Central Baptist Church

Learning Community Class - Winter 1997

The On Line Church

Internet Overview and Introduction to the World Wide Web

What is the Internet?

The simple answer is that it is a global collection of computer networks, or a network of networks. The Internet was originally developed as a communication tool for military use. The idea being that a centralized communications system was vulnerable to attack (how could US authorities communicate following a nuclear attack?). Over time, networks at non-military reserach facilities and educational institutions were connected to the military network, forming what is now know as the Internet. Until recently, commercial activity was prohibited on the Internet, but that is now the fastest growing segment.

Other views of the Internet focus more on the people (community) or resources, rather than the hardware. It's sort of like asking what is "the Church?" Is it the building, the people, or what the people do?

If you are really interested the gory details, you can read an a very good history of the Internet written by the User Services Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

What is on the Internet?

When people think of the Internet, they usually think of e-mail and the Web. But there is more to the Internet than that.

• Electronic Mail or E-mail: a means of sending electronic messages between individuals connected to the Internet. Probably the most popular use of the Internet.
• Listserv Discussion Groups: Listservs allow you to subscribe to and participate in e-mail discussion groups. There are more than 3000 active discussion groups.
• Usenet Discussion Groups: Usenet is a collection of newsgroup forums, each of which provides discussion or debate on a particular topic. There are over 13,000 Usenet groups. The difference between Usenet and Listserv is that Listserv delivers the conversation directly to your mail box. Usenet makes it easier to be an occasional participant in the discussion
• Telnet: Telnet allows you to logon to any computer on the Internet, assuming you have a login name and password.
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP): FTP allows you to transfer files, e.g. software programs or text files, between computers on the Internet very quickly.
• Archie is software for finding files stored on anonymous FTP sites. It searches for keywords to find files and where they exist. These are over 2 million publically available files you can search with Archie.
• Gopher, Veronica and Jughead: Gopher servers provide a menu-driven system for making text files available to Internet users. Veronica and Jughead allow you to conduct keyword searches of gopher sites.
• World Wide Web: The World Wide Web (WWW or W3 or Web) is a hypertext gateway to the Internet where resources (home pages, gopher sites, ftp sites, etc.) are interconnected via hypertext links. A document (page) on the WWW can be linked to thousands of other documents and sites in an interwoven, nonlinear web of online information. WWW provides access to the whole range of online information including text, images, sound and video clips.

An Introduction to the Web

The key to the Web is that various pages are linked to each other, forming a web. If you're not connected to another page that's connected to another page...., then your page isn't part of the Web. Within a web page these connections are shown through hypertext links. When you see a hypertext link in a Web page (usually underlined in blue), selecting that link by clicking with your mouse will call up that page.

Web pages reside on computers connected to the Internet. They can contain text, graphics, movies, and sounds. Some pages provide information and other pages are nothing more than links to other pages. Some pages are created on request and other (most) pages are static - alway there.

For More Information

The best on line introduction on the Internet I've seen is put together by the University of Washington Libraries.

1. Overview and Bibliography
2. Internet Glossary
3. Guide for Responsible Use
4. Gopher
5. Veronica
6. Telenet
7. Archie
8. FTP
9. Usenet
10. Listserv
11. World Wide Web

For more information on the Internet, try Zen and the Art of the Internet, Life on the Internet or Patrick Crispen's Internet Roadmap.

For more information on the Web check out The World Wide Web Consortium - founded in 1994 to develop common standards for the evolution of the We.

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