1958 The United States Department of Defence establishes the Advanced Research Projects Agency in response to the Sputnik launch which heralded the era of global communication
1971 First email is sent
1974 The term Internet is coined
1982 First Internet connection in Asia is developed in Keio University in Japan
1983 The Domain Name System is invented
1989 British engineer Tim Berners-Lee proposes what would become the World Wide Web in his paper “Information Management: A Proposal”
1990 Development begins for the first browser called “WorldWideWeb”
1993 Mosaic the first graphical brower is launched, helping to popularise the World Wide Web
1994 Yahoo and Amazon.com are founded
1995 Microsoft Internet Explorer 1.0 released
1998 Google launches its search engine. Singaporean Tan Tin Wee founds multilingual domain name system
1999 Web 2.0 is coined as more websites start to allow users to post content
2000 The dot.com market peaks and crashes
2001 Wikipedia is born
2004 Facebook is born
2005 First YouTube video is posted
2006 The first Tweet is sent. twitter founder Jack Dorsey writes: “Just setting up my twttr” (sic)
2010 Instagram is launched
2012 Gangnam Style becomes first YouTube video to reach 1 billion views
2013 New generic top-level domain names such as .guru, .camera and . diamond are introduced
2014 Ellen DeGeneres’ selfie at the Academy Awards ceremony is re-tweeted 3.2 million times, and holds the record for most re-tweets.
Sources: INTERNET SOCIETY, BLOOMBERG, WORLD WIDE WIDE WEB CONSORTIUM, WORLD BANK, INTERNETHALLOFFAME.ORG
Notes: The above listing is a work in progress continuum. A recognition of human Ingenuity (and some, unsung heroes), quality of being clever, original, and inventive, in the process of applying ideas to solve problems or meet challenges. Without which, knowledge of everything will then still confine to the privileged and the educated few.