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10 people you don't know who revolutionised the internet
We take it for granted, but without these technology strategists, the internet would be just an academic exercise in communication
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are real personalities of the World Wide Web. Since the creation of the internet, many names became famous. Some had 15 minutes of fame but some have lasted until today.
There is also a category of geniuses who contributed significantly to the
transformation of the internet but have never been heard of. Graphic design blog this week published a list of 10 people who revolutionised the internet but we hardly know about them. The 10 are listed below as a tribute.
Source: Graphic design blog
1. Jon Postel - Request for Comment (RFC)
Born August 6, 1943. Died October 16, 1998.
Nationality: American
He was the brains behind the Request for Comment (RFC) document series. Jon also worked on the early protocols and the creation of TCP/IP. He co-developed many of the key internet standards, including TCP/IP (basic internet protocols), SMTP (e-mail transfer), and DNS (name servers).
2. Julian Assange - WikiLeaks
Nationality: Australian
He is the man behind WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing website dedicated to publishing classified documents from around the world. Julian designed an advanced software for shielding the identities of people who upload the documents. WikiLeaks was launched in 2006 and it is an international non-profit media organisation that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous sources and leaks. An internet leak occurs when a party's confidential information is released to the public on the internet. Today, Assange is famous for publishing the confidential cable messages sent by diplomats from various US embassies around the world to Washington.
3. Gary Thuerk - the first e-mail spam
Nationality: American
Gary Thuerk was the world's first e-mail spammer. Spamming is a marketing technique of sending unsolicited e-mails to random people for promotional purposes. Albeit controversial in many aspects, it has revolutionised e-marketing techniques.
4. Scott Fahlman - The First Emoticon
Born: March 21, 1948, in Medina, Ohio, US.
Fahlman is credited with originating the first smiley emoticon, which he thought would help people on a message board at Carnegie Mellon to distinguish serious posts from jokes.
5. Peter Thiel- Paypal
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and raised in Foster City, California, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO. Thiel began by giving a small group of developers the access to its code, letting them work with its online transaction framework.
6. Pierre Morad Omidyar - EBay
Born: June 21, 1967. Paris, France
Omidyar was 28 when he spent a long weekend to write the original computer code for what eventually became an internet superbrand — the auction site eBay. He revolutionised the concept of building trust in online shopping.
7. Robert Tappan Morris - First Worm
Born: November 8, 1965. Nationality: American
He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the internet. Thanks to him a huge business was created by fixing computer virus problems. The first worm viruses to be sent out over the internet inadvertently caused enormous financial damage when it was released in the late 1980s.
8. Bram Cohen - Bit Torrent
Born: 1975. Residence: San Francisco Bay Area, California.
In 2004, he founded BitTorrent, Inc. with his brother Ross Cohen. Bram Cohen changed the face of file sharing by developing BitTorrent that instantly shares files over the internet. BitTorrent revolutionised file sharing by breaking them up into smaller portions. This way, users upload and download files simultaneously.
9. Michael Hart - eBooks
When Michael Hart was a student at the University of Illinois (USA), in July 1971, he set up Project Gutenberg with the goal of making available for free, and electronically, the largest number of books with expired copyrights. So hats off to Michael Hart for instituting the concept of eBooks and making education affordable and accessible to all. Project Gutenberg is the world's first electronic library that changed the way we read and learn.
10. Adam Seifer - fotolog
Launched in May 2002, the Fotolog site generates over 3 billion page views and receives over 20 million unique visitors each month and is a success. It is one of the first share album pictures online. Adam was the co-founder, Chairman of the Board, former CEO and current Chief Product Officer of the website Fotolog.com, an online community for posting daily photos that started as a hobby in 2002 and has since virally blossomed into a community of over 17 million members who have shared more than 470 million photos.
.
We take it for granted, but without these technology strategists, the internet would be just an academic exercise in communication
Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg are real personalities of the World Wide Web. Since the creation of the internet, many names became famous. Some had 15 minutes of fame but some have lasted until today.
There is also a category of geniuses who contributed significantly to the
transformation of the internet but have never been heard of. Graphic design blog this week published a list of 10 people who revolutionised the internet but we hardly know about them. The 10 are listed below as a tribute.
Source: Graphic design blog
1. Jon Postel - Request for Comment (RFC)
Born August 6, 1943. Died October 16, 1998.
Nationality: American
He was the brains behind the Request for Comment (RFC) document series. Jon also worked on the early protocols and the creation of TCP/IP. He co-developed many of the key internet standards, including TCP/IP (basic internet protocols), SMTP (e-mail transfer), and DNS (name servers).
2. Julian Assange - WikiLeaks
Nationality: Australian
He is the man behind WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing website dedicated to publishing classified documents from around the world. Julian designed an advanced software for shielding the identities of people who upload the documents. WikiLeaks was launched in 2006 and it is an international non-profit media organisation that publishes submissions of otherwise unavailable documents from anonymous sources and leaks. An internet leak occurs when a party's confidential information is released to the public on the internet. Today, Assange is famous for publishing the confidential cable messages sent by diplomats from various US embassies around the world to Washington.
3. Gary Thuerk - the first e-mail spam
Nationality: American
Gary Thuerk was the world's first e-mail spammer. Spamming is a marketing technique of sending unsolicited e-mails to random people for promotional purposes. Albeit controversial in many aspects, it has revolutionised e-marketing techniques.
4. Scott Fahlman - The First Emoticon
Born: March 21, 1948, in Medina, Ohio, US.
Fahlman is credited with originating the first smiley emoticon, which he thought would help people on a message board at Carnegie Mellon to distinguish serious posts from jokes.
5. Peter Thiel- Paypal
Born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, and raised in Foster City, California, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO. Thiel began by giving a small group of developers the access to its code, letting them work with its online transaction framework.
6. Pierre Morad Omidyar - EBay
Born: June 21, 1967. Paris, France
Omidyar was 28 when he spent a long weekend to write the original computer code for what eventually became an internet superbrand — the auction site eBay. He revolutionised the concept of building trust in online shopping.
7. Robert Tappan Morris - First Worm
Born: November 8, 1965. Nationality: American
He is best known for creating the Morris Worm in 1988, considered the first computer worm on the internet. Thanks to him a huge business was created by fixing computer virus problems. The first worm viruses to be sent out over the internet inadvertently caused enormous financial damage when it was released in the late 1980s.
8. Bram Cohen - Bit Torrent
Born: 1975. Residence: San Francisco Bay Area, California.
In 2004, he founded BitTorrent, Inc. with his brother Ross Cohen. Bram Cohen changed the face of file sharing by developing BitTorrent that instantly shares files over the internet. BitTorrent revolutionised file sharing by breaking them up into smaller portions. This way, users upload and download files simultaneously.
9. Michael Hart - eBooks
When Michael Hart was a student at the University of Illinois (USA), in July 1971, he set up Project Gutenberg with the goal of making available for free, and electronically, the largest number of books with expired copyrights. So hats off to Michael Hart for instituting the concept of eBooks and making education affordable and accessible to all. Project Gutenberg is the world's first electronic library that changed the way we read and learn.
10. Adam Seifer - fotolog
Launched in May 2002, the Fotolog site generates over 3 billion page views and receives over 20 million unique visitors each month and is a success. It is one of the first share album pictures online. Adam was the co-founder, Chairman of the Board, former CEO and current Chief Product Officer of the website Fotolog.com, an online community for posting daily photos that started as a hobby in 2002 and has since virally blossomed into a community of over 17 million members who have shared more than 470 million photos.
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