The diffusion of the Internet is one of the most rapid and extensive of any advanced technology in history. Like any widely adopted technology, the Internet is not just technical, but also involves social, political, and economic dimensions.” (Wolcott and Goodman, 2003; 1-2)

It was not long after Marshal McLuhan conceptualized of a ‘Global village’ (1964; 11-12) that the ARPANET was started on an experimental basis. “In 1969, the experimental ARPANET being developed by the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense consisted of four host computers, all located in the United States. England and Norway were added in the early 1970s. In 1980, 213 host computers in fewer than a half dozen NATO countries were connected. By 1989, only a few years after the ARPANET migrated out of the Department of Defense and became the Internet, connectivity jumped to more than 20 countries and 100,000 host computers” (Wolcott and Goodman, 2003; 1).

“During the 1990s, annual worldwide growth of both hosts and users was often in the neighborhood of 100 percent, and much higher in some countries. The millionth host was connected in 1992. Today over 200 countries enjoy full TCP/IP connectivity, and by some accounts, over 500 million users access the Internet regularly” [Cited by Wolcott and Goodman 2003; 1 from ‘Internet Domain Survey’, 2002).

The proliferation and adaptation of the Internet at an unprecedented speed is palpable. Take for instance, a relatively recent facet of the Internet – ‘Blogging’ or ‘Web logging’. What was, till recently a typing error, ‘Blogging’, the process of maintaining an online personal journal –(‘Blog’/ ‘Web Log’), has been multiplying and proliferating at an unprecedented pace. A blog tracking real time search engine, which monitors the world of web logs, called Technorati, claims to be monitoring over 36.8 million sites and 2.3 billion links, with about 75,000 new blogs being created a day – (that’s about one a second), 700,000 posts daily or about 29,100 blog updates an hour (<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/srj2g49ugm" rel="me">Technorati Profile</a>).

In China, “Internet connectivity has been growing especially fast, albeit from a very low base. According to china Internet Network Information Centre, there were 22.5 million internet users in china in January 2001, quintupling from a year and a half earlier” (IBRD, 2001; 84). “According to Total Telecom, there are around 520 internet service providers (ISP’s) and 600 Internet content providers (ICP’s) in china” (IBRD, 2001; 84).

More recently, “the Internet is increasingly becoming a part of our media and telecommunication systems, and a genuine technological convergence is taking place” (Schiller and McChesney, 2003; 15). “Accessing the Internet through alternative means such as mobile phones and personal digital assistants is showing strong growth, from 200,000 in March to 590,000 in June 2000, almost tripling in three months” (IBRD, 2001; 92). (The figures mentioned above are for china alone)

Interesting ! Wonder what the future looks like?