d business-to-business sec- tors. Another contributor is the major shift toward the use of advanced applica- tions, including pervasive computing, which introduces a wide range of intelligent Internet Basics appliances ready to communicate through the Internet, as well as applications that include the more captivating visual and sensory streams; the entertainment indus- try in particular expects large growth in this space. Finally, the availability of broadband or high-speed access technologies further drives our interest in and ability to interact with Web sites that use these advanced applications and offer e-commerce capabilities. A Brief History of the Internet To help understand the factors that contributed to the creation of the Internet, let's look very briefly at the history of the Internet. The ancestor of the global Internet was the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), developed the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). Introduced in 1969, ARPANET was the world's first operational packet-switched network. There were several reasons for the development of ARPANET. First, the project was launched during the Cold War era, when the government wanted to build a network that had no single point of failure and that could sustain an attack and continue to function. As my colleague, Steve Riley of Microsoft, expresses, "The launch of Sputnik really galvanized the U.S. government into action. Before then, we were somewhat complacent, not really looking toward much future tech- nological development." For More Information The Internet Society offers "A Brief History of the Internet," written by the "fathers" of the Internet, at www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtm Second, there was great interest in creating a computer communications net- work that would enable ARPA-sponsored researchers, scattered around the nation, to use various ARPA computers, making research results and new software quickly and widely available to all concerned parties. The initial thought, i