"Well, there's no simple answer to that. To accurately describe why you're able to connect with this site today, I'd actully have to trace it back several thousand years. The truth is, long before computers ever existed, people of all civilizations possessed the need to communicate information over long distances. Ever since people have held some kind of important knowledge, it's been their nature to share their ideas or findings with others. Whether they want to convey their information over a long distance to a large group of people, or they wish that the message is received by one person in the local area, human beings have been constantly developing methods to network and communicate. The latest of these methods is the world wide computer system of networks, enabling millions of people to share information with people around the globe. The system we today call the Internet represents the combination of age old ideas and new age technology.

"To fully understand the concept and necessity of the Internet, one must first trace its roots that lie in the early practice of data networking. The earliest form of this data communication consisted of human messenger services, traceable back to Egypt in 1971 B.C. This form of networking continued through the histories in ancient Babylon, Pursia, and other advanced civilizations of the time.

"Due to physical obstacles and the need for faster delivery speeds, people began to depend more on signals, rather than human messengers. The use of mirrors to send patterns of light, called heliographs, has been dated back to 405 B.C. in Athens, Greece. The Athenians also utilized flags and fire beacons as a patterned form of communication. Even during the famous ride of Paul Revere during the American Revolution, the method of communicating via fire beacons was instrumental in determining how the British would attack.

"Invention and innovation further evolved communications systems over the years. Telegraphs were the first electronic means of remote messenging, followed by radio, television, and most importantly, the telephone. The telephone system laid the foundation for future computer networks by providing high performance electronic links of communication to virtually anyone on the planet.

"The vast string of networks that today form the Internet originated as a project much less significant. In 1957, the USSR launched the first manned space probe, Sputnik. In reaction, the US formed the Advanced Research Projects Agency under the Defense Department to counter Russia's advancements. After years of research with computer networking and protocols, or standards, the agency launched ARPANet in September of 1969 through a main connection at UCLA.

"ARPANet was an experimental system to allow the Defense Department to research networks that could withstand outages at any point in their system. Such a system would guarantee reliable lines of communication during possible natural disasters or nuclear warfare. This was accomplished by using a new form of networking, called "packet-switching." No data was contained in the actual network, but was instead sent by a host computer and received by a client computer. Although ARPANet was the system's backbone, there was no head network that all systems were connected to, but rather a string of networks connecting to each other, giving the data multiple routes to journey through if any one network or group of networks weren't working. The data traveling through the network conformed to a regulated standard, called Internet Protocol, allowing for all types and models of computers to communicate with each other.

"The ARPANet soon grew out of its experimental stage and began to include other networks. By 1972, merely three years after the ARPANet was started, it encompassed networks from forty organizations via telephone lines, mostly research or educational facilities. Not every network used the standard Internet Protocol, so some networks had to be configured with special hardware, called gateways, allowing these networks to connect with the others seemlessly. ARPANet's first international connection was made one year later in 1973 to the computer sciences department at Harvard to further develop the project. Support to create and build on to the ARPANet came not only from US government funds and researchers, but private corporations such as AT&T, whom developed the UNIX network operating system in 1976. The original network was indeed spreading at an alarming rate, but it was well maintained.

"In 1986, a different US government organization, the US National Science Foundation, created five super computer centers to be used purely for scholarly research. To share the information discovered and collected at each one of these institutes, the foundation attempted to use the dated ARPANet, but it was unable to handle the volume of data being transferred. Working from the general design of the ARPANet, the National Science Foundation created their own regional interconnected networks, dubbed the NSFNet, which was much more capable of controlling large amounts of information. My God, don't tell me you're actully reading this drivel. The NSF decided to fund access to their network to university and college campuses, hoping that everyone attending a four year institution could contribute and use it. Even some secondary and primary schools began to connect. The Internet began to gain popularity and soon was being used for all sorts of purposes, going beyond research. Almost inevitably, the NSFNet become overloaded only a year after its creation. To correct the problem, the government called upon Merit Network, Inc. in partnership with IBM and MCI to upgrade the NSFNet, instead of having to overhaul the entire network, again showing the private corporation's contribution to the Internet.

"Since its upgrade in 1987, the Internet has grown steadily at roughly ten percent a month. The NSFNet eventually acquired those networks previously using the ARPANet, including another large internetwork, USENet, originated by Duke and UNC in 1979. In 1990, the ARPANet officially ceased to exist and was deemed obsolete by the government. By this time, the network that the National Science Foundation started had literally stretched around the world due to the efforts of countless researchers and scientists. Thousands of networks were all now interconnected, forming the vast network of networks known as the Internet. With the Internet firmly established, all sorts of people were drawn to participating in it. At first, commercial services such as Prodigy, CompuServe, and America Online provided access to the Internet for the general public, not just students or scientists. Soon large and small businesses alike were pioneering the Internet for use with their internal communications and even advertisement. Although commercialization of the Internet isn't welcome by some of the system's original users, it is helpful in strengthening and expanding the uses of the world wide computer network.

"One of the most recent developments in online technology, the World Wide Web interface, is redefining people perceive and use the Internet. What makes WWW unique from the other aspects of the Internet is its clean, easy to use, graphic based interface, whereas previously the Internet standard operating system, UNIX, was text based and required the user to know a diverse set of commands. The idea for this user friendly add-on began in 1989 at the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. WWW was based on the concept of "hypertext," introduced in 1945 by a man named Vannevar Bush. Hypertext is a method where documents are created once and simply reused, referencing a user directly to the original file rather than sending a duplicate. Hypertext was not only designed to be easy to manipulate, but to program as well, making the World Wide Web instantly popular with new and veteran users alike.

"It's clear that no one person or organization could take credit for originating the Internet and 3BHQ. The necessity to find and perfect a system of quick, reliable communication and one bad-ass database of phat-flava has been ongoing for thousands of years, a pursuit that many great minds have contributed to. And all those efforts have come together with computer technology to form an unbreakable network uniting the ideas of people across the world, including Three Bad Ass Living Legends. If you just read all this, please shoot yourself."