History
The Internet evolved in the late 60's, in times of the Cold War. It's original aim was to provide a decentralised communication system for the US Army. It was used to transmit military commands and data safely. Even in case of a nuclear war these data should not be destroyed. The same data were stored in several computer systems that were distributed across the whole country. If these data were changed or up-dated they should be transmitted to every computer system that was part of the network. All the computers were connected with the others in various ways, even if one computer broke down the network would still work.
The DARPANET (Defence Advanced Research Agency Network), later called ARPANET, was established in 1969. In 1983 the ARPANET was opened for civil, especially for academic, purposes, the army founded the separate MILNET. All the important scientific computer centres of the USA were connected. Since this time the Internet rapidly developed and is now being used by millions of people all over the world (about 40 million in 1996). It is mainly a means of communication but the World Wide Web (WWW) also provides a brilliant source of information of any kind.
One main use of the Internet is electronic mail (e-mail). You can send messages, data, and files to everybody who has an e-mail account. E-mail has advantages compared to common post services. E-mail is much faster and it is cheaper than sending a letter or a parcel. Students, for example, can send questions to their professors and soon get an answer if the professor reads his mail regularly. So if you just have one short question, you do not have to bother about the office hours. One problem of e-mail is, that confidential or secret data can be read by third persons, e-mails are like postcards. There is the possibility of enscrypting your messages, but writer and addressee need a special software for that.
File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
Another important application of the Internet is the transfer of files. The FTP enables you to download files from a server computer or to upload files to a server computer. There is a lot of software—shareware and freeware—available. You can even download the complete operating system Linux on your private computer.
World Wide Web (WWW)
The Internet is an accumulation of thousands of networks, run by universities, private companies, online-services and more. The Swiss nuclear research company CERN is the creator of the WWW. The idea was to make text documents visible on-line. They developed the Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) and the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). All you need is a WWW-Browser to view HTML documents on your computer.
Publications
The WWW provides a very good platform for everyone who is interested in publishing texts that are supposed to be read by other people. People who publish texts may have various intentions.
Companies, for example, benefit from the internet as a medium for advertising. Compared to commercials on TV or ads in newspapers it is probably the cheapest way to reach a very big number of people. Since the number of Internet users obviously grows very fast within the course of time, it is and will be a very important market. There are many possibilities to order products of any kind via e-mail. Customers have the chance of comparing offers from different companies and choose the best one. But what future effects will this have for small shops for example? Will they all run out of business? This may be one of the negative aspects of the growing WWW.
The WWW is a very good source of information. There are, for example, lots of newspapers that you can read on-line. You can also use search engines to look for keywords that you enter, and you will certainly get a large number of hyperlinks to web-pages that inform you about the topics you are interested in. You can access information about various countries, science, health, culture, political parties, universities, TV and radio stations and you can have a look at the weather forecast.
"Private" users also have the possibility to establish homepages of their own. They can publish anything they want. I think this one of the dangers of the WWW. I am not in favour of any kind of censorship, but the possibilities of publishing anything is abused by many people. Right-wing and fascist organisations, for example, have the chance of agitating against foreigners and other minorities. They propagate hatred and violence via Internet. They can arrange meetings and actions to support their morbid ideas. This also applies to other kinds of criminal and terrorist organisations.
Of course, the fact that complete surveillance of the Internet is not possible has many advantages too. In countries like China, where the government tries to control everything, the Internet can be a powerful tool for political dissidents. They can co-ordinate demonstrations and activities and inform the population about the "political reality" in their country.
The Internet will probably be the most important medium in future times. More and more people will access the Internet and communicate world-wide. I think it is exciting to be a part this development.
Reference
- Münz, Stefan (1998):
SELFHTML.
www-Dokument vom 6.1.1999 (Adresse: http://www.teamone.de/selfhtml/selfhtml.htm)
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