From the titans of ".net" and ".org" to the college based ".edu", with the politically common ".gov", domain names are part of our lifestyle now.
But the domain name that most of us were first introduced into our excursion into the World Wide Web and online protocols, and most familiar with, is the legendary ".com".
Well, today is the 25th birthday of that famous domain name. It's even older than me, a staggering thought.
Way back on this day in the Bay State a score and a half decade ago, it was born:
On March 15, 1985, a Massachusetts computer systems firm registered the first .com Internet domain name.The silver anniversary of the birth of the ".com" username is just another reason to have a "WOW" moment.
Although Symbolics.com didn't spark an instant gold rush, the event planted the first seed of a transformation that has changed the world into a Web-fueled digital river of news, commerce and social interaction.
Today, exactly 25 years later, life B.C - Before .Com - is already a distant memory, especially in the tech-centric Bay Area.
The progress of technology as we all know is astounding.
But funny enough, the inventors of the protocol didn't even know it was its birthday.
But there was hardly a ripple when Symbolics Inc., a Cambridge, Mass., maker of computer systems and software based on research done at MIT, signed up the first .com with Network Solutions, the domain registration firm that was acquired by VeriSign in 2000.
Symbolics founders who were contacted for this story didn't even remember the event. The assets and intellectual property of the original publicly traded Symbolics Inc. have been taken over by a privately held firm of the same name. The Symbolics.com Web site still exists, but was purchased in 2009 by XF.com, an Internet domain investment firm.
In one wild ridiculous moment in the article, it did get political by attacking "the left" :
Rainie said Symbolics.com signaled the entry of an entrepreneurial spirit to a nascent online world dominated by a "libertarian leftist" class that saw the Internet as a way to "democratize power" and circumvent big powerful institutions like government and big business.But whoever that Rainie guy is now, he probably would want to think the opposite of that after seeing a site such as this and the rest of the "The Online Rational Community."
Still, the article is filled with other interesting and quality aspects negating that one dubious opinion, including how ".com" was threatened to possibly not be THEE domain name of that time and of now.
In 1985, only six entities registered a .com, one of six top-level domain names created a year earlier in a reorganization of the early Internet's naming bureaucracy. At the time, .cor (short for corporate) almost beat .com as the designation for commercial Internet addresses.Thank goodness it didn't become .cor, even though much of the internet is that right now.
So if you get a chance today, wish a Happy 25th birthday and pop some apple cider, Vodka, orange juice, water, coffee, purp (for those who don't know, you probably will say "Yuck" after you do), or anything else for one ".COM".
To Tevin, Goodnight:
0 comments:
Post a Comment