Introduction
It seems that you can't get away from it. Everywhere you look people are getting online. It is hard to imagine that just two
years ago the word Internet meant nothing to most people in America. Now, it is almost hard to imagine a world without the
Internet. In 1995 the Internet revolution really took hold. Some businesses scraped entire business plans to invest money
and strategies in the Internet, and other floundering computer companies turned into multimillion dollar corporations almost
over night by offering Internet services.(Levy 26) The number of websites increased exponentially by the month, and the
world became a little smaller through the communication technologies brought about by this world wide medium. The
Internet changed the face of communication as we know it, and it shows no sign of slowing it's course of technological and
ultimately societal change.
The scope of the Internet as a medium of communication can not be underestimated. I feel it to be on the same scale as the
invention as the telephone and the automobile. It is ironic that the invention of thetelephone is the basis for this new
revolution almost a century later. In this essay I will examine just what the Internet is, and how it has affected the rest of the
media industry. I will focus on the World Wide Web part of the Internet (the two have almost become synonymous) and
specifically the Netscape corporation which has been and continues to be a forerunner in the development and application
of Web technology.
Part 1: The Wonder Of It All
The Internet (capitalized) is technically defined as "the network of 45,000 interconnected [computer] networks in 70
countries that use the TCP/IP networking communications protocol." (Fahey 96) The real definition is much more complex,
because the Internet provides a variety of services to users such as the World Wide Web (WWW), File Transfer Protocol
(FTP), chat rooms, news servers, and access to thousands of databases.(Fahey 96) These services can be broken down
into two basic subcatagories: information services and communication services.
The information services offered by the Internet are sometimes staggering. With the wealth of information on any given topic
from Star Trek to baseball, cars to erotic fiction, travel to pets, any topic that you can come up with will have some "home"
on the Internet. Research capabilities seem infinite and the Internet offers easy access of information that people would have
had to search long and hard for in the past. For example, all of the hearings of congress and other legislative bodies of the
government are posted on the Internet. Just try the FCC's homepage at www.fcc.gov and take a look at all of the data
contained in that single site and you start to get an idea of the scope we are dealing with. This information was available to
the public before the existence of the Internet, but you would have to send away for such information. Today it is just a
couple mouse clicks away.
The Internet is not just used for its information gathering capabilities. There are other uses than finding out when a specific
Star Trek episode airs, or what tomorrow's forecast is for Malaysia. The communication possibilities offered by this new
technology are like nothing we have ever seen. It is indeed a global medium. Electronic mail can be sent to anywhere in the
world in an instant. You can now do live real-time video conferencing on the Internet, and with programs such as See You,
See Me, you can watch broadcasts of the camera currently aboard the space shuttle. You may also connect to one of the
hundreds of chat rooms and talk (via typing) to people from all over the world in real-time. The best aspect of the Internet
has nothing to do with the money or the technology. It is us. "The Internet mediates human interaction better than any other
medium," says futurist Paul Saffo in Newsweek magazine. "Getting in touch is more fun than the coolest computer game or
the hottest information."(Levy 27) .
The structure in its most basic sense is relatively simple. (See fig. 1)
Basic Structure of the Internet
Figure One
Individuals that have a modem in their personal computer log on to either large mainstream service providers like America
Online or Prodigy (just to name a couple) or one of thousands of local service providers such as SBT Technologies in
Waterloo. These middlemen are hooked into large regional data lines called backbones and these backbones are all linked
together by a common protocol. (I will discuss this in more detail in the next section)
One of the most amazing things about the Internet is that it has been built and flourished with no central organization to
dictate how it would proceed. Newsweek magazine observes that, "at the top of the perimid there is no CEO of the
Internet." The Internet has survived on a philosophy that permeates everything on the Net. "The ethics are easy to identify:
Voraciously free expression, a drive for individual empowerment, a loathing for authority and a strong libertarian strain that
actually welcomes commerce-as long as it follows the live-and-let-live spirit of the Net"(Levy 27-28). As we have seen
more recently with the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, as the Net gets more and more commercial, this
"free-spirit" feel will probably disappear with passages of national laws governing the content of the Internet.
The World Wide Web is a mostly graphical manifestation of the Internet. The Web was the killer application of the Internet
when it was introduced (levy 26). It brought all of the aspects of the Internet together in one easy to use interface and is
now the centerpiece of the entire Internet. The words "World Wide Web" have indeed become almost synonymous with
the word "Internet". The Web is made up of a "web" (for lack of a better term) of documents called homepages all written
with a standard code called hypertext markup language or HTML. These pages are interconnected or linked with other
homepages. This allows for very easy "browsing" of the contents of the Internet. You can jump from page to page with just
a click of the mouse button and can easily access points that you have previously visited creating a string of where you have
been, thus the "web" metaphor. With the rapidly growing searchable databases, called "search engines", it just keeps getting
easier and easier to find what you want from all over the globe. Today it seems that everyone has a homepage. Without the
WWW, it is doubtful that the Internet would have exploded into the global culture the way that it has. It can be said that the
WWW truly changed the nature of communication on a global scale.
Figure 1-2
Current statistics show that the Web is doubling every 53 days or so(Fig 1-2). A recent Nielsen rating pegged the number
of regular Net users at around 24 million in North America alone although some critics say that estimate is too high. The
profile of the people using the Internet indicates that they are primarily upscale and well educated, with an average income
between $65 and $80 thousand a year. This is theprimary reason that businesses are "clamoring to get online". The business
potentials of the Web are the biggest driving force in the popularity and rapid growth of the Internet." (Levy 26-27)
The popularity of the Internet has impacted the computer industry immensely. Since the popularity of computers has
increased along with the arrival of the Internet into our popular culture, the cost of systems have been dropping, making it
easier and easier for the average American family to own a computer to get online with. In fact, as pointed out in an article
from The Net by Stephen Alburty, computer manufacturers are now developing computers for the sole purpose of getting
on line cheaply. These are computers without a hard drive or other features of normal computers, called "dumb terminals".
They will be on the market sometime this year for around $500. Another technological step has been taken by Gateway.
The computer corporation has introduced a new computer that comes with a 31" monitor, wireless keyboard and mouse,
and a CPU that fits into your existing stereo component rack. The monitor also functions as a television set so you can
switch back and forth with the touch of a button. These new product lines are being introduced to make it easier and easier
for people to get on-line.
All of these ideas are constantly changing and evolving at a rapid rate. New additions to the HTML language come up
every four or five months, businesses find new ways to use the Internet every day, and more and more people just keep
getting connected. For proof of this, just count how many web addresses are given at the end of commercials on television
and on the radio. The current status of this industry can be really summed up in two words: explosive growth.
Continue to Part 2
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