Timeline BC ~ 1900 BC: Egyptian writers use non-standard Hieroglyphs in inscriptions of a royal tomb; supposedly this is not the first but the first documented example of written cryptography 1500 an enciphered formula for the production of pottery is done in Mesopotamia parts of the Hebrew writing of Jeremiah's words are written down in "atbash", which is nothing else than a reverse alphabet and one of the first famous methods of enciphering 4th century Aeneas Tacticus invents a form of beacons, by introducing a sort of water-clock 487 the Spartans introduce the so called "skytale" for sending short secret messages to and from the battle field 170 Polybius develops a system to convert letters into numerical characters, an invention called the Polybius Chequerboard. 50-60 Julius Caesar develops an enciphering method, later called the Caesar Cipher, shifting each letter of the alphabet an amount which is fixed before. Like atbash this is a monoalphabetic substitution.

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Centralization of the Content Industry Following the 1980s a sweeping restructuring of commercial media power has happened. While some firms have grown through expansion others extended through mergers and acquisitions. Examples are Time & Warner & Turner & AOL; Viacom & Paramount & Blockbusters or News Corp. & Triangle & 20th Century Fox & Metromedia TV. In recent years those developments have led to the rise of transnational media giants, resulting in the domination of the global media system by about ten huge conglomerates. These have interests in numerous media industries, ranging from film production, magazines, newspapers, book publishing and recorded music to TV and radio channels and networks, but also include retail stores, amusement parks and digital media products. Behind these firms are about three or four dozen smaller media companies, which primarily engage in local, national or niche markets. In short, the overwhelming majority of the world's content production facilities and distribution channels lies in the hands of approximately fifty enterprises.

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Legal Protection: Multilateral Agreements With the rise of a global economic system a desire to establish agreements, which protect works not only within national borders, but also within a "Union" of countries or on an international level, has been expressed. As a consequence a variety of multilateral treaties have been negotiated and adopted by governments. Those shall simplify practice through international standardization and mutual recognition of rights and duties among nations.

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Microsoft Corporation Founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen and headquartered in Redmond, USA, Microsoft Corporation is today's world-leading developer of personal-computer software systems and applications. As MS-DOS, the first operating system released by Microsoft, before, Windows, its successor, has become the de-facto standard operating system for personal computer. According to critics and following a recent court ruling this is due to unfair competition. http://www.microsoft.com For more detailed information see the Encyclopaedia Britannica: http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0,5716,1524+1+1522,00.html http://www.microsoft.com/ http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0...

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The World Wide Web History Project The ongoing World Wide Web History Project was established to record and publish the history of the World Wide Web and its roots in hypermedia and networking. As primary research methods are used archival research and the analysis of interviews and talks with pioneers of the World Wide Web. As result a vast of collection of historic video, audio, documents, and software is expected. The project's digital archive is currently under development. http://www.webhistory.org/home.html

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