Your Internet Consultant: the FAQs of Life Online

From chapter 1, "What the Internet Is and Isn't"

Copyright 1994 by Kevin Savetz

What is the Internet?

The Internet is the world's largest computer network. It is not a piece of software or hardware. It's a huge collection of computers, cables, and people. When people talk about the Internet, they generally aren't thinking of the physical computers, wires, routers, and other gadgets that compose the network, but of the collection of people, software, and tools that they "see" online.

To the technically-minded, the Internet is a network of computer networks that talk to each other using Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP). TCP/IP is a set of rules that define how messages can be sent between computers. A communications protocol allows different kinds of computers using different operating systems to communicate with each other. That is important because the Internet isn't made up of any single type of computer system. Using TCP/IP, hundreds of different types of computers are able to communicate on the Internet.

This common set of protocols makes it possible for a user plugged into any network on the Internet to communicate with people or software located on any of the other networks connected to the Internet.

To most of the people who use the Internet, the Net isn't about networks, protocols, and operating systems; it's a community of people. A very large community. I might even call it (with a cringe for using such a trite, hackneyed term) a "global village."

The Internet is a locale, a place. It is the closest thing we've got to "Cyberspace" (a term coined by William Gibson in his science fiction classic Neuromancer), an electronic place where people and programs work, learn, and coexist (sometimes peacefully, sometimes not).

Note: Talking about the Internet is like dancing about architecture. You can go on and on about its structure, history, and future, but it doesn't mean anything until you travel around and see it for yourself.

OK, I have Internet access. What can I do?

You can do so much with the Internet that it would be impossible to list everything here. Here's a sampling:

The Internet is free, right?

Wrong. That's a big misconception, probably brought to us by college students and business types who get to play on the Internet at no cost to them thanks to the generosity of their schools, businesses, and/or governments. Most of us actually pay to use the Internet. Even if you don't, rest assured that someone else is paying for your connection.

But access to the Internet's resources are free, right?

That is correct. Those of us who do pay for our Internet access generally pay based on how much time we're online, not by what we do. If your service provider charges $1 an hour, it doesn't matter if you're searching an agriculture database or playing games, because the vast majority of the Internet's resources are free.

The Internet resources are never quite "free" when you consider the amount of time and money invested in making them work. The computers, network equipment, software, and maintenance are paid for by governments, businesses, and personal time and money. However, many resources are accessible without charge, regardless of these expenses. This may come as a surprise to some. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, right? Why would anyone give away the products of their efforts?

Well, everyone seems to have their own reasons. Academic institutions often make their resources available because it is their purpose to disseminate knowledge. Businesses often offer free services to promote their reputations. "Regular people" donate their time for a variety of reasons[md]to boost their ego, to give something back to a community they find useful, or simply to do good for the public network.

What parts of the world are wired for the Internet?

Most of the world has some sort of access to the Internet However, if your closest family lives in the Gobi desert, you're out of luck.

At last count, 146 countries had some sort of connection to the Internet and 91 did not. Full Internet access is enjoyed by the United States, Canada, most of South America, all of Australia, Asia, and Europe. Africa is the least wired part of the world: more than half of Africa has no Internet; most of the rest of that continent have e-mail access only. Most of the rest of the world has access to limited Internet services like BITNET, UUCP, and FidoNet.

What's wrong with the Internet?

The Internet isn't perfect. Far from it. Here are four important things that are wrong with the Internet today:

  1. The Internet is hard to learn to use. (If it weren't, you wouldn't need to read this book.) There are too many programs and tools for doing different things[md]FTP for file transfers, Telnet for remote login, Gopher, archie and so on. If that weren't bad enough, many functions can be done with a variety of "competing" programs that do more-or-less the same thing.
  2. The Internet is almost completely disorganized. It's filled with stuff, some of which you'll find useful and some of which is worthless. The Internet is like a junk yard. If you look in the right places (and given a little luck) it is possible to unearth the electronic equivalent a pristine 1955 Porche Spyder. If you are without direction, however, you can search for days for something and come away discouraged and dirty. (The Internet is slowly becoming more organized with the help of indexing tools such Veronica and Archie, but it has a long way to go.)
  3. There is too much information on the Internet. This is really a throwback to #2, because with better cataloging and retrieval systems, the amount of information on the Internet would be manageable. (With reliable cataloging and retrieval systems, no one complains about "too much information." Have you ever complained about this in your public library? Probably not.) Combine today's software with the fact that everyone on the Internet is a potential publisher of information, and you have a problem of too much content.
  4. The Internet is growing too fast for its own good. As new networks and hosts are added to the Internet (at a rate of about one every ten minutes!) the InterNIC, the group with assigns Internet addresses, is running out of them. (We'll talk more about addresses in Chapter 3, "How does the Internet work?.")

So is this the Information superhighway?

Oh, how I hate that phrase. The so-called information superhighway (also known as the infobahn in those sleek cybermedia magazines) is a phrase used by newspapers and television news reporters who don't know how better to describe new technology that they don't quite understand. Not that the term is overused, but I've heard the information superhighway used to refer to the Internet, to television-top boxes that will deliver movies on demand, and to personal digital assistants like Apple's Newton. (One of the local TV news shows in Northern California even used the term to describe a program in which college students repair computers from circa 1980 to give to grammar schools. That's the information superhighway?)

At any rate, call it what you will: the Internet is one part of a future where more people will have easier, less expensive access to technology. That technology could reshape our lives, or we might only be able to order pizza delivery from an on-screen menu. We can only wait and see.

No one can quite define it, but we will know it when we see it.

End of document. There's more if you buy the book :-)