The Internet or An Amalgam of the Past

Long before Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), the internet, or even the telephone a technology emerged that would revolutionize communication. The technology which clustered from the telephone and telegraph: the fax machine. A fax machine used existing telephone lines to transmit data constructed from a scanned document to a receiver which in turn created a copy or facsimile of the document. The telephone allowed people to verbally communicate over vast distances and the fax machine added the ability to share written documents or pictures. Fax machines were not without their limitations and eventually, after the advent of the computer, a method for sharing computerized documents as well as other forms of information was developed.

Fax Machine
Enhances: Communication
Obsoletes: Telegraph
Retrieves: Document sharing and collaboration
Reverses: a system that allows for sharing video

ARPANET was developed to allow multiple users to network computers and share information. What began as a military program (like many great innovations), slowly grew into a technology that revolutionized communication. ARPANET allowed for the quick access of research and data which enabled scientists to collaborate and arguably promulgated more thorough scientific inquiry. However, to be used as a tool to grow commerce and develop a global community, ARPANET needed to evolve into something that anyone could use to share and access information.

ARPANET
Enhances: Communication/collaboration
Obsoletes: University libraries
Rekindles: Collaborative inquiry, research, and experimentation
Reverses: a user-friendly, less cumbersome system for networking computers

The internet is the culmination of technologies that have been developed since the printing press. The average person through unrestricted access to the internet can obtain and share nearly any kind of information in real time. From the collected works of Aristotle to Lolcats, the internet is an emerged technology that has both promoted the sharing of knowledge and created a record for future posterity. Eventually, the internet will be replaced by a more reliable and less “cluttered” version that connects users to information without the aid of a computer.

Internet
Enhances: Communication/collaboration
Obsoletes: Telephone, television, fax machine
Rekindles: Exploration and knowledge generation
Reverses: a more reliable system that connects people without computers

After reflecting on these three tetrads, I can see that the current internet has only been possible by the development of many technologies dating back centuries. Chains and clusters can be drawn from innovations that I had not thought of before analyzing the precursors to the internet.