What is the Internet? A Brief Introduction

The internet has transformed the world into a global village for it is a network of computers and other electronic devices. Through this you can access any information or communicate with people from any part of the world regardless of any specific timing. This is all possible when you connect your computer to the internet which in turn means going online.

The internet has changed methods of communication and commerce and is aptly referred to as the “network of networks,” after it emerged in the United States in the 1970s but did not become visible to the general public until the early 1990s. People can now work in collaboration at any point through the many features available such as human communication via social media, electronic mail (e-mail), “chat rooms,” newsgroups, and audio and video transmission. 

What is the Web?

The World Wide Web (WWW) is a group of social media sites that enable one to access digital information on the Internet. A website is made up of related text, images and various other resources. The website even resembles other forms of media communication such as a newspaper, magazine, online blog or television programs. The website can serve multipurposes be it a virtual library, an advertisement with brochures, a news platform, a forum for sharing images, social networking sites for keeping in touch with people around the world, online brands and outlets for shopping or educational sites which offer lectures for free. Once you are connected to the Internet you can easily use any web application called a browser such as Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox to access and view the websites. 

Working of the Internet

The internet is a global network of physical cables, which can include copper telephone wires, TV cables, and fiber optic cables. Even wireless connections like Wi-Fi and 3G/4G rely on these physical cables to access the Internet. When visiting a website your computer will send a request via these wires to your server. A server is where all the websites are stored and is more like a computer’s hard drive. Once the request arrives the server will retrieve your data and send it back to your website and send the data back to your computer. 

What features are available for users online?

The options available for you on the internet are endless. You can browse the search bar for information on a school project or assignment, watch a movie, listen to music, take a virtual tour through your favorite foreign spots, shop from home or sign business deals with partners in any corner of the world. The travel restrictions and language barriers can now easily be resolved by the advent of the internet and its innovative additions like real-time translation apps. 

• Instant broadcast communication

The internet allowed new forms of communication for millennials as Email soon took precedence over the more traditional snail mail. Instant messaging and social networking sites expanded in scope with the convergence of the Internet and cellular telephone access to the Web. More than 50 million American adults, including 11 million at work, use IM especially with the numbers growing in schools as students use it to send notes and research work to each other.  Moreover, the internet has resulted in rapid gathering of flash mobs, protestant organizations, street or art performance and shopping.

Before emailing and other messaging facilities people did gather in large crowds but now the difference is in the speed of assembling such events. For instance in February 1999, activists began planning protests against the November 1999 World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle, Washington. This helped organize a total of 50,000 individuals from all across the world and the demonstrations sometimes even turned violent which helped in altering the WTO agenda. 

Online Discussion:

Same case is when flash mobs are organize on a short notice through Web sites, online discussion groups, or e-mail distribution lists. They participate in strange but usually harmless public activities. In addition to this, during any calamity or natural disaster, the internet is a major assistance for providing charitable donations to people who are disadvantaged by such catastrophic failures. It also helps in connecting people who have been misplaced or displaced. To reach out to loved ones when people are forced to abandon their homes and to inhabit new places they are unfamiliar with.

  For example during the September 11, 2001, attacks, people found it easier to contact their loved ones in New York through email rather than the distressed telephone lines.  Similarly the earthquake that struck Haiti in January 2010 also portrayed how social media was a great influence in coordinating relief efforts and delivering basic necessities like food, clothing and medication to the victims at priority. The friends or relatives living abroad could access social networking sites such as Facebook to learn about the whereabouts of their loved ones who were reported missing during this time. NGOs and other government sponsored organizations could design maps of the areas affected and channel resources to them on an urgent basis. Moreover the people who did not have any access to the internet also contributed their efforts through text messaging and mobile phone networks. 

• Business Marketing and E-commerce

The process of nichification is two prong: consumers can find the products they need while the advertisers can also reach out to their potential consumers. The search engines can generate revenue by matching ads to what the client is requiring at that moment. However the major task is to not spam the audience with unnecessary content which annoys them but to fulfill their particular requirement and commercial needs. Furthermore, boosting e-commerce is the perfect opportunity through the internet. A real life bookstore does not have the capacity to place each and every version of a text in its preserved form on the limited space of the shelves. However in an online store nearly everything ever publish can be display. Now customers can even search and order from the convenience of their homes from online stores.

The internet does not only match buyers and sellers relatively quickly and at a cheaper rate but also aids in enhancement of various interests such as in games or music. For e-commerce through the internet customers can browse the online stores and pay orders for products and services by their individual devices. It provides new channels for marketing, sales, customer support, delivery, payment and to avoid any intermediaries in buy-and-sale transactions. 

• Education  

The internet is equally important in the education sector of society which deals with production and utilization of knowledge. Using a large range of resources helps in improving the quality of education for instance when teachers prepare lectures through online research or post their notes and videos on school’s website and students extend the scope of their knowledge by browsing through different websites to gain insight on every aspect of a related topic. Remote learning is also assist when people can study while social distancing in their homes. The internet allows them to access free lectures, documentaries and problem-solving videos online via youtube or through student-friendly apps like Khan Academy, Coursera or Udemy.

Educational Quizzes:

This offers great interaction between the mentor and mentees through tutorials and educational quizzes. There are no particular physical or language barriers when it comes to online learning as students can now approach well-reputed instructors worldwide through the many social networking sites, blogs, emails or other chat forums. Many helpful websites like Reddit aid students to come into contact with people of their age groups studying in the same education level but from different institutions perhaps even in different countries. The students can take part in group discussions, share their study regimens, tips and strategies to increase their concentration spans and to make effective group study plans. Popular search engines like Google and Yahoo provide instant and vast amounts of information on a topic that needs urgent attention.  

The Excessive Use Of The Internet:

However, the excessive use of the internet can somehow pose challenges and it is unclear whether the large number of computers in classrooms have any measured positive impact on enhancing the learning, reading and writing abilities of students. Since vast amounts of digital information(Digital Advertisers) is always available to students by a single click, it is a major cause of students failing to understand the importance of hardcover books and traditional libraries. Such bookstores have become antiquated as digital libraries have taken precedence.

Moreso, the surge in plagiarism as a consequence of internet resources has made students lousy enough to not display an honest work ethic.

Cutting and pasting has become so common that using the exact same material from wikipedia or other online sites and incorporating it into one’s own research papers has become a norm. The same case is when students can commission others to write their term papers or purchase essays online and wrongfully score a better grade in their examinations.

This is harmful when it comes to exploiting your teacher’s trust by betraying your morals and ethics as a student. Nevertheless, nowadays teachers too have a vast database of resources and cross-check their students’ submitted assignments with other electronically submitted papers they have in record. In this manner even a single online search will show where a phrase that the student used was originally post. 

• Politics and Free Speech 

With access to the internet in the present times people can’t help but vocalize their concerns through the medium of blogs, online discussion platforms or other applications like Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Political and social activism have become so commonplace that nearly every person regardless of age, gender or cultural and religious background has something to say and that too rightfully. Many blogs are like personal diaries or journals where people express their concerns and opinions while others are more interactive spaces allowing many like-minded people to argue and reconsider their judgements or viewpoints on controversial or debatable topics. These even include challenging government pronouncements or the conventional news media.

Dominating Power:

The United States can be see as the dominating power over the blog universe name as ‘blogosphere’ where English surpasses every other language. However it is interesting how the Iranian language, Farsi has become the commonest Middle Eastern language in the blogosphere. Even though the Irani government has limit access to the Internet, 60,000 active Farsi blogs are host at a single service provider, PersianBlog. 

Political Message:

Apart from that, open access to the Internet is also somewhat prompting in spreading political messages. Such as the Ukrainian Orange Revolution of 2004 which had a significant Internet component. Nonetheless, use of Internet by terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda is worrisome for they can contribute to terrorist activities like recruiting memebers in their mafia, sending notifications to sleep cells  and celebrating their own criminal victories.

The Iraq War had such a wide-scale impact for the Al-Qaeda leaders did not just fight a physical battle on ground but also online by mobilizing their followers for jihad through secret web sites. Al-Qaeda operators use password-protected chat rooms before granting anyone access to the group’s actual network so they can maintain their anonymity and underground terrorist activities.

In spite of all such precautions posting content online has its own chances of being reveal with all that vulnerability. Therefore the security analysts could learn of the group’s tactics after gaining access to their “Jihad Encyclopedia” and the Arab-speaking investigatrors infiltrated into their chat-rooms and gained control of the otherwise restricted material. 

The Internet and Privacy 

Matters about privacy in cyberspace have become a great concern worldwide. Discussions on issues like healthcare, writing, shopping, personal lives. And interests are so frequently share online that people are growing anxious. About their privacy being invade, monitore, store and misinterprete when taken out of the original context. Exchange of intimate information has become a great risk online for one cannot trust strangers through social media in the wake. Of cybercrimes and hacking through fake profiles. Users need to be very careful when oversharing about themselves to people they have only been in contact with online for a very short period of time.