2.  REVIEW OF INTERNET DEVELOPMENT, SMALL AND 

MEDIUM ENTERPRISES (SMEs) AND REGIONAL 

AUTONOMY IN INDONESIA 

2.1. Information & Communication Technology (ICT)  

At the beginning, Internet is a technology developed for military defense purpose 

in the United States of America military headquarter Pentagon, In its advanced 

development, Internet technology eventually used widely by the world 

community, and since then it had been growing very rapidly. The computer 

technology prior to the Internet era were only used for words and data processing. 

However, the combination of computer and Internet technology were now used as 

the backbone of the world wide web network.  

Through this web network, the computer user using Internet connection perform 

data and information exchange throughout the world without distance barrier. The 

requirement needed to be connected to this world wide web network simply a 

telephone line or satellite through and the Internet service provider (ISP) to bridge 

the telephone line and the world wide web network.  

The development of World Wide Web network is growing very rapidly in the 

developed nations due to the availability of the availability of infrastructure and 

utilities to support the network, using very low cost digital data exchange via a 

file transfer protocol (FTP). This digital data transfer is then used to transfer data 

through email (electronic mail) where previously were transferred through 

facsimile and courier services. 

The information and communication technology keeps on developing, followed 

by the innovation of HTML (hyper text markup language). The personal or 

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