INTERNET, The

INTERNET, The. Short form the Net. A worldwide range of computer networks made possible by a standard set of communication rules known as the Internet protocol, allowing for both data transmission and an electronic E-MAIL service. The latter passes messages from one electronic address to another (for which a computer requires a modem, a device that links it on demand to the general telephone system). The Internet derives from the ARPAnet used in the 1970s mainly by educational institutions. It has expanded to include millions of individuals and organizations who have various means of ‘accessing’ Internet ‘gateways’, as for example through such ‘providers’ as America Online (AOL), CompuServe, and Demon Internet. A key aspect of the Net is its Domain Name System, which specifies the location of computers sending and receiving transmissions. An Internet address consists of the user's account name followed by the symbol @ (‘at’), a host organization's name, and one or more domains, as in jsmith@au.edu, where au stands for American University and edu is education. Because the system originated in the US, American addresses do not have a national domain, whereas addresses in other countries generally do: for example, uk for the United Kingdom, placed at the end. Because of the success and vast expansion of the Net in the later 1990s, congestion has arisen in the form of delays in ‘downloading’ (that is, receiving and storing) data. As a result, some organizations have created their own private intranets, which offer easier transmission and fewer breakdowns.

The Internet is inherently decentralized, there is no single controlling organization, it is not operated for profit, and has been described as ‘anarchy by design’. This is because it grew out of the ARPAnet, an extensive military system created in 1969 by ARPA (the United States Defense Advanced Research Project Agency), which linked a number of US universities, research centres, etc., by means of an electronic ‘nervous system’ which had no headquarters. As a result, the ARPAnet could not be destroyed by an enemy strike at any one locality, and had in addition a capacity for rerouting information if any kind of disruption arose. For the same reason, no government or other organization can impose policy or watertight censorship on what transpires among users of the Internet, who have inherited a system created for very different reasons from those which make the Net useful for them. Most people now access the Net through commercial service providers, such as US-based America On-Line (AOL) and CompuServe and UK-based Demon Internet and Pipex. In 1981, only 213 computers were registered on the Internet, by 1989 there were c.80,000, by late 1990 over 300,000, in early 1992 over 700,000, by 1993 1–2m worldwide, and by 1996 probably more than 30m people in over 70 countries currently exchanging data, news, and comment. See COMPUTING, EMOTICON, NETIQUETTE, WORLD-WIDE WEB.