Mill Creek Beacon - Your Hometown News Source

I know this column will register with all of the readers. This week, I’d like to describe how our society is being transformed in how we communicate.

Let’s start with e-mail. In the distant past (circa 1972 or so), the Merit Computer Network was formed with a grant from the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). (It is now called DARPA – adding Defense to the title and administered under the Department of Defense.) It linked together a dozen or so mainframe computers (long before the personal computer came to life in the early 80s). The idea was that by sharing this computing powe...