What Is the Internet?

USING the Internet, David, a teacher in the United States, acquired course materials. A Canadian father accessed it to stay in contact with his daughter in Russia. Loma, a housewife, used it to examine scientific research on the early beginnings of the universe. A farmer turned to it to find information about new planting methods that make use of satellites. Corporations are drawn to it because of its power to advertise their products and services to millions of potential customers. People around the globe read the latest national and international news by means of its vast reporting and information services.

What is this computer phenomenon called the Internet, or the Net? Do you personally have need of it? Before you decide to get “on” the Internet, you may want to know something about it. In spite of all the hype, there are reasons to exercise caution, especially if there are children in the home.

What Is It?

Imagine a room filled with many spiders, each spinning its own web. The webs are so interconnected that the spiders can travel freely within this maze. You now have a simplified view of the Internet—a global collection of many different types of computers and computer networks that are linked together. Just as a telephone enables you to talk to someone on the other side of the earth who also has a phone, the Internet enables a person to sit at his computer and exchange information with other computers and computer users anyplace in the world.

Some refer to the Internet as the information superhighway. Just as a road allows travel through different areas of a country, so the Internet allows information to flow through many different interconnected computer networks. As messages travel, each network that is reached contains information that assists in connecting to the adjacent network. The final destination may be in a different city or country.

Each network can “speak” with its neighbor network by means of a common set of rules created by the Internet designers. Worldwide, how many networks are connected? Some estimates say over 30,000. According to recent surveys, these networks connect over 10,000,000 computers and some 30,000,000 users throughout the world. It is estimated that the number of connected computers is doubling each year.

What can people locate on the Internet? It offers a rapidly growing collection of information, with topics ranging from medicine to science and technology. It features exhaustive material on the arts as well as research material for students and coverage of recreation, entertainment, sports, shopping, and employment opportunities. The Internet provides access to almanacs, dictionaries, encyclopedias, and maps.

There are, however, some disturbing aspects to consider. Can everything on the Internet be regarded as wholesome? What services and resources does the Internet offer? What precautions are in order? The following articles will discuss these questions.

[Box/Picture on page 4]

Origin and Design of the Internet

The Internet began as an experiment by the U.S. Department of Defense in the 1960’s to help scientists and researchers from widely dispersed areas work together by sharing scarce and expensive computers and their files. This goal required the creation of a set of connected networks that would act as a coordinated whole.

The Cold War generated interest in a “bombproof” network. If a part of the network were destroyed, data would still travel toward its destination with help from the surviving parts. In the resulting Internet, the responsibility of message routing was thus spread throughout the network instead of being centered in one location.

In large part the Internet, now over two decades old, has grown in popularity because of the use of browsers. A browser is a software tool that greatly simplifies the process of a user’s “visiting” different locations on the Internet.