Whatever they are called, web-based applications, cloud computing, utility computing, or interactive browser-controlled environments, they all describe controlling computational activities at a distance, and are not, as denizens of the mobile web and web 2.0 would like the world to believe, new things under the sun. The history of these concepts--or of this single concept, if considered spokes of the same wheel--goes back to at least 1961 when the concept was first given life by a comment made by future Turing Award-Winner John McCarthy in a speech at the Centennial Celebration of MIT. McCarthy, also responsible earlier (1955), for the coining of another phrase of great current importance, “artificial intelligence,” said at that time that he believed that computing would be organized in the future as a “public utility.” The word “utility,” of course, meaning the metered use of computer infrastructure and services deployed at locations other then the users’. Shared assets being then as now the most important spoke in the conceptual wheel. At the time of McCarthy’s Delphic utterances the Internet was still in its infancy, actually still “in utero,” and only the networks of a few Eastern universities and the time-sharing business of computer giant IBM existed that were even remotely capable of fulfilling his prophecy.

Money tight? Check here for short term car insurance young driver car insurance or temporary car insurance uk

The first genuine stirrings of what later would become the Internet began at about this time as military computers were networked with a growing number of universities and the first telephone dial-up connections between computers on both coasts were made. By 1969 and ARPNET, the future Internet, companies were sharing infrastructure and software with increasing frequency. Expensive mainframe computers became less expensive minicomputers in the 1970’s, allowing nearly every business a computer. The mini morphed into personal computers in the early 1980’s. Suddenly everybody that wanted a computer had one and just like electricity at the turn of the century, a system was needed to keep the information flowing. That was the web, reachable on the Internet and transforming every mans’ computer into a remote control of sorts.

The Internet allowed, indeed demanded, sharing of infrastructure and software. It also demanded a degree of computer literacy that most people had neither the time nor desire to achieve. Fortunately the first browsers, including NCSA Mosaic and Netscape Navigator, appeared at this time, the early 90’s, allowing everyone access to the web and its resources. But in order to deal with the shared infrastructure and programming of the web, each web interactive program first had to be downloaded to the users’ personal computer; after which they could take advantage of the web beyond. In 1995 Netscape introduced JavaScript, the first interactive browser-controlled script that gave programmers the ability to render results at the browser client-side without processing by the server. Also in 1995 came ViaWeb, arguably the first web-based program in the sense of Web 2.0. Viaweb allowed users to develop and run stores at remote servers. Cloud computing, seen by some as the next step by completely divorcing the user’s computer from the program and needing no downloading, was underway.

Cloud computing, by the way, was first used in a lecture by Rammnath Chellappa in 1997. The term was “cloud” taken from the web’s great-grandad, the telephone business. Cloud was the term used to denote telephone networks that functioned as part of the overall telephone network, but had a still independent existence. Oddly, it was the great dot-com collapse at the end of the last century that brought out some of the key developments in cloud computing. Amazon was among the first to initiate new product developments that took elements of cloud computing to customers external to its own system. Other industry giants Google and IBM along with several universities undertook a cloud computing research project in 2008 that resulted in “Eucalyptus” and open source for companies that want to develop their own private clouds.

Web-based applications or cloud computing or whatever the current term, were not developed in the last ten years. The concept is an old one in terms of the computer/Internet history. The idea has always been to give the user power, performance and information beyond his own monitor’s ability to deliver it.