Communications and cyberspace

Long-distance communication has changed the world. In the USA, the telegraph and the telephone helped shape the country's settlement and the growth of its cities.

Today, optic fibre cables carry huge amounts of data rapidly, securely, and almost without error. Combined with digitisation (turning all kinds of information into numbers), they formed the Internet.

Satellites, used for communication since the 1970s, made a striking change: the cost of communicating became the same whether the distance was 500 km or 5,000 km. Distance no longer mattered.

India's satellite programme began with:

• Aryabhatt (1975), India's first satellite;
• Bhaskar-I (1979);
• Rohini (1980);
• APPLE (1981), an experimental communication satellite;
• and the INSAT series, used for communication, broadcasting and weather forecasting.

Cyberspace, the world of electronic, computerised communication through the Internet, has grown at astonishing speed: from under 50 million users in 1995 to about 5.4 billion in 2023. It brings e-mail, e-commerce, e-learning and e-governance to people everywhere, making the world a 'global village'.