The Internet gives you almost instant communication with a world of information where you can access such valuable information, entertainment, and commercial services as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, Disney, discount shopping, current stock quotes, and weather reports to mention just a few. We have provided a brief three part tutorial on using the Internet. It begins with an overview of the Internet, then examines the use of a browser to explore the Internet, and concludes with a discussion on how to find what you want and move around the web.
Contents of Overview
The World is at Your Fingertips
You can visit museums anywhere in the world, from the Louvre in Paris to the Canadian Museum of Civilization. At the Louvre you can view the famous Mona Lisa.
You can access and read the complete works of Shakespeare, the Bible, and the Periodic Table. You can explore the Solar System and Milky Way, and then seconds later visit the underwater worlds of the most famous aquariums. You can read about dinosaurs and earthquakes, make airline reservations, and see movie reviews.
You can get free stock quotes and create simultaneous performance graphs for a particular stock or the market as a whole:
Hundreds of business and finance publications can be accessed including MONEY, Fortune, Business Week, and the Wall Street Journal. You can visit Charles Schwab, Fidelity Investments and most of the major brokerage firms. You can obtain real time graphs with the latest information at virtually no cost.
You can read USA Today, The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Time before they hit the newsstand—all from your computer terminal. In short, you have the world at your fingertips.
You can get the latest sports scores, and find out what’s happening with your favorite team. The possibilities are endless. There are dozens of major providers of sports news and updates including Fox Sports and ESPNET SportsZone.
The World Wide Web has undergone phenomenal growth. We are witnessing the birth of one of the most important technological achievements of our lifetime. Writers on the subject view the World Wide Web as a revolution:
"You’re becoming an accomplice to the greatest revolution mankind has ever realized. Bigger than the French Revolution. Bigger than the Russian, American, and Chinese revolutions combined. Times 10. Times 100. And not a shot has been fired. A revolution in communications is raging around the world, and it’s called the Internet." (Patrick Vincent, 1995).
"During Phase One (1960-1985), the number of [Internet] hosts grew to 2,000; in Phase Two, to one million (1985-1995). Since 1988, the Internet has doubled every year. Today, the Net interlinks 6.6 million computer hosts, interconnecting over 50,000 networks, enabling over 30,000,000 people around the planet in over 160 countries to communicate and collaborate. In Technologies Without Boundaries, Ithiel de Sola Pool calls the Internet ‘…part of the largest machine that man has ever constructed.’ Phase Three is just beginning." (Gary Gach, 1996)
Since Gary Gach penned these words the Internet has continued to grow, with the number of networks more than doubling. Not everyone saw it coming, but there is little doubt that it has arrived. In a short period the Internet and the World Wide Web have become one of the most important advances in our time. Access to them is expected to be in virtually every home within the next several years.
To take advantage of the Web you need a program called a browser that lets you "browse" through the material located at the various web sites on the Internet. When you use a "browser" you are looking at a television screen connected to the Web. However, there are two major difference. First, instead of being limited to 4 or 5 local channels or perhaps 30 or 40 cable channels, you have access to literally millions of channels. With so many channels to choose from there is no "TV Guide" because there’s too much to choose from. Instead, you use search engines to find what you’re looking for.
Second, a browser lets you interact with the content of what you’re seeing. You choose what is on, when it’s on, and where you go next. The main control instrument for operating a browser is a mouse that lets you click highlighted (hypertext) links that take you to another place. Sometimes that place is on the current web site and sometimes it is half way around the world. In this way, your browser becomes your vehicle for traveling around the information superhighway.
Everyday worldwide more than 50,000,000 messages are sent using E-Mail over the Internet. E-mail allows for electronic delivery of information within a matter of minutes. In fact, e-mail users refer to regular mail as "snail mail" because, compared to e-mail, it takes so long to get to its destination.
All this is made possible, because, in a sense, the Web is like a giant international phone company that nobody owns and anyone can use. Although computer communications can be a complex and bewildering process, the World Wide Web was designed to eliminate these complexities. Using it is like driving your car—just as you don’t need to be an auto mechanic to get to the store, you don’t need to know a lot about computers or the information super highway to use the Internet.
Safeguarding Children on
the Internet 
Because the World Wide Web are open and free, with a reach that extends beyond national boundaries, they present a unique challenge to the cultural values and beliefs of families everywhere. Literally anyone with a computer and a modem connection to the Internet can post information that can be easily accessed by anyone else of any age.
Several organizations have attempted to provide a solution to this problem by developing filter software that, while allowing access to the Internet, screens out material that would be unsuitable for children. These filter programs attempt to block the display of Web pages containing material that most parents would consider unacceptable viewing for their children. At the same time, access to everything on the Internet remains available to adults in the family.
Filtering allows the child access to the great range of educational and cultural material on the Internet, while reducing the chances that he or she may be exposed to inappropriate material. The child can still visit museums and exchange letters with friends, travel to other countries, and explore worlds of knowledge that till now have remained inaccessible. Only a very few doors remain closed. The intent is to provide responsible, concerned adults a way of monitoring and controlling the material their children may encounter on the Web, while at the same time safeguarding the civil liberties and freedoms mature adults have come to expect. Unfortunately, the current filter programs are limited and rarely block more than ten to twenty percent of the hard core pornography available on the Internet.
The ultimate use of your computer—that of joining and participating in the information network now emerging as the World Wide Web—promises a world where knowledge and communication are instantly available to anyone. Essentially it offers the freedom to know what you want, when you want to know it. Your computer, modem, and a Browser give you a voice to communicate in ways not previously possible. More importantly, they allow your family access to a wealth of information heretofore unavailable.
Welcome to the World Wide Web, the information super highway that will take you into the 21st century!
For additional resources on using the web click here.
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