The internet is not any single person, company, or entity, it is in fact all of them. It is a network of people and computers who share a connection to each other. Today the internet s where you can go to connect with other people. Where you can find old friends, share memories with your family, or meet new people.
It started as a project of the US millitary to create a more reliable means of communicating in the event of an attack. Some of the bright minds then went on to create a larger network for universities and eventually corporations. From 1965 until the early 1990s, the "internet" remained a means of sharing very important information with colleagues working in the military, universities, and high-tech companies.
The internet that you and I enjoy today had to wait for the "PC" or personal computer, which brought the cost of computers within reach for the middle class westerners, and web browsers.
The first successful web browser was the Netscape Navigator introduced in 1994, which went on to become the first web browser for the first generation of internet users. In the following years Microsoft released its Internet Explorer and Opera released its self-titled browser.
The web browser is the software that allows you to access the world wide web, which is the collection of websites and links that we can see, hear, and share. This website is just one part in a truly massive number. No one person could ever see everything on the internet. There is more information added each day than you could ever have time to see it.
Because the internet is so vast and growing, we need a way to find what we want. That is why we use search engines. A good search engine has a catalog of websites that is continuously updated. When you tell a search enginge what you want to find, it will look for websites which are related to our topic, then it ranks them according to the best match, and shows us the options that it found. Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Baidu are just a few of the many choices available. Search engines are meant to save time so that we quickly find what we want.
It's is now almost a cliche that you can find anything and everything on the internet, and as far as I can tell over the last 12 years of experience it is true. There are now almost two billion internet users around the world. In the next post, I'll show you how you can go from being an observer to participating in the conversation.
Before I go, I strongly recommend that you use Firefox or Chrome as your web browser. They are safer and faster than any alternative that I have tried. As you become an advanced user they also have useful features which you will appreciate.