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Back To The Books: Technically Speaking

"Want to lose 25 pounds? Buy our new product and do just that!" "Click here for a free I-pod!" "Are you a good kisser? Take our kissing quiz and receive $1000!" Now when was the last time you were reading a book and one of these popped up and made noises at you? Personally, I can't recall the last time it happened. Why is that you ask? Because a good encyclopedia, dictionary, or just plain novel doesn't run on electricity and isn't open to the entire population for implementation of viruses. According to the Complete Idiot's Guide to Books, books have been around since 3500 B.C. in the time of Sumerian rule. Sumerians used cuneiform alphabet, pressed in clay with a triangular stylus. Clay tablets were dried and/or lit on fire for longevity. Some even had clay envelopes, which were also inscribed. Some people consider them to be the earliest form of the book. According to Funk and Wagnall's New Encyclopedia, Volume 14, the Internet in which we use today was created in 1989. While reading a recent T.V. Guide, I found that 69% of the United States population relies on the Internet for some part of their life. This is not only a bad thing, but also a distraction from the actual lifesaver. Books: are they a thing of the past or do we still realize that they are just as useful as a computer? In order to answer this question, we must first look at the history of the Internet and how it overcame books.
The Internet was the result of some visionary thinking by people in the early 1960's that saw great potential value in allowing computers to share information on research and development in scientific and military fields, according to the book, Internet and Its Many Uses. J.C.R. Licklider of MIT, first proposed a global network of computers in 1962, and moved over to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in late 1962 to head the work to develop it. Leonard Kleinrock of MIT and later UCLA developed the theory of packet switching, which was to form the...

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