INTRODUCTION

Abstract

The history of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) is full of developments, surprises, debates, and as many certainties as many uncertainties. Landmarks in the history of ICTs that stand out, including the first packet-switching network, the Transmission Control Protocol and the Internet Protocol (IP) in the late 1960s, the development of hypertext language in 1989, the release of the World Wide Web by CERN for general use in 1993, and the spectacular developments around broadband, Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 from the mid-2000s onward, cannot portray sufficiently the scale, magnitude, and wealth of breakthroughs in the domain of ICTs and ICT-enabled services.