Starting out as a small military experiment some 35 years ago, the Internet is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. With a present population of about 40 million users world wide, it seems to have a very promising future. Uncensored and almost impossible to monitor, it’s a breeding ground for all sorts of offensive and derogatory information. On the other hand, it is probably the biggest single source of data in the world brought home into your personal computer. Will this form of communication survive in the future, or will it simply ie out like many others have in the past?
History The first nodes of the Internet were built 36 years ago by the RAND corporation. They faced the problem of keeping communication between U. S. authorities active in the aftermath of a nuclear war. The country needed a command-and-control network. The biggest problem was protecting the main server, which could be knocked out by a single atomic warhead. RAND came up with the solution in 1964. The new network would have no central authority, and secondly, it would be designed to operate in shambles.
The Internet is just starting to have a large impact on society. It seemed to come out of nowhere, popping up in magazines and on the news. The Internet is now becoming an influential communications medium to over 40 million people worldwide. Many of these people are becoming aware of the Internet’s commercial capabilities and they are taking advantage of them. ” According to some recent estimates, the amount of traffic on the Internet has been increasing 10 percent per moth, and the number of new applications and services has been increasing almost as quickly.
There are tens of thousands of sites scattered throughout the world wide web where items ranging from games to sex toys can be ordered through a First Virtual Internet Account, or just by providing your e-mail address (not a very good idea if you want to keep your privacy). Business is another thing the internet can be used for. You could read documents and obtain projects and reports from anywhere in the world through your computer. The downside to conducting business over the net is the possibility of a hacker infiltrating private documents and sing them for whatever he/she pleases.
The internet can have a good influence on society as well as a bad one. On the good side, the internet teaches us how to us a computer for communication purposes and it provides us with bundles of information. It can help you get your business going and is great for advertising products no matter what they are. These are all the good things that the Internet can be used for. Unfortunatly it contains a lot of bad stuff too, the stuff you hear about most often on the news or in magazines.
The internet is one of the few uncensored forms of mass communication. The net is loaded with pornographic images and movies as well as dirty chat lines and sex shops. Many of the images you find contain child pornography as well as bestiality, all of which can be downloaded onto your computer and viewed. The information superhighway is such a huge mass of links it is almost impossible to monitor, and the people putting these pictures on the net can stay annonymous making them very hard to locate.
An analysis of earches by Internet users found that 47 per cent were for pornographic material” (The Weekly Telegraph 21). This is why parents should monitor their childern carefully while they are “surfing the net. ” Present Uses The internet is quickly becoming one of the most popular forms of communication. It has become a commercial center out of what began as an experimental military project. Computers, modems, servers, and telephone wires are becoming faster and more efficient.
Computers have gone from 8086’s to 80486’s and pentiums. Modems started at about 1200 bps and they are now up around 28,800 bps, and fibre optics are replacing regular wires. All of these factors are changing the internet into a powerful new system that almost anyone can use with ease. The present day estimate of the number of internet users worldwide is somewhere between 20 and 80 million. The most accurate assumption would be about 40 million people. This is a huge increase to the number just a few years ago.
The Internet is full of technology and full of tools, all of hich help you to send and receive elecronic mail, participate in discussions about topics, and access information resources. ” (Carroll 9) Conclusion The future for the Internet is looking very bright. No other form of communication can provide the user with such freedom of expression and privacy. All of this may yet change if the government decides that the net needs to be censored. This is going to be a debate for the future, one which could determine if the Internet has a future.