General System Theory and The Internet Design Idea Essay - 2

General System Theory and The Internet Design Idea - Essay Example Baran’s idea finally matured under the Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA). Internet is designed in such a way that there are no centralized switches. The design is comprised of randomly spread unnamed nodes, which act as switches that route information from one node to another until it reaches its destination. The information to be sent is first divided into message blocks, which are known as packets, and then sent separately. On reaching their destination, the packets are joined again to make the original information. Internet was first used by military researchers but later was adopted by various universities. From there, the idea spread like waves and it came to the most common information network that links people from different regions of the world. Today it is identified by names such as Web or World Net because of its wide network coverage (Sivridis, 2009). Today, Internet is used by doctors, psychologists, religious leaders and all groups of people as the main communication and research tool. According to Marshall (2012), Internet can be described as an unplanned communication network. This is because it doesn’t need any planning. The various people who use the Internet plan and organize themselves into groups of communicators. These groups of people have the freedom to choose the people they want to communicate and interact with. It is argued that internet has broken geographical boundaries and this has resulted in the idea of globalization. Assuming the general system theory perspective, Internet has had both positive and negative impact on the society. Internet acts as the main research centre for all scholars of various disciplines. In terms of politics, issues concerning a country and other countries worldwide are shared through the Internet. This keeps people abreast of current political situation. As Skyttner (2006) remarks, the sector which has benefited much from the Internet is the