Defense (DOD) instructed ARPA to develop an interactive system that could resist disturbances caused by enemy attack. Four locations were selected: UCLA; Stanford Research Institute; University of California at Santa Barbara; and Utah.

Several years later, in 1985, the National Science Foundation developed its own backbone (NSFNET) in order to include smaller regional networks that connected many of the nation's research institutions, since the ARPANET couldn't operate on a high speed transmission backbone. By 1990 NSFNET had become the major network, leading to ARPANET's downfall. Now the Internet could serve public, research, and government domains.

The next significant development for the Internet was the WWW. CERN placed the software for the WWW in the public domain. In 1993 a group of graduate students from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana developed Mosaic which uses a graphic interface. This development led to business interest in the Internet since it made the Internet more accessible to inexperienced users.

Finally, the document presents an overview about business and the Internet. It offers some guidelines on how to connect a business to the Internet.

Usefulness to social psychology?

The Internet offers accessibility to various domains such as public, private, commercial, government, universities and more. I think that it is a great advantage to have this kind of communication resource; now people from all over the world, from different backgrounds and various sectors, can interact with each other and access a valuable body of knowledge via the Internet.

In reading this document I have gained some insight into the history of the Internet. I think that it is important for me to know how it was established and what it has to offer since I use the system daily.

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