Sifting through legislative history for a bill passed in 1988 I came across this gem:
"States routinely exchange information with each other for unemployment purposes through an arrangement sometimes referred to as "INTERNET."
Has it really been that long?
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Well, by 1994 there were 20 million internet users and several major banks (including Chase Manhattan and Citibank) were "edging toward electronic commerce" (according to a May 13, 1994 article in Retail Banker International). If internet use was that pervasive by 1994, it must have been around for a few years already... funny, though, how I don't remember hearing about the internet back in the '80s...
(I'm in the middle of writing a 15-page paper on internet banking. I didn't do research just to leave a comment on the blog.) :)
If you consider that the 20 million is likely the figure for the entire world, that may put things in a different perspective. Even if there were 20 million internet users in the U.S. in 1994, the current estimate for internet use is 207,000,000 for the US alone. That's a more than 1000% increase over about 12 years.
Many people say the internet was 'born' in January of 1983 with the first wide area network (WAN) run by the National Science Foundation. The ideas leading up to that began in the 1950's during the space race with the USSR.
Internet usage stats from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats2.htm
I thought the 20 million was referring to the entire world; I know it's a small percentage compared to the total population (or even compared to the number of internet users now), but the internet must have been developed at least enough for the big banks to see its potential.
Interesting stats... I didn't realize that I'm only a month older than the internet! ;-)
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