The Internet and World Wide Web

The Internet and the World Wide Web are revolutionizing computing
and will have a major input on your life. Here we explore these rapidly
expanding highways of information technology. As you proceed through
this topic, you will learn how to:

* Describe what the Internet and World Wide Web are and how to
connect

* Use a browser and Internet address to navigate the World Wide Web.

* Locate information on the Web using search engines and other resourses.

* Describe the latest additions to the Web, including multimedia, video and
phone.

The World Wide Web - What Is It?
Reminder: When you click any of the underlined links on this or any other page, you jump to the computer that contains that page. Click the "Back" button on your browser to return to this page so you can select another site to visit. You may have to click it more than once if you have followed links on the page you first visited. Most of the talk you hear about the Internet is really about just one of its services--the World Wide Web. This service is quite new, but itís the service that has made the Internet so popular. However, before the Web was invented there were lots of other useful Internet services. Most of these are now dying as their functions are moved into a Web format, but some remain. To check out these older and rapidly disappearing services, you can visit the Library of Congress' ftp, Gopher, and Telnet sites. (After connecting to telnet, exit by typing 12 and pressing Enter. Then click the Close button in the upper-right corner of its window. This only works if you use Windows). As you learn about the Web, and other aspects of computing, you'll find yourself confronting a whole new vocabulary. A good place to find out what some

of the words mean is the Multilingual Internet Terms site. Here you'll find links to lots of glossaries in a wide variety of languages. There are so many sites on the Web that you will never be able to see them all, even if you wanted to. However, there are many sites that standout and deserve a visit from almost everyone. One such site is the Library of Congress American Memory site. To see some well-done home pages, you might also want to check out the U.S. Mint, or the CU-SeeMe page at Cornell University. Now that you've gotten your feet wet, you might want to take some time to explore Life on the Internet, a PBS on-line presentation. This site was developed to accompany the PBS TV series of the same name, but its taken on a life of its own. Its mission is to "examine the ways people use this new medium and its impact on all of us." If you have never used the Web before, you might want to check on Microsoft's tutorial on how to surf.