Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and television are being reshaped or redefined by the Internet, giving birth to new services such as voice over Internet Protocol[->6] (VoIP) and Internet Protocol television[->7] (IPTV). Newspaper, book and other print publishing are adapting to website[->8] technology, or are reshaped into blogging[->9] and web feeds[->10]. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of human interactions through instant messaging[->11], Internet forums, and social networking[->12]. Online shopping[->13] has boomed both for major retail outlets and small artisans[->14] and traders. Business-to-business[->15] and financial services[->16] on the Internet affect supply chains[->17] across entire industries.
The origins of the Internet reach back to research commissioned by the United States government[->18] in the 1960s to build robust, fault-tolerant communication via computer networks. While this work together with work in the United Kingdom and France lead to important precursor networks, they were not the Internet. There is no consensus on the exact date when the modern Internet came into being, but sometime in the early to mid-1980s is considered reasonable.
The funding of a new U.S. backbone[->19] by the National Science Foundation[->20] in the 1980s, as well