THE EXPANSION of worldwide means of communications has been unprecedented. On October 29, 1969, the very first message was sent from a computer at the University of California, Los Angeles, to the Stanford Research Institute. A December 1969 map of what would eventually become the internet showed a total of four computers. In August 1981, there were just 213 internet hosts.
The first-ever website was created in 1991.
As of 2015, there are approximately three billion internet users. There are about two billion smartphones across the world, which is projected to reach four billion by 2020. It is estimated that it would take about six million years to watch all the videos crossing global networks in a single month. Were each Facebook user counted as an inhabitant, Facebook would have a larger population than China.