Solutions to the problems of cross-platform computing are just now starting to be developed. We think of these problems as being relatively new, but research about how computers communicate has been ongoing for many years. The development of the Internet actually has a much longer history than most people realize. It has been around nearly as long as computers, although it has caught popular attention only within the last two years. The Internet actually got its start in the heart of the Cold War, during the 1960's. Much of the research in computing was funded by the US military. In particular, the military was interested in a communications network that could tie together the various geographical locations that would be involved in the control and launching of nuclear missiles. There was an important tactical consideration: If an intermediate station was blown up by the bad guys, the communication still needed to get there through alternative means. A protocol was developed that took messages, broke them into packets, and sent each packet separately to its destination. If the way was blocked, the packets could find an alternate route. When they got to the destination, the packets would automatically re-join. This ingenious strategy, known as TCP/IP ( Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol) became the foundation of today's Internet. The entire network which used TCP/IP to tie together the military computers was first referred to as ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network).
Eventually the military emphasis of the ARPANET was modified to include scientific and educational capabilities. Control of the ARPANET was absorbed by the National Science Foundation (NSF), so the name of the network was changed to NSFNET. It is interesting to note that commerce was strictly forbidden on the NSFNET. This explains resistance among long-time Internet users to some of the current commercial utilization of today's Internet.
The term "Internet" came into popular use in the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign. The charter of the NSFNET was substantially changed to encourage personal and commercial use of the Internet. The NSFNET (which is a US institution) joined with other large networks to form the Internet as we currently know it. A consortium of private entities known as the Internet Network Information Center (InterNIC) actually has what little control there is of the Internet. The Internet is global in scope, so other parts of the backbone are owned by various entities. It is not owned or controlled by anybody, although there is an international coalition known as the Internet Architecture Board (IAB) that helps to establish mutually agreed standards for Internet protocols.
Notice that the history of computers as communication tools is very much a history of problems and solutions. The evolution of the Internet is a collective effort of millions of people trying to solve problems with methodologies similar to the STAIR technique we have been studying.