“Connected-world” by Junior Melo – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.

The Internet – it’s something that you and I use everyday and has become a staple in our normal daily routines. But…do people actually know what the Internet is and how it works? When I was asked this in my tutorial at RMIT for Networked Media, I could form pretty basic and mostly incorrect assumptions on what it was and how it worked, but I did not know for certain.

The first version of the Internet which formed the basis for what we use today was known as the ARPANET, and was expanded in 1981. From then until 1990, this was when Internet technologies that we still use today such as the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) was introduced.

The Internet really had an impact on our society and culture ever since the mid 90s, and has continued to grow since then. The first form of somewhat “instant” communication was developed in the form of E-Mail, then some would say a legitimate instant messaging solution was introduced with online chat applications (I’m sure we all remember the MSN-using days).

I hope you all know that The World Wide Web (the www.) is not solely the Internet! It is quite simply – a web. A system of hypertext documents that are available through the Internet. You are viewing this page on an Internet browser, where web pages that contain a vast amount of media, text, and other elements can be viewed. These web pages are created through the use of programming, or, a computer language. There are several different programming options, including HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) for example, or C++.

By textbook definition, the Internet in the utmost basic of terms is a global, international system of networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite and packet data to link billions of devices to an online dimension. This has linked people altogether from around the world and has helped us communicate in ways never before imagined possible.

However as with anything, there are apparent drawbacks. Firstly, if ANYONE can post pretty much ANYTHING in this digital space that is available to over 2.5 billion people, doesn’t that invite the menacing and “evil” people of our world to launch an attack of some sort? Of course.

All hail the Internet, where online assassinations, drugs, sex, government-banned material, top-secret government material, live online suicide recordings, computer viruses that steal all of your personal data, free pirated movies, softwares, games, and several more juicy goodies can be accessed with little to no real hassle at all. The line between what is morally and ethically suitable between our online world and our physical world are very different. What applies here, may not apply there.

This was a pretty basic explanation, but have fun surfing.