ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some of the milestones in the rise and spread of the Internet and how its recent history has paved the way for the emergence of the vivid and fast-developing field of Internet studies. The history of Internet studies is also briefly presented, while the case of the Web and its own history, standing and role in communication are discussed from within the field of Internet studies. Most locate the origins of the Internet in the 1960s and the creation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) in the US. ARPANET was used initially by the military and computer scientists at several major universities ARPANET was a network for sophisticated technologists, principally computer scientists. As Livingstone has suggested, the story of Internet studies is substantially marked by the debates, complexities, uncertainties, politics and contested developments surrounding the Internet, offering a multi-dimensional and highly diverse mapping of this field of study.
