Experience the Internet
through the Ages

The Internet is made of connections. And the Internet is made for connections.

The story of the past three decades, since the popular adoption of the Internet and the world wide web, has been the story of ever-closer human communication and cooperation. From Usenet to Instagram, online dating to open banking, and Skype calls to Signal chats, seamless, instantaneous, global interaction has been made possible like never before.

But we should never take it for granted. Across the world, there are people who see the open Internet as a threat. Calls to fragment the Internet come in many guises, but they all amount to the same thing: a wish to create an unequal, lopsided world where access to the global network is stifled or totally denied.

So that’s why we should always remind ourselves of what’s great about the Internet: how it’s created whole new relationships, whole new ways of doing business, whole new forms of creativity, even whole new professions that were unimaginable just decades ago.

In the short essays below, we’ll set out how the Internet has affected every area of our lives for the better.

a group of people installing antenna and solar panel on top of a hill
Help protect the Internet from fragmentation.
Help protect the Internet from fragmentation.

Image copyrights:
© Nyani Quarmyne, © Nyani Quarmyne, © Elyse Butler, © InfoWorld magazine, 14 Mar 1983, © Candice Ward/The Internet Society, © Nyani Quarmyne, © Chris Gregory