The document discusses the history and development of the internet over the past 50 years, from its origins as a US military program called ARPANET to the commercialization of the world wide web in the 1990s. It grew exponentially from the 1980s onward and now billions of people use the internet for communication, information, commerce, and entertainment on a daily basis. The internet has fundamentally changed how society interacts and shares information on a global scale.