importance of Internet

	Sign In Sign-Up

Why The Internet Is Important

Western Civilization has had a centuries' long romance with technology and has often worshipped it as the "savior of mankind". Alternately, anti-utopians, ever since Shelly conjured up Frankenstein, have depicted it as the destroyer of humankind and human values.

Technology is power and, as such, can serve many purposes. Whereas an earlier vision of the computer predicted an Orwellian "big brother" utilizing a centralized computer system to control society, the advent of the personal computer has turned this power pyramid on its head.

Increasing thousands of people have a computer on their desk with as much capability at their fingertips as once was housed in an expensive and complicated mainframe. Obviously, the decentralization of power is no guarantee that the people will make good or wise use of it.

The Internet is unlike any previous human invention. Because it is a world wide resource, it is important to all of the people in the world. The following sections describe some of the net's most important features:

Geographic Distribution : The net reaches around the world.
Robust Architecture : The net adapts to damage and error.
Speed : Data travels at 2/3 the speed of light on copper and fiber.
Universal Access : The net provides the same functionality to everyone.
Growth Rates : The net is the fastest growing technology ever.
Freedom of Speech : The net promotes freedom of speech.
The Digital Advantage : The net is digital, and can correct errors.

In communications, as in transportation, it is more economical for many users to share a common resource rather than each to build his own system, particularly when supplying intermittent or occasional service. This intermittency of service is highly characteristic of digital communication requirements. Therefore, we would like to consider the interconnection, one day, of many all-digital links to provide a resource optimized for the handling of data for many potential intermittent users, a new common-user system.

The Internet reaches around the world. The key feature of the Internet is that once you have connected to any part of it, you can communicate with all of it.

All of the net's technologies - web, newsgroups, email enables geographically distributed groups of people to communicate who otherwise couldn't do so. This new, powerful communication media has interconnected our world, and created a global village.

The net is having the same effect on our civilization as previous inventions that have dramatically expanded our geographic communication reach, making the world smaller:

Boats
Horses
Roads
Books
Printing presses
Railroads
Typewriters
Telegraphs
Cars
Amateur radios
Telephones
Citizen band radio
Satellites

The Internet is the latest and most powerful such invention, with a current reach to every corner of the globe, and already moved into space on a floating web of satellites.

The 'choking' of input procedure has been simulated in the network and no signs of instability under overload noted. It was found that most of the advantage of store-and-forward transmission can be provided in a system having relatively little memory capacity. The network 'guarantees' very rapid delivery of all traffic that it has accepted from a user...

The problem of building a reliable network using satellites is somewhat similar to that of building a communications network with unreliable links. When a satellite is overhead, the link is operative. When a satellite is not overhead, the link is out of service. Thus, such links are highly compatible with the type of system to be described.

The Internet is the most robust network ever built, able to adapt itself almost instantaneously to damage and outages to individual parts.

The Internet has no central control, administration, or authority. It can't be bought, hijacked, or monopolized. The loss of individual computers and networks does not affect its overall reliability. The Internet perfectly realizes its original intent, it is robust, and cannot be completely deactivated without bringing down every single connection.

The net is robust over time, too. Many people alive today were born before the net was invented. If we mark its birth from 1969, we can safely assume that it is now effectively immortal, and will continue to exist in some form for the rest of human history.

This basic routing procedure was tested by a Monte Carlo simulation of a 7x7 array of stations. All tables were started completely blank to simulate a worst-case starting condition where no station knew the location of any other station. Within 1/2 second of simulated real world time, the network had learned the locations of all connected stations and was routing traffic in an efficient manner.

The Internet is very fast. Digital information travels at about 2/3 of the speed of light on copper wire and on fiber optic cables, or 200 thousand kilometers a second. This is 1/3 less than full light speed because copper and fiber optic cable are one-third thicker than a vacuum.

At this speed, computers have to be more than ten thousand kilometers apart, or almost half way around the world, before they experience more than a tenth of a second in communications delay.

There are two ways to make networks faster -- increase the number of bits that are traveling at once down the connection, or increase the speed at which you switch them from one connection to another at the junction points. Internet routers are getting faster and faster, to the point where the switching speed is next to instantaneous. Fiber optics and other technologies are enabling networks to send much larger numbers of bits simultaneously. The Internet is getting faster.

An ideal electrical communications system can be defined as one that permits any person or machine to reliably and instantaneously communicate with any combination of other people or machines, anywhere, anytime, and at zero cost.

It should effectively allow the illusion that those in communication with one another are all within the same soundproofed room -- and that the door is locked.

In digital communications media, the vast majority of participants are active creators of information as well as recipients. This type of symmetry has previously only been found in media like the telephone. But while the telephone is almost entirely a medium for private one-to-one communication, computer network applications such as electronic mailing lists, conferences, and bulletin boards, serve as a medium of group or 'many-to-many' communication.

The new forums atop computer networks are the great levelers and reducers of organizational hierarchy. Each user has, at least in theory, access to every other user, and an equal chance to be heard.

The Internet provides the same powerful capabilities to everyone with access to the network.

The Internet is based on a common standard, the TCP/IP network protocol, which provides all computers on the net with the same interface and capabilities. This common foundation makes all of the internet technologies - Email, Web, Usenet, IRC, MUD's, Mailing Lists - available universally to anyone connected to the net.

The Internet gives you the ability to make complex information like audio, video, and interactive functions accessible to a world wide audience at an extremely low cost. Ten megabytes of storage space can be rented from most Internet Service Providers for a low monthly fee. And because the Internet has a "many-to-many" architecture, it allows anyone to become a global publisher.

Citizen's Band radio and Amateur Radio are technologies that provided a similar ability to share a common space across geographical distances. The Internet is the current such frontier. You can approach it with a spirit of exploration, and don't have to have a task or a question to answer when you use the net -- you can surf from link to link or try random searches to see what turns up. As much interesting information often turns up from accidental queries as from purposeful ones.

The Internet is the focus of three different exponential growth factors -- processing power, software sophistication, and market size.

Size. The graphs in the Historical Statistics show the exponential rate of growth in the number of people that use the Internet.
Power. As first appreciated at the Dartmouth AI Conference in 1956, computer processors are continue to double in power about every two years.
Functionality. Software applications are continually building on previous technology to become more sophisticated and powerful with every release.
The combination of these three factors make the Internet the fastest growing and advancing technology humankind has ever developed.

When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct, that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas, that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out. That at any rate is the theory of our Constitution. It is an experiment, as all life is an experiment.

The Internet fosters free speech on a global scale. The Internet is a common area, a public space like a village square. Anything that anybody wants to say can be heard by anyone else in the world with access to the net. In fact, the Internet is the largest common area that has yet existed in human existence.

The Internet community is as large and diverse as humanity itself. Therefore, no one community's standards can govern the type of speech permissible on the net. This principle is also supported by the Internet technical design, which has a very robust architecture. In the famous words of John Gilmore, founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

It is impossible to effectively block access to Internet information, except in very limited and controlled circumstances, such as when blocking access to a specific site in a home, or when using a network firewall to block certain sites from employees in the workplace.

If you believe that there is an inherent value in truth, that human beings on average and over time recognize and value truth, and that truth is best decided in a free marketplace of ideas, then this aspect of the Internet is a very important feature indeed.

Generally speaking, the more experience someone has with the Internet the more strongly they believe in freedom of speech, because their personal experience has convinced them of its benefits. The net not only provides access to free speech, it also promotes the concept of free speech.

A few of the early events that signaled the power of the Internet to promote freedom of speech are summarized below:

Tiananmen. During the Tiananmen Square rebellion in China in 1990, the Internet kept Chinese communities around the world, especially in universities, in touch with the current events through email and the newsgroups, bypassing all government censorship.
Russian Coup. In 1991 a Soviet computer network called Relcom stayed online and bypassed an information blackout to keep Soviet citizens and others around the world in touch with eyewitness accounts and up-to-date information about the attempted communist coup against Mikhail Gorbachev.
Kuwait Invasion. Internet Relay Chat became well-known to the general public around the world in 1991, when traffic skyrocketed as users logged on to get up-to-date information on Iraq's invasion of Baghdad through an Internet link with Kuwait. The links stayed operational for a week after radio and television broadcasts were cut off. Archives of this first world famous IRC event can be found here.

CDA. In 1996 the US Government passed the Communications Decency Act (CDA) prohibiting distribution of adult material over the net, even though the law was widely believed to be unenforceable and unconstitutional. This gave birth to a blue ribbon campaign to show support for freedom of speech on the Internet. Many sites placed a black background on their web pages for the first 24 hours after the CDA passed. A few months later a three-judge panel imposed an injunction against the law's enforcement, pending resolution of lawsuits launched by several civil liberties groups, and it was subsequently found be be unconstitutional.
National Restrictions. In 1996 many countries around the world became frightened of the freedom of speech associated with the net. China mandated that Internet users must register with the police. Germany banned access to some adult newsgroups on Compuserve. Saudi Arabia restricted Internet access to universities and hospitals. Singapore mandated that political and religious sites must register with the government. New Zealand courts ruled that computer disks are a type of "publication" that can be censored. None of these efforts had much lasting effect.
Yugoslavia. 1996, a radio station in Yugoslavia continued to broadcast over the Internet after normal broadcasting is shut down by one of the last remaining dictatorial governments in Europe.

One day in the future (and we are not foolhardy enough to predict an exact date), for economic reasons alone in the military environment it may be necessary to break away from existing analog signal communication network concepts in favor of all-digital networks.

The digital media of computer networks, by virtue of their design and the enabling technology upon which they ride, are fundamentally different from the now dominant mass media of television, radio, newspapers and magazines. Digital communications media are inherently capable of being more interactive, more participatory, more egalitarian, more decentralized, and less hierarchical. As such, the types of social relations and communities which can be built on these media share these characteristics.

Digital communications have the "D4 advantage" -- "digital data doesn't degrade".Analog systems and digital systems are like mirror images of each other. Analog systems are often controlled by physical mechanisms that can be in an infinite number of continuous positions. A typical example of an analog system is a bicycle which provides force to the wheels through the gear system depending on the force of your feet on the pedals. An example from the 20'th century is one of those old record players that recorded the sound of music with the depth and pattern of a tiny groove cut into a vinyl disk by a diamond needle.

In contrast to approximate, analog systems, the Internet is a digital medium based on data made up of 1's and 0's. A bit of computer data is not infinitely adjustable, and only has one of two unambiguous states -- it is either a 1, or a 0. This limitation has a very important compensating advantage: there is no "drift" that can introduce error.

For example, for many years radio stations that broadcast on the AM frequency were subject to a lot of static, because their signal was based on an analog measurement of radio waves that were distorted in transmission. However, FM radio stations used the phase of the radio wave frequency to transmit the music signal, which was a digital measurement with only one of a small number of different values, and provided static free sound that wasn't changed in transmission. On the other hand, once you got far enough away, and the FM receiver started having trouble decoding the weakening signal, then the station would often just drop out altogether.

The Internet, like all computer systems, is based on digital data, so that information never changes or becomes distorted over time or in transmission between sites. This is the key feature that makes it possible to construct the very complex software systems that run the net, so that a web site doesn't age and become fuzzy or garbled over time, and the characters in an email don't get transposed or mixed up when they are sent over long distances.

One of the most important strengths of the Internet is that it's based on one of the simplest concepts - digital 1's and 0's.