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From the early 1970s to the late 1980s, the Internet moved from the development stage to the entrepreneurial stage, in which it became a marketable medium. The first signal of the Net’s imminent marketability came in 1971 with the introduction of microprocessors, which led to the introduction of the first personal computers (PCs), which were smaller, cheaper, and more powerful than the bulky systems that had occupied entire floors of buildings during the 1960s. In 1986, the National Science Foundation developed a high-speed communication network (NSFNET) as well as five new supercomputer centers (at Princeton, the University of Illinois, the University of California–San Diego, Cornell, and in Pittsburgh—a center jointly operated by Carnegie-Mellon, the University of Pittsburgh, and Westinghouse), which were designed to speed up access to research data and encourage private investment in the Net. This government investment triggered a dramatic rise in Internet use and opened the door to additional commercial possibilities.

Also in the mid-1980s, fiber-optic cable, capable of transmitting thousands of messages simultaneously (via laser light), became the standard for conveying communication data speedily—making the commercial use of computers even more viable than before. Today, thanks to this increased speed, the amount of information that digital technology can transport is nearly limitless.

In 1990, ARPAnet officially ended, and in 1991 the NSF opened its network fully to commercial use. By this time, a growing community of researchers, computer programmers, amateur hackers, and commercial interests had already tapped into the Internet. These tens of thousands of participants in the network became the initial audience for the Internet’s emergence as a mass medium.