The Internet has turned our existence upside down. It has revolutionized communications, to the extent that it is now our preferred medium of everyday communication. In almost everything we do, we use the internet.

The Internet started in the sixties as a way for government researchers to share information. Computers in the '60s were large and immobile and in order to make use of information stored in any one computer, one had to travel to the site of the computer or have magnetic computer tapes sent through the conventional postal system.

Another spark in the formation of the Internet was the Cold War. The Soviet's launch of the Sputnik satellite encouraged the U.S. Defense Department to consider secure ways information could be distributed. This eventually led to the formation of the (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET). ARPANET was a great success but limited in users. In response to this, other networks were created to provide information sharing.

January 1, 1983, considered the official birthday of the Internet. Prior to this, the various networks did not have a standard way to communicate with each other. A new communications protocol was established called Transfer Control Protocol/Internetwork Protocol (TCP/IP). This allowed different kinds of computers on different networks to "talk" to each other. ARPANET and the Defense Data Network officially changed to the TCP/IP standard on January 1, 1983, hence the birth of the Internet. All networks could now be connected by a universal language.

Before the Internet, if you wanted to keep up with the news, you had to walk down to the newsstand when it opened in the morning and buy a local edition reporting what had happened the previous day. But today a click or two is enough to read your local paper and any news source from anywhere in the world, updated up to the