Internet

While the public perception is that the Internet is the term for any site they connect to through their phone or computer, technically, the term applies to any computer or device, that is interconnected through the use of internet protocol.

CERN's world-wide-web uses the internet

The original internet protocol was designed so other protocols could be laid on top of it. In the 1990s Tim Berners Lee, of CERN designed the HyperText Transport Protocol (http), and nicknamed it the "world-wide web". Using http, users would use a program called a "browser", to visit pages written in a mark-up language called html, for HyperText Markup Language. The html markup language allowed regular text to be mixed with images, graphics, and links to other pages. Those images and graphics and other pages could be anywhere on the network.

Civilians start using the internet

Civilian internet usage spiked in the '90s, becoming almost ubiquitous by the 2020s.

Previously, the ancestor of Internet, called Arpanet, was used by the US Military as a method of communication during times of war. It was important to maintain a level of communication from coast to coast, should the Soviet Union attack using nuclear weapons on the mainland.

While initially an innovation for communication, Internet has evolved under a marketing perspective, starting with the dot com boon in 2000 and the lowered prices for fast connections, which are made available to much of a country's population (see also: digital divide). Marketing has influenced the development of web 2.0, with the fast generation of content and attempts at monetizing it.