The technological and industrial history of Canada encompasses the country's development in the areas of transportation, communication, energy, materials, public works, public services (health care), domestic/consumer and defense technologies. That the 21st century has become the Internet Age is both literal and metaphorical. The technology that dominates this period of time is wireless technology, cloud computing, HD/3D TV, mega oil, "greentech" and nanotechnology. Most technologies diffused in Canada came from other places; only a small number actually originated in Canada. For more about those with a Canadian origin, see Invention in Canada.
Technology is a major cultural determinant, no less important in shaping human lives than philosophy, religion, social organization, or political systems. In the broadest sense, these forces are also aspects of technology. The French sociologist Jacques Ellul defined la technique as the totality of all rational methods in every field of human activity so that, for example, education, law, sports, propaganda, and the social sciences are all technologies in that sense. At the other end of the scale, common parlance limits the term's meaning to specific industrial arts.
Fields of technology
Internet
The Internet has become an essential part of daily life and is found in most Canadian homes, businesses and government offices. In December 2006, there were 22,000,000 Internet users representing 65.9% of the population and 7,675,533 Internet broadband connections. In 1988, the first .ca Canadian web address, upei.ca, was assigned by John Demco of the University of British Columbia (UBC) to the University of Prince Edward Island. The one millionth .ca address, krauslaw.ca was assigned in 2008 by the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, formed in 1998, to Brent Kraus of Calgary for the promotion of his law firm. As of the end of 2010, Canadians, on a per-capita basis, were the most intensive users of Internet in the world.
During this period, the web search engine became an integral part of use of the Internet. The first such programme, the "Archie search engine", was developed by McGill University student Alan Emtage in 1990. Since then, search engines, which have been mostly developed in the US, have evolved and become more versatile and powerful. Notable engines include Lycos (1994), Alta Vista (1995), Magellan (1995), Google (1998), Yahoo! Search (2004), MSN Search (2005), and Bing (2009). These Internet tools are available to web users from countries around the world, including Canada.
E-mail, a very popular feature of the Internet, predated that technology by decades. E-mail type functionality was a feature of a computer sharing technology developed at MIT in the US in 1961. It was also part of the US-developed Semi Automatic Ground Environment (SAGE) component of the North American air defense system created in the fifties and sixties and which included a facility at RCAF North Bay, Ontario. However, it only became a publicly used service with the development of the Internet. A number of US providers now offer this worldwide service to Canadian users, including MSN Hotmail in 1996, Yahoo! Mail in 1997, AOL Mail in 2004 and Gmail in 2004.
The development of special software allowed the Internet to be used to make computer-to-computer phone calls. In August 2003, a service known as Skype became available to Internet users around the world including Canada. It has since become extremely popular.
Other web sites including those for social networking such as Facebook (2004), which as of 2008 has 17 million Canadian profiles, MySpace (2003), with 4.5 million Canadian profiles as of 2008, and Twitter (2006). Video and photo sharing sites such as YouTube (2005), with 14.5 million Canadian visits per month, and Vancouver-developed Flickr (2004), have become extremely popular in Canada. The popular Canadian-developed on-line dating service Lavalife went on line for the first time in 1997. In 2010, more than 2 million Canadians were members of LinkedIn, a social networking website, developed in the US in 2003 to enable workers to network for professional and career reasons. In recognition of the importance of the Canadian market, the company opened a Canadian office in 2010.