# The Internet The Internet is the global TCP/IP network that grew out of ARPANET's 1969 debut and expanded over 100x through the 1990s[1][2]. Beyond the plumbing, it spawned the earliest recognized internet memes, from Godwin's Law to the word 'spam' itself, and houses nearly every meme format cataloged since. ## Origin The ARPANET, the direct forerunner of the Internet, went live on August 30, 1969, when BBN delivered the first Interface Message Processor to Leonard Kleinrock's Network Measurements Center at UCLA[1]. The first host-to-host connection came that October, between the UCLA machine and Douglas Engelbart's NLS system at the Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park[3]. The word 'internet' itself appeared as shorthand for 'internetworking' in a 1974 paper co-authored by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal and Carl Sunshine[3]. The web layer most people now equate with 'the internet' arrived two decades later. On March 12, 1989, Tim Berners-Lee circulated the proposal titled 'Information Management: A Proposal' at CERN, which became the blueprint for the World Wide Web[6]. ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990 and the first web page went live the same year[7], with full commercialization of the Internet following in 1995[3]. - **Platform:** ARPANET (origin) / Usenet and the Web (meme culture) - **Creator:** Unknown - **Date:** 1969 ## Overview Know Your Meme treats The Internet less as a single joke and more as the hosting medium for every joke that followed, with a long entry that walks from ARPANET through net neutrality and conceptual art projects[3]. The entries bundled under its umbrella include the first widely cited internet meme (Godwin's Law), the first widely cited piece of internet jargon (spam), and the policy fights that shaped how memes travel, from SOPA to CISPA[3]. The through-line is that each item was coined, debated or weaponized on the network itself, which is why net culture tends to date everything from the 1990s Usenet era forward. The cultural tone around 'the internet' as a subject swings between reverence and mockery. Early folklore like the BBN engineer's 'Do it to it, Truett' message, scrawled on the crate holding the first Interface Message Processor shipped to UCLA, gets passed around as origin trivia[1]. At the other end, Senator Ted Stevens' 2006 description of the network as 'a series of tubes' became a running joke, with Urban Dictionary top entries defining The Internet as exactly that[4]. Both strands coexist in the way the term is used today. By raw numbers, the subject outgrew its own folklore. In 1995 under 1% of the world population had an internet connection; by 2014 that figure was close to 40%, with the first billion users reached in 2005, the second in 2010 and the third in 2014[5]. Those thresholds tracked, roughly, the eras memes themselves scaled through: Usenet, blog-era web, and mobile social platforms. ## How It Spread The first wave of recognizable net culture formed on Usenet in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The word 'spam,' borrowed from a Monty Python sketch, took hold among Usenet and IRC users as a label for repetitive junk postings; the earliest documented mass commercial message is a 1978 ARPANET pitch from DEC marketer Gary Thuerk, which drew a reaction thread that reads much like modern spam complaints[8]. In 1990 attorney Mike Godwin coined what became Godwin's Law on Usenet, often cited as the first self-identified internet meme[3]. The commercial 1990s layered institutions on top. The first Webby Awards were held in 1995 at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, with winners famously held to five-word acceptance speeches[3]. Brewster Kahle founded the Internet Archive in 1996 as a free public library of web pages, audio, video and public-domain books[3]. In 2001, computer scientist Michael Bergman's Journal of Electronic Publishing paper 'The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value' coined 'deep web' for the portion of the network not indexed by search engines[3]. The 2000s and 2010s shifted the story to policy and image boards. Caturday, the Saturday cat-image tradition, began on 4chan's /b/ in 2005 and is credited as the first of the internet theme days[3]. Protect IP Act and SOPA were introduced in 2011, drawing coordinated blackouts and shelving in January 2012; CISPA followed in the House in 2012 and passed there in April 2013 before stalling in the Senate[3]. In May 2013, Kenneth Goldsmith launched 'Printing Out The Internet' at the LABOR gallery in Mexico City as a memorial to activist Aaron Swartz, collecting more than 10 tons of printed pages from over 20,000 contributors by August 31, 2013[9]. ## How to Use Writers invoke 'the internet' as a collective agent, as in 'the internet decided' or 'the internet is undefeated,' usually when a crowd reaction, remix wave or pile-on is the actual subject. The 'series of tubes' line is still used ironically whenever someone, often a lawmaker, fumbles a technical explanation[4]. For dated references, net citizens commonly reach back to Godwin's Law when a thread drifts toward Nazi comparisons, treating the invocation itself as a thread-ender[3]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is The Internet? It is a global system of computer networks that communicate using the TCP/IP protocol suite, originally descended from ARPANET[1]. ### Where did The Internet come from? From ARPANET, whose first node went online when BBN delivered an IMP to UCLA on August 30, 1969[1]. ### What does The Internet mean? In practice, 'the internet' now refers both to the TCP/IP network and to the web-based culture layered on top of it[3]. ### How do you use The Internet? Culturally, writers invoke 'the internet' as a collective subject, often with the 'series of tubes' joke when mocking a bad technical take[4]. ### Is The Internet still popular? Internet access grew from under 1% of the world population in 1995 to about 40% by 2014, reaching three billion users that year[5]. ### What was the first internet meme? Godwin's Law, coined by Mike Godwin on Usenet in 1990, is widely credited as the first self-identified internet meme[3]. ### Where does the word 'spam' come from? From a Monty Python sketch; Usenet and IRC users adopted it in the early 1990s for repetitive junk messages[3]. ### What was the first spam? A 1978 ARPANET message from DEC marketer Gary Thuerk advertising a new DEC-20 machine, which drew sharp replies at the time[8]. ### When was the World Wide Web proposed? On March 12, 1989, when Tim Berners-Lee circulated 'Information Management: A Proposal' at CERN[6]. ### What is the Internet Archive? A free digital library founded by Brewster Kahle in 1996 that preserves websites, media and public-domain books[3]. ### What was Printing Out The Internet? A 2013 Kenneth Goldsmith art project at LABOR gallery in Mexico City in memory of Aaron Swartz, which collected over 10 tons of printed pages[9]. ## References 1. [https://www.livinginternet.com/i/ii_arpanet.htm]() 2. [https://www.internetlivestats.com/internet-users/]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-internet]() 4. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=The%20Internet]() 5. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet]() 6. [https://www.w3.org/History/1989/proposal.html]() 7. [https://webfoundation.org/about/vision/history-of-the-web/]() 8. [https://www.templetons.com/brad/spamreact.html]() 9. [https://www.labor.org.mx/en/]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/the-internet Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library