We cannot begin addressing the impact of Web Authoring without discussing the history of the World Wide Web itself.

• 1945 Vannevar Bush created a photo-electrical-mechanical device called a Memex. The Memex allowed a user to link to other documents within a microfiche system.
• 1958 ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency) was formed. It is an agency within the Department of Defense. It became known as DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Project Agency) in 1972. This established the US as the leader in science and technology within the military realm.
• 1962 J.C.R. Licklider from MIT created the concept of "Galactic Network". This was the first concept of globally connecting computers so that everyone has access to data.
• 1964 At the height of the Cold War, the United States decides to investigate research for decentralizing information to ensure security of the nation in the case of a global nuclear war.
• 1965 the very first wide-area-network for two computers (one in California and one in Massachusetts) by using a low speed dial-up telephone. The result of this first WAN was the realized need for 'packet switching'.
• 1969 Interface Message Processors (IMPS) were created by the Bolt, Baranek and Newman (BBN) corporation.
• 1969 two host computers, one from the Stanford Research Center and another from UCLA were linked together through ARPANET. By the end of 1969, there were a total of four computers linked through ARPANET creating a wide-area-network, which allowed universities and research centers to share information without a central system. (This is primarily seen as the birth of the Internet).
• 1969 S. Crocker established the Request For Comments (RFC), which was intended for the sharing of information and standards.
• 1970 the Host-to-Host protocol called the "Network Control Protocol (NCP)" allowed the developers to create web applications.
• 1972 the first public demonstration of the network technology was shown to the public at the International Computer Communication Conference.
• 1972 Ray Tomlinson from BBN produced the initial popular application "electronic-mail".
• 1973 Vint Cerf (considered to be the father of the Internet - not the well believed notion by Al Gore…hehe), with the architectural ideas and collaboration with Bob Kahn from BBN, developed a protocol that would meet the needs of the open-architecture network environment called Transmission Control Protocol (TCP).
• 1973 Ethernet technology was created by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC.
• 1978 it was discovered that the TCP protocol could only support a limited range of transport services making it necessary to reorganize the original protocol into two protocols expanding the name to include Internet Protocol - TCP/IP.
• 1980 ARPANET comes to a halt due to a virus.
• 1981 the BITNET is created to allow electronic mail to distribute information as well as file transfers. This network system allowed a restricted community to communicate between it's own various mainframes reducing the need for an expanding networking compatibility to all systems.
• 1984 Paul Mockapetris developed the Domain Name System (DNS) due to the expanding need to have more than one single table of host.
• 1985 the NSFNET was created to serve the higher education societies and along with this program came the decision by Dennis Jennings to make the TCP/IP protocol mandatory.
• 1986 when Steve Wolff took over the NSF, he opened the NSFNET to the general academic and research societies. As a result, protocols and procedures were implemented which standardized the Internet and it's technology.
• 1989 Tim Berners-Lee, developed the World-Wide-Web (WWW) software and Cern, a Particle Physics Laboratory in Switzerland, released it to the world.
• 1989 ARPANET ceased to exist.
• 1993 National Center for Supercomputer Applications (NCSA) created and released the first graphical web browser known as Mosaic.
• 1993 the White House comes on-line.
• 1995 search engines arrive along with the beginnings of JAVA, JAVAscript and VRML.
• 1997 the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) adopts "Internet Official Protocol Standards". They are called 2000th RFC.
• 1998 e-Commerce, e-Auctions, e-Trade begin.
• 1999 online banking and MP3's were introduced.
• 2000 the new year was reported as 19100 on January 1 by several time services around the world including the US timekeeper (USNO).
• 2000 several domain names were hijacked in May and June.
• 2000 Napster and the Love Letter virus emerged.
• 2001 five high schools in Michigan, Missouri, Oregon, Virginia and Washington gain access to the Internet2--a consortium of 190 universities in partnership with technology to develop the Internet of the future.

  In 1969 there were four hosts available for Internet access. It exponentially increased from 1,024 hosts available in 1984 to 28,000 hosts in 1987 to 147,344,723 hosts in 2002.

Because of the explosion of the Internet in recent years, it is easy to see that the World Wide Web has information, services, or products that affects almost all areas of life. By companies offering 'easy access' to the Internet (i.e. AOL, Microsoft, TENET), the general public was drawn to the alluring freedom of access to 'anything and everything' that the Internet has to offer. A person can be viewed as 'handicapped' or 'deprived' without free access to the Internet.

 
Areas of Impact on our Society
 

Education

• Search engines and resources (i.e. ProQuest, AskEric, Edu-cyberpg.com, AwesomeLibrary.org) have been developed for sites designed for educators to easily access subject content.
• Universities and organizations post materials (current and archived) for public educational use.
• Students can now research colleges, educational requirements online and even register online.
• Online courses are readily available for off-site learning.
• "Smart" search engines (i.e. PlanetSearch.com) have been developed to access multiple search engines at one time. This has allowed educational research faster and more efficient, thus persuading the educational communities to look to the Internet for research.
• Internet access supplements the onsite resources for both teachers and students.
• Educational organizations, such as the College Board, provide list server for communication and collaboration among teachers.

General Information Sharing

• Email allows people to communicate as often as they please, regardless of distance or time of day, through any Internet service provider (ISP). Ex: Communicating with a friend in a foreign country or another state--cost is no longer a consideration.
• Medical information is made readily available to the general public in areas concerning more sensitive topics (i.e. Organ Donor Information, Disease Diagnosis, purchase of pharmaceutical items)
• Genealogical research is easier to conduct and document using online resources and sites such as Ancestry.com and Genealogy.com.
• Law enforcement and intelligence agencies have used the internet to share information about public offenders and convicted felons. (i.e. CopLinkConnect.com, US Department of Justice Bureau)
• International groups of professional individuals are formed online to share ideas, experiences, and good practices.
• National weather statistics and current weather conditions are available through the National Weather Service.
• Travel directions are readily available online through services such as MapQuest and Yahoo Maps.
• Current news is available 24-hours a day without having to purchase a paper or stay awake for the 10 O'clock news. (I.e.CNN.com, DallasMorningNews.com, www.accessnorthga.com, startelegram.com)

Commerce

• The Internet has revolutionized the way that many people shop. Here is an example of a shopping directory that suggests the ways shopping is organized on the Internet and categories of merchandise available. (I.e.Shopping Directory)
• Live auctions provide an exciting forum for buying and selling products on line.(I.e.Ebay.com,
• Sources for merchandise not available locally can be found on the web. (I.e.Magnetic Paint and Acrylic Mirrors
• Medicines can be bought online, opening the opportunity to purchase cheaper medicines from other countries. (I.e.The Meds Club)
• Airline tickets, hotel reservations, car reservations...all aspects of travel are taken care of by your personal ticket agent online. (I.e.Expedia.com, CheapTickets.com, Travelocity.com as well as major airlines.)
• Many online catalogs are available for diverse products. (I.e.Prentice Hall , Barnes and Noble, Amazon.com)
• Real estate can be viewed and even 'toured' from the privacy of your own home. (I.e.Coldwell Banker.com, ArlingtonTexasHomes.com)
• E-Businesses have begun to offer guarantees of refunds and customer satisfaction to ensure that online purchases are just as sound as those made at a typical store.

Entertainment

• Shows, concerts and play dates (as well as reservation services) can be found online to ensure the fan is never left out. (I.e. Jazz Concerts or Web Tickets)
• Sporting event schedules, as well as scores, can be located easily online. (I.e.Dallas Stars)
• Restaurant critiques and reservations are available online. (You can order a pizza too!)
• Vacation sites can be investigated making planning a trip an adventure of its own. (I.e.TravelCarrier, Travel Guides, Cheap Tickets, sites that offer packages)
• A computer game addict can play online and in real-time using services such as Battlenet which is an interactive real-time Internet area.
• Tourism can be investigated for the city of your choice. (I.e.Colorado Tourism)
• It is even possible to tour places that you may actually never be able to visit in this lifetime. (I.e.the Louvre, The Guggenheim or The Dallas Museum of Art)

Consumer Protection

• People who were once hesitant to use the Web were persuaded of its safety because the Federal Trade Commission enforces laws governing advertising and marketing on the Internet. The FTC provides a comprehensive list of suggested consumer responses to poor online business practices.
• E-Businesss softwares have been developed to provide secure environments for payments made online.
• The FTC offers guidelines to e-business consumers for "Paying It Safe".
• Software is available to block/filter inappropriate sites for the protection of children. (I.e.Web Filter software, Net Nanny, and the Texas Internet Providers Association)

What do all of these web sites have in common? They share the same basic strategies to entice Internet users to visit and investigate their sites: keep it attractive, offer good navigation, make it informative, design it to load quickly, and keep in mind that the basic Internet user is fickle. All of these strategies make up the study of Web Authoring.

Web authoring is the vehicle that delivers the product created with any technical application to society as a whole. In education, web authoring is the culminating skill that "brings it all together". Web authoring blends multimedia, video technology, digital animation and graphics, and desktop publishing into an exciting visual information package that can be shared world wide.

When the use of web authoring is considered, it is easy to see how it has had a strong influence on the way that people see the world. Without web authoring it is doubtful that the Internet would have come to be such a unique tool that appeals to so many different people.

Education, Commerce and Consumer Protection researched.
Assisted in creation of page layout and development.

Mary-Dawn Hudspeth

Information sharing and Entertainment researched
Assisted in creation of page layout and development.

History of the Internet, web usage statistics and introduction of Web Authoring tools.
Assisted in creation of page layout and development.