The Internet
The Internet is a network of computer networks extending world-wide. Increasingly most countries in the world have Internet connectivity and more and more people are using it.
- How is it controlled?
- What is available on the Internet?
- What are its limitations?
- How are the problems being solved?
- How will the Internet develop?
- Internet Courses
How is the Internet Controlled?
The Internet is governed by its members with the ultimate authority resting with the Internet Society, a voluntary organization promoting information exchange world wide using internet technology. Technical management of the Internet is the responsibility of the Internet Architecture Board, (IAB) appointed by the Internet Society which gives the go-ahead for standards and allocates resources such as addresses. Net users can influence opinion and initiate changes through the subgroup Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), another volunteer organization which discusses operational and technical problems and which anyone can join. Other organizations also have an influence.What is available on the Internet?
The Internet can be used to access information in a variety of ways:- remote access to on-line public. access library catalogues
- access to commercial database hosts
- news - newspapers, journals, etc.
- document ordering
- access to full-text documents e.g. journals and other literature
- mailing lists ,newsgroups and discussion lists
- access to pre-print archives
- software
- electronic mail
- company/organisation/academic institution information
- information about the network itself
- training e.g. internet courses,
- travel e.g. airline bookings, hotel and B&B information
An interview with the "Web maestro" - Tim Berners Lee - is reproduced from MIT's Technology Review.
What are its limitations?
The wealth of information on the Internet can appear to some like untamed chaos, to others an exciting new world of knowledge. If you are the latter, do not expect the Internet to be the ultimate resource. The Internet has limitations and drawbacks, though these may lessen as time passes. The ease with which people and institutions can ‘publish’ on the net has caused an explosion of information with little organization or indexing. One of the problems of the Internet is how to find out what is available which is like being faced with a mail-order warehouse without a catalogue. While the feat of being able to access information ‘instantly’ around the world is an amazing development, in reality response time can be slow when the networks are at their peak usage and it can take a long time to elicit a piece of information for this reason alone. The different interfaces, browsers, complexity of network addresses can be daunting. The US bias particularly with regards to explanations of the Internet can be confusing.How are the problems being solved?
They are being overcome by various means. A number of global navigational tools "browsers" have been developed to make searching and browsing easier. National and individual bodies index and categorize resources, and other bodies offer the advantages of access to manual, semi- and fully automated resource search tools such as the aptly named ‘crawlers’, ‘worms’, ‘spiders’, 'bots' and 'search-engines' which scan Internet addresses and documents world-wide.How will the Internet develop?
The Internet is expanding exponentially in relation to both information providers and seekers. Commercial organizations and private individuals are adding to the increasing numbers of academic institutions connecting world wide. The convergence of telecommunications and computers combined with audio-visual equipment is bringing the reality of an information multi-media superhighway to everyone’s door. 100 American universities have recently joined together to develop Internet 2 a high speed communications network.This can be accessed by means of "browsers" - server-client programs such as Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Explorer.
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Internet Courses
TONIC - Online Netskills Interactive Internet Course
Internet Roadmap - Internet Workshop by Patrick Crispen, NIC.
How to produce webpages - from Hotwired.
Internet kurs på svenska - från Karolinska Institutet
For More Information contact:
Nancy Fjällbrant
Tel: 031-28 49 33