The Internet In 1958, in response to the Soviet launch of Sputnik, President Eisenhower created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), which produced a system that routed digitized messages between computers to facilitate military communications. The technology spread beyond the military; by 2000, even the poorest countries had some access to what became the Internet. By 2011, Internet-enabled smartphones were abundant. Activists used digital networks to organize protests and broadcast their stories and images during the Arab Spring of 2011.

Ron Haviv/VII/Corbis.