History of the Internet and World Wide Web (WWW) - Commercialization

COMMERCIALIZATION

Beginning in the mid-1990s, the World Wide Web helped propel the Internet to a new stage of mass consumption, and in the process both were radically transformed, as was the society that used them. The Internet and World Wide Web opened new fields of debate over social and cultural concerns, including the right to privacy, the protection of children from harmful or inappropriate materials, freedom of speech as it pertains to electronic networks, intellectual property, issues of social equality, the security of financial and personal data online, and a host of other issues.

As businesses grew increasingly interested in the Internet and the Web for their own strategies, the race to take advantage of the emerging e-commerce markets highlighted the needs of commercial interests in the Internet architecture, in Web-and e-mail-based security measures, and in business models structured on Internet communications and technology. In turn, businesses used these technologies as tools to enter and take advantage of new markets throughout the world, in the process furthering the proliferation of the Internet and the globalization of the world's economies. In the process, the range of social and cultural concerns connected to the Web and the Internet were intensified.

It is clear that, far from the special provenance of technicians, computer scientists, and scholarly researchers, the Internet and the World Wide Web by the mid-1990s had evolved into critical components of the national—and increasingly the international—infrastructure, components with which the rest of economic and social life were increasingly intertwined. As a result, the spate of questions, concerns, cautions, and enthusiasm about these technologies required careful negotiation to ensure that these forces served the good of everyone they affected. Several organizations sprouted up for just that purpose, including the W3C and the Internet Society, which brought together diverse interests to attempt to oversee the development of these technologies within the context of the overall common good. While these debates remained contentious as competing groups wrangled to assert their positions, and consensus over the future direction of these technologies was far from realization, there was little doubt that the Internet and the World Wide Web were thoroughly enough integrated into the fabric of society that they would both affect and be affected by the social forces that attempt to guide them.