Shadowing Practice: The weird history of the internet... - Learn English Speaking with Video
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In the beginning, there were humans, and those humans captured the power of the skies, put it into rocks, tricked those rocks into thinking, and called them computers.
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But those computers are lonely.
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They can't talk to each other.
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If you want to move data from one computer to another, you write it into a magnetic tape, walk outside, get in your car, light up a dart, and drive it across town.
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This is called the sneaker net, and for about 20 years,
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it's the fastest network on Earth. and scare Americans.
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In a panic, the US government creates an agency named ARPA to ensure that they would never be big dorked again.
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A few years later, a guy at the RAND Corporation named Paul gets handed a military problem.
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The Air Force wants to know how its command
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and control links could survive a nuclear first strike and stay alive long enough to order a counter -strike.
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The phone network of the day runs on circuit switching, where two machines reserve one dedicated end -to -end line for the whole conversation,
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break any link in the chain, But Paul is smart.
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He comes up with an idea.
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What if instead of a dedicated line, you slice the message into small chunks called packets, stamp each one with its own destination address, and let them scramble across the network independently,
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each one finding its own route through whatever nodes are still standing, before getting reassembled on the other end.
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He invents what'll later be called packet switching, and in 1969, ARPA actually decides to build the thing, and they call it ARPA -NET.
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The first message is sent from a computer at UCLA, Institute in Menlo Park.
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They try to type the word "login", the system crashes after two letters, the next thing you know...
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By 1971, the network connects 15 computers and a man named Ray needs a symbol to separate humans from machines.
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He brings shame to his family by choosing the @ symbol and inventing email.
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But there's another problem.
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ARPANET is just one network, but it's lonely too.
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There are other networks, but none of them can talk to each other.
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and invent a universal language called TCP slash IP.
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TCP chops your data into packets and makes sure they show up, and IP gives every machine a numbered address so packets know where to go.
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On January 1st, 1983, every machine on ARPANET switches to TCP IP on the same day.
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They call it Flag Day, and the internet is born.
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But now we have another problem.
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Remembering numbered addresses is hard.
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So that same year, a different guy named Paul invents the domain name system,
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human -friendly domain names into the IP address where the computer lives.
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So now, there's a global network connecting thinking rocks all over the planet.
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But it's the last place you'd want to be, since it's only accessible to academics.
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Then, in 1989, a British scientist named Tim is working at CERN, a particle physics lab in Switzerland.
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Tim is a smart guy, and he has an idea.
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All these academics have information trapped on different computers in different formats,
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and there's no reads it and scribbles three words across the top.
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Vague, but exciting.
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That proposal was the World Wide Web.
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Tim goes on to invent HTML, HTTP, and the URL, the first web browser, and the first web server on a computer with a sticky note begging people to not turn it off
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because if they did, the entire internet would go down.
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But the coolest part is that he then gives it all away for free because he wants it to belong to everyone.
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For the next few years,
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the web is just an ugly wall is a browser called Mosaic that can display images in line with the words.
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The browser shows promise, Mark graduates, moves to California, and turns Mosaic into Netscape Navigator, which quickly becomes the most popular software on Earth.
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From there, the information superhighway becomes mainstream, and Bryant Gumbel asks, what is internet anyway, on the Today Show.
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Then, Microsoft wakes up, notices the internet exists, and panics.
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A horndog named Bill declares war.
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Microsoft builds free with Windows, which is on about 9 out of every 10 computers on the planet by this point.
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This gets them sued by the government for being a monopoly, but it kills Netscape, whose dying body is scattered to the open source gods and is eventually reborn as Firefox.
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Meanwhile, normal people are getting online for the first time through a company called AOL, which carpet bombs the planet with free trial CDs through the mail
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that 7 -year -old me thinks would be fun to microwave.
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It is.
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Oh no. The microwave is on fire.
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Ouch, ouch, hot.
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To connect screams into the line to make a digital handshake.
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The two modems negotiate a baud rate and modulate ones
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and zeros into audible tones over a copper line that was originally built for human voices.
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You top out around 56 kilobytes per second, which means it takes roughly eight minutes to download one song off Napster and give your computer aids.
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And because the modem is hijacked the same line your telephone uses, the second anyone picks up the kitchen phone,
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their voice gets dumped right Now it's the late 90s.
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Everyone realizes you can make money on the internet, or at least convince other people that you're about to.
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Investors throw billions at any company with a dot -com in the name,
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so companies lease OC -3 lines and stuff data centers full of Sun servers to handle traffic that never comes.
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One company sells pet food online and lights its entire war chest on fire for a sock puppet Super Bowl ad.
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Another offers to drive a single candy bar to your door for free.
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when the bubble pops, when the Nasdaq loses most of its value and thousands of companies vanish overnight.
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Sadly, a generation of young men on that Mamacoco have to move back in with their parents, but a few survivors manage to crawl out of the wreckage,
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the biggest being two guys named Larry and Sergey who write an algorithm they call PageRank.
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The idea is to treat every hyperlink as a vote, then weight each vote by how important the linking page is recursively so a link from a
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then wire it up to an ad auction and turn it into the most profitable money printer ever built.
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Meanwhile, the browser continues to evolve, and some call it Web 2 .0.
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Under the hood, a trick called Ajax lets JavaScript quietly fetch data in the background with XML HTTP requests
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and update a page without a full refresh, so a website can finally feel like an app instead of a pamphlet you need to keep reprinting.
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And now, it's 2007.
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Civilization has peaked, but we don't know it yet.
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built -in backdoor for his shareholders.
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Around the same time, a guy named Steve pulls a rectangle out of his pocket.
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It's a phone that runs a real browser with an always -on cellular connection.
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The information superhighway escapes from our desk into our pockets.
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And the good news is that we no longer need MapQuest to navigate around the world.
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But the bad news is that it'll eventually rot our children's brains.
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And that brings us to today.
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When you visit an average website, you must first accept cookies, decline the newsletter pop -up,
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dismiss the app download download before you can even read the content that probably wasn't even written by a human.
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Thankfully, two guys named Sam and Dario ingested the entire internet while tricking the rocks into thinking harder, and now they're renting it back to us at a premium.
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But while some companies are filling the internet with slop, others are trying to clean it up.
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Which brings us to CodeRabbit, the sponsor of today's video.
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AI can write code faster than ever, but reviewing 40 files of PR slop still feels like reading your code base through a paper shredder.
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A CodeRabbit review It groups related changes into cohorts,
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orders them into layers, and adds AI summaries so you can move through the change in an order that actually makes sense.
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Instead of one giant flat diff, you get what feels like an IDE for your pull requests.
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Your comments and approvals still go back to GitHub natively, and when it helps, CodeRabbit can generate diagrams in line for call flows, state changes, or schema updates.
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Over 100 ,000 open -source projects like Bunn and Nux .js use CodeRabbit, and you can try it out for free with the link below.
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This has been the History of the Internet in 8 Minutes.
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Thanks for watching, and I will see you in the next one.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, we will explore the fascinating history of the internet, focusing on its early developments and key innovations that led to the interconnected world we live in today. By practicing with the transcript provided, you will enhance your English listening and speaking skills, particularly in understanding complex subjects and technical terminology. This activity is designed for learners who want to improve their vocabulary and conversational fluency through a technique known as shadowspeak, where you mimic a speaker's pronunciation and intonation. You'll also gain insight into how historical contexts shape language use in tech discussions.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Packet Switching: A method of data transmission where messages are broken into smaller packets.
- ARPANET: The precursor to the modern internet, developed by the U.S. Department of Defense.
- Email: A digital message sent over the internet using electronic communication.
- Domain Name System: A system that translates human-friendly domain names into IP addresses.
- HTML: Hypertext Markup Language, the standard language for creating web pages.
- HTTP: Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the foundation of data communication for the web.
- URL: Uniform Resource Locator, the web address used to access resources online.
- Browser: Software that allows users to view and interact with websites on the internet.
Practice Tips
To make the most of this shadow speech exercise, start by listening to the video at a slower speed if needed. Focus on grasping the meaning of the technical terms as you hear them. Pay attention to the speaker’s intonation and rhythm, and try to match it as closely as possible. Engage in shadowing by pausing the video after each sentence or phrase, then repeat what you hear. This will help you improve your pronunciation and speaking fluency. Because the content is rich and fast-paced, breaking it down into smaller parts can make the practice more manageable and effective. Consistent practice with shadowspeaks will bolster your confidence in discussing complex topics in English.
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is called · be called · is sent |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | has peaked · has been |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | Windows, which is · second, which means |
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.