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What is the Internet?


The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite

(often called TCP/IP, although not all applications use TCP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of

networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks, of local to global

scope, that are linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The Internet

carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the

World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.

Most traditional communications media including telephone, music, film, and television are reshaped or redefined by

the Internet, giving birth to new services such as Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and Internet Protocol

Television (IPTV). Newspaper, book and other print publishing are adapting to Web site technology, or are reshaped

into blogging and web feeds. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of human interactions through

instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking. Online shopping has boomed both for major retail outlets

and small artisans and traders. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across

entire industries.

The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by the United States government in

collaboration with private commercial interests to build robust, fault-tolerant, and distributed computer networks.

The funding of a new U.S. backbone by the National Science Foundation in the 1980s, as well as private funding for

other commercial backbones, led to worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies,

and the merger of many networks. The commercialization of what was by the 1990s an international network

resulted in its popularization and incorporation into virtually every aspect of modern human life. As of 2011, more

than 2.2 billion people – nearly a third of Earth's population — use the services of the Internet.[1]

The Internet has no centralized governance in either technological implementation or policies for access and usage;

each constituent network sets its own standards. Only the overreaching definitions of the two principal name spaces

in the Internet, the Internet Protocol address space and the Domain Name System, are directed by a maintainer

organization, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). The technical underpinning and

standardization of the core protocols (IPv4 and IPv6) is an activity of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), a

non-profit organization of loosely affiliated international participants that anyone may associate with by contributing

technical expertise.

Terminology

Internet is a short form of the technical term internetwork, the result of interconnecting computer networks with

special gateways or routers. The Internet is also often referred to as the Net.

The term the Internet, when referring to the entire global system of IP networks, has been treated as a proper noun

and written with an initial capital letter. In the media and popular culture, a trend has also developed to regard it as a

generic term or common noun and thus write it as "the internet", without capitalization. Some guides specify that the

word should be capitalized as a noun but not capitalized as an adjective.

The terms Internet and World Wide Web are often used in everyday speech without much distinction. However, the

Internet and the World Wide Web are not one and the same. The Internet establishes a global data communications

system between computers. In contrast, the Web is one of the services communicated via the Internet. It is a

collection of interconnected documents and other resources, linked by hyperlinks and URLs. In addition to the

Web, the Internet also powers a multitude of other services, including (among others) email, file transfer,

newsgroups, and online games. On the flip side, Web services can exist apart from the internet, such as on a private

intranet.

History

Professor Leonard Kleinrock with

the first ARPANET Interface

Message Processors at UCLA

Research into packet switching started in the early 1960s and packet switched

networks such as ARPANET, Mark I at NPL in the UK,[6] CYCLADES,

Merit Network, Tymnet, and Telenet, were developed in the late 1960s and

early 1970s using a variety of protocols. The ARPANET in particular led to the

development of protocols for internetworking, where multiple separate networks

could be joined together into a network of networks.

The first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected

between Leonard Kleinrock's Network Measurement Center at the UCLA's

School of Engineering and Applied Science and Douglas Engelbart's NLS

system at SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, on 29 October

1969.[10] The third site on the ARPANET was the Culler-Fried Interactive

Mathematics center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the

fourth was the University of Utah Graphics Department. In an early sign of

future growth, there were already fifteen sites connected to the young ARPANET

by the end of 1971. These early years were documented in the 1972 film Computer Networks: The Heralds of

Resource Sharing.

Early international collaborations on ARPANET were sparse. For various political reasons, European developers

were concerned with developing the X.25 networks.[13] Notable exceptions were the Norwegian Seismic Array

(NORSAR) in 1972, followed in 1973 by Sweden with satellite links to the Tanum Earth Station and Peter T.

Kirstein's research group in the UK, initially at the Institute of Computer Science, London University and later at

University College London.[14]

T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992

In 1982, the Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) was standardized and the

concept of a world-wide network of fully interconnected TCP/IP

networks called the Internet was introduced. Access to the ARPANET

was expanded in 1981 when the National Science Foundation (NSF)

developed the Computer Science Network (CSNET). In December

1974, RFC 675 – Specification of Internet Transmission Control

Program, by Vinton Cerf, Yogen Dalal, and Carl Sunshine, used the

term internet, as a shorthand for internetworking; later RFCs repeat

this use, so the word started out as an adjective rather than the noun it

is today.

TCP/IP network access expanded again in 1986 when NSFNET provided access to supercomputer sites in the United

States from research and education organizations, first at 56 kbit/s and later at 1.5 Mbit/s and 45 Mbit/s.[16]

Commercial internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s and 1990s. The ARPANET was

decommissioned in 1990. The Internet was commercialized in 1995 when NSFNET was decommissioned, removing

the last restrictions on the use of the Internet to carry commercial traffic. The Internet started a rapid expansion to


Europe and Australia in the mid to late 1980s and to Asia in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

This NeXT Computer was used by Sir Tim

Berners-Lee at CERN and became the world's

first Web server.

Since the mid-1990s the Internet has had a tremendous impact on

culture and commerce, including the rise of near instant

communication by email, instant messaging, Voice over Internet

Protocol (VoIP) "phone calls", two-way interactive video calls, and the

World Wide Web[21] with its discussion forums, blogs, social

networking, and online shopping sites. Increasing amounts of data are

transmitted at higher and higher speeds over fiber optic networks

operating at 1-Gbit/s, 10-Gbit/s, or more. The Internet continues to

grow, driven by ever greater amounts of online information and

knowledge, commerce, entertainment and social networking.[22]

During the late 1990s, it was estimated that traffic on the public

Internet grew by 100 percent per year, while the mean annual growth

in the number of Internet users was thought to be between 20% and 50%.[23] This growth is often attributed to the

lack of central administration, which allows organic growth of the network, as well as the non-proprietary open

nature of the Internet protocols, which encourages vendor interoperability and prevents any one company from

exerting too much control over the network.[24] As of 31 March 2011, the estimated total number of Internet users

was 2.095 billion (30.2% of world population).[25] It is estimated that in 1993 the Internet carried only 1% of the

information flowing through two-way telecommunication, by 2000 this figure had grown to 51%, and by 2007 more

than 97% of all telecommunicated information was carried over the Internet.


The most prominent component of the Internet model is the Internet Protocol (IP), which provides addressing

systems (IP addresses) for computers on the Internet. IP enables internetworking and in essence establishes the

Internet itself. IP Version 4 (IPv4) is the initial version used on the first generation of today's Internet and is still in

dominant use. It was designed to address up to ~4.3 billion (109) Internet hosts. However, the explosive growth of

the Internet has led to IPv4 address exhaustion, which entered its final stage in 2011,[28] when the global address

allocation pool was exhausted. A new protocol version, IPv6, was developed in the mid-1990s, which provides

vastly larger addressing capabilities and more efficient routing of Internet traffic. IPv6 is currently in growing

deployment around the world, since Internet address registries (RIRs) began to urge all resource managers to plan

rapid adoption and conversion.[29]

IPv6 is not interoperable with IPv4. In essence, it establishes a parallel version of the Internet not directly accessible

with IPv4 software. This means software upgrades or translator facilities are necessary for networking devices that

need to communicate on both networks. Most modern computer operating systems already support both versions of

the Internet Protocol. Network infrastructures, however, are still lagging in this development. Aside from the

complex array of physical connections that make up its infrastructure, the Internet is facilitated by bi- or multi-lateral

commercial contracts (e.g., peering agreements), and by technical specifications or protocols that describe how to

exchange data over the network. Indeed, the Internet is defined by its interconnections and routing policies.

Routing

 nternet packet routing is accomplished among various tiers of Internet Service Providers.

Internet Service Providers connect

customers (thought of at the "bottom"

of the routing hierarchy) to customers

of other ISPs. At the "top" of the

routing hierarchy are ten or so Tier 1

networks, large telecommunication

companies which exchange traffic

directly "across" to all other Tier 1

networks via unpaid peering

agreements. Tier 2 networks buy

Internet transit from other ISP to reach

at least some parties on the global

Internet, though they may also engage in unpaid peering (especially for local partners of a similar size). ISPs can use

a single "upstream" provider for connectivity, or use multihoming to provide protection from problems with

individual links. Internet exchange points create physical connections between multiple ISPs, often hosted in

buildings owned by independent third parties.

Computers and routers use routing tables to direct IP packets among locally connected machines. Tables can be

constructed manually or automatically via DHCP for an individual computer or a routing protocol for routers

themselves. In single-homed situations, a default route usually points "up" toward an ISP providing transit.

Higher-level ISPs use the Border Gateway Protocol to sort out paths to any given range of IP addresses across the

complex connections of the global Internet.

Academic institutions, large companies, governments, and other organizations can perform the same role as ISPs,

engaging in peering and purchasing transit on behalf of their internal networks of individual computers. Research

networks tend to interconnect into large subnetworks such as GEANT, GLORIAD, Internet2, and the UK's national

research and education network, JANET. These in turn are built around smaller networks (see the list of academic

computer network organizations).

Not all computer networks are connected to the Internet. For example, some classified United States websites are

only accessible from separate secure networks.

General structure
The Internet structure and its usage characteristics have been studied extensively. It has been determined that both

the Internet IP routing structure and hypertext links of the World Wide Web are examples of scale-free networks.[30]

Many computer scientists describe the Internet as a "prime example of a large-scale, highly engineered, yet highly

complex system".The Internet is heterogeneous; for instance, data transfer rates and physical characteristics of

connections vary widely. The Internet exhibits "emergent phenomena" that depend on its large-scale organization.

For example, data transfer rates exhibit temporal self-similarity. The principles of the routing and addressing

methods for traffic in the Internet reach back to their origins in the 1960s when the eventual scale and popularity of

the network could not be anticipated. Thus, the possibility of developing alternative structures is investigated.[32] The

Internet structure was found to be highly robust to random failures and very vulnerable to high degree attacks.[34]

Governance
ICANN headquarters in Marina Del Rey,

California, United States

The Internet is a globally distributed network comprising many

voluntarily interconnected autonomous networks. It operates without a

central governing body. However, to maintain interoperability, all

technical and policy aspects of the underlying core infrastructure and

the principal name spaces are administered by the Internet Corporation

for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), headquartered in Marina

del Rey, California. ICANN is the authority that coordinates the

assignment of unique identifiers for use on the Internet, including

domain names, Internet Protocol (IP) addresses, application port

numbers in the transport protocols, and many other parameters.

Globally unified name spaces, in which names and numbers are

uniquely assigned, are essential for the global reach of the Internet.

ICANN is governed by an international board of directors drawn from across the Internet technical, business,

academic, and other non-commercial communities. The government of the United States continues to have the

primary role in approving changes to the DNS root zone that lies at the heart of the domain name system.[35]

ICANN's role in coordinating the assignment of unique identifiers distinguishes it as perhaps the only central

coordinating body on the global Internet. On 16 November 2005, the World Summit on the Information Society,

held in Tunis, established the Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to discuss Internet-related issues.

Modern uses

 The Internet allows greater flexibility in working hours and location, especially with the spread of unmetered

high-speed connections. The Internet can be accessed almost anywhere by numerous means, including through

mobile Internet devices. Mobile phones, datacards, handheld game consoles and cellular routers allow users to

connect to the Internet wirelessly. Within the limitations imposed by small screens and other limited facilities of

such pocket-sized devices, the services of the Internet, including email and the web, may be available. Service

providers may restrict the services offered and mobile data charges may be significantly higher than other access

methods.

Educational material at all levels from pre-school to post-doctoral is available from websites. Examples range from

CBeebies, through school and high-school revision guides, virtual universities, to access to top-end scholarly

literature through the likes of Google Scholar. For distance education, help with homework and other assignments,

self-guided learning, whiling away spare time, or just looking up more detail on an interesting fact, it has never been

easier for people to access educational information at any level from anywhere. The Internet in general and the

World Wide Web in particular are important enablers of both formal and informal education.

The low cost and nearly instantaneous sharing of ideas, knowledge, and skills has made collaborative work

dramatically easier, with the help of collaborative software. Not only can a group cheaply communicate and share

ideas but the wide reach of the Internet allows such groups more easily to form. An example of this is the free

software movement, which has produced, among other things, Linux, Mozilla Firefox, and OpenOffice.org. Internet

chat, whether in the form of an IRC chat room or channel, via an instant messaging system, or a social networking

website, allows colleagues to stay in touch in a very convenient way when working at their computers during the

day. Messages can be exchanged even more quickly and conveniently than via email. These systems may allow files

to be exchanged, drawings and images to be shared, or voice and video contact between team members.

Content management systems allow collaborating teams to work on shared sets of documents simultaneously

without accidentally destroying each other's work. Business and project teams can share calendars as well as

documents and other information. Such collaboration occurs in a wide variety of areas including scientific research,

software development, conference planning, political activism and creative writing. Social and political collaboration

is also becoming more widespread as both Internet access and computer literacy spread.

The Internet allows computer users to remotely access other computers and information stores easily, wherever they

may be. They may do this with or without computer security, i.e. authentication and encryption technologies,

depending on the requirements. This is encouraging new ways of working from home, collaboration and information

sharing in many industries. An accountant sitting at home can audit the books of a company based in another

country, on a server situated in a third country that is remotely maintained by IT specialists in a fourth. These

accounts could have been created by home-working bookkeepers, in other remote locations, based on information

emailed to them from offices all over the world. Some of these things were possible before the widespread use of the

Internet, but the cost of private leased lines would have made many of them infeasible in practice. An office worker

away from their desk, perhaps on the other side of the world on a business trip or a holiday, can access their emails,

access their data using cloud computing, or open a remote desktop session into their office PC using a secure Virtual

Private Network (VPN) connection on the Internet. This can give the worker complete access to all of their normal

files and data, including email and other applications, while away from the office. This concept has been referred to

among system administrators as the Virtual Private Nightmare,[36] because it extends the secure perimeter of a

corporate network into remote locations and its employees' homes.


Services Information

Many people use the terms Internet and World Wide Web, or just the Web, interchangeably, but the two terms are not

synonymous. The World Wide Web is a global set of documents, images and other resources, logically interrelated

by hyperlinks and referenced with Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs). URIs symbolically identify services,

servers, and other databases, and the documents and resources that they can provide. Hypertext Transfer Protocol

(HTTP) is the main access protocol of the World Wide Web, but it is only one of the hundreds of communication

protocols used on the Internet. Web services also use HTTP to allow software systems to communicate in order to

share and exchange business logic and data.

World Wide Web browser software, such as Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, Apple's Safari,

and Google Chrome, lets users navigate from one web page to another via hyperlinks embedded in the documents.

These documents may also contain any combination of computer data, including graphics, sounds, text, video,

multimedia and interactive content that runs while the user is interacting with the page. Client-side software can

include animations, games, office applications and scientific demonstrations. Through keyword-driven Internet

research using search engines like Yahoo! and Google, users worldwide have easy, instant access to a vast and

diverse amount of online information. Compared to printed media, books, encyclopedias and traditional libraries, the

World Wide Web has enabled the decentralization of information on a large scale.

The Web has also enabled individuals and organizations to publish ideas and information to a potentially large

audience online at greatly reduced expense and time delay. Publishing a web page, a blog, or building a website

involves little initial cost and many cost-free services are available. Publishing and maintaining large, professional

web sites with attractive, diverse and up-to-date information is still a difficult and expensive proposition, however.

Many individuals and some companies and groups use web logs or blogs, which are largely used as easily updatable

online diaries. Some commercial organizations encourage staff to communicate advice in their areas of specialization

in the hope that visitors will be impressed by the expert knowledge and free information, and be attracted to the

corporation as a result. One example of this practice is Microsoft, whose product developers publish their personal

blogs in order to pique the public's interest in their work. Collections of personal web pages published by large

service providers remain popular, and have become increasingly sophisticated. Whereas operations such as Angelfire

and GeoCities have existed since the early days of the Web, newer offerings from, for example, Facebook and

Twitter currently have large followings. These operations often brand themselves as social network services rather

than simply as web page hosts.

Advertising on popular web pages can be lucrative, and e-commerce or the sale of products and services directly via

the Web continues to grow.

When the Web began in the 1990s, a typical web page was stored in completed form on a web server, formatted in

HTML, ready to be sent to a user's browser in response to a request. Over time, the process of creating and serving

web pages has become more automated and more dynamic. Websites are often created using content management or

wiki software with, initially, very little content. Contributors to these systems, who may be paid staff, members of a

club or other organization or members of the public, fill underlying databases with content using editing pages

designed for that purpose, while casual visitors view and read this content in its final HTML form. There may or

may not be editorial, approval and security systems built into the process of taking newly entered content and

making it available to the target visitors.

Communication

 Email is an important communications service available on the Internet. The concept of sending electronic text

messages between parties in a way analogous to mailing letters or memos predates the creation of the Internet.

Pictures, documents and other files are sent as email attachments. Emails can be cc-ed to multiple email addresses.

Internet telephony is another common communications service made possible by the creation of the Internet. VoIP

stands for Voice-over-Internet Protocol, referring to the protocol that underlies all Internet communication. The idea

began in the early 1990s with walkie-talkie-like voice applications for personal computers. In recent years many

VoIP systems have become as easy to use and as convenient as a normal telephone. The benefit is that, as the

Internet carries the voice traffic, VoIP can be free or cost much less than a traditional telephone call, especially over

long distances and especially for those with always-on Internet connections such as cable or ADSL. VoIP is

maturing into a competitive alternative to traditional telephone service. Interoperability between different providers

has improved and the ability to call or receive a call from a traditional telephone is available. Simple, inexpensive

VoIP network adapters are available that eliminate the need for a personal computer.

Voice quality can still vary from call to call, but is often equal to and can even exceed that of traditional calls.

Remaining problems for VoIP include emergency telephone number dialing and reliability. Currently, a few VoIP

providers provide an emergency service, but it is not universally available. Traditional phones are line-powered and

operate during a power failure; VoIP does not do so without a backup power source for the phone equipment and the

Internet access devices. VoIP has also become increasingly popular for gaming applications, as a form of

communication between players. Popular VoIP clients for gaming include Ventrilo and Teamspeak. Wii, PlayStation

3, and Xbox 360 also offer VoIP chat features.

Data transfer
File sharing is an example of transferring large amounts of data across the Internet. A computer file can be emailed

to customers, colleagues and friends as an attachment. It can be uploaded to a website or FTP server for easy

download by others. It can be put into a "shared location" or onto a file server for instant use by colleagues. The load

of bulk downloads to many users can be eased by the use of "mirror" servers or peer-to-peer networks. In any of

these cases, access to the file may be controlled by user authentication, the transit of the file over the Internet may be

obscured by encryption, and money may change hands for access to the file. The price can be paid by the remote

charging of funds from, for example, a credit card whose details are also passed – usually fully encrypted – across

the Internet. The origin and authenticity of the file received may be checked by digital signatures or by MD5 or other

message digests. These simple features of the Internet, over a worldwide basis, are changing the production, sale,

and distribution of anything that can be reduced to a computer file for transmission. This includes all manner of print

publications, software products, news, music, film, video, photography, graphics and the other arts. This in turn has

caused seismic shifts in each of the existing industries that previously controlled the production and distribution of

these products.

Streaming media is the real-time delivery of digital media for the immediate consumption or enjoyment by end

users. Many radio and television broadcasters provide Internet feeds of their live audio and video productions. They

may also allow time-shift viewing or listening such as Preview, Classic Clips and Listen Again features. These

providers have been joined by a range of pure Internet "broadcasters" who never had on-air licenses. This means that

an Internet-connected device, such as a computer or something more specific, can be used to access on-line media in

much the same way as was previously possible only with a television or radio receiver. The range of available types

of content is much wider, from specialized technical webcasts to on-demand popular multimedia services.

Podcasting is a variation on this theme, where – usually audio – material is downloaded and played back on a

computer or shifted to a portable media player to be listened to on the move. These techniques using simple

equipment allow anybody, with little censorship or licensing control, to broadcast audio-visual material worldwide.

Digital media streaming increases the demand for network bandwidth. For example, standard image quality needs 1

Mbit/s link speed for SD 480p, HD 720p quality requires 2.5 Mbit/s, and the top-of-the-line HDX quality needs 4.5

Mbit/s for 1080p.

Webcams are a low-cost extension of this phenomenon. While some webcams can give full-frame-rate video, the

picture either is usually small or updates slowly. Internet users can watch animals around an African waterhole, ships

in the Panama Canal, traffic at a local roundabout or monitor their own premises, live and in real time. Video chat

rooms and video conferencing are also popular with many uses being found for personal webcams, with and without

two-way sound. YouTube was founded on 15 February 2005 and is now the leading website for free streaming video

with a vast number of users. It uses a flash-based web player to stream and show video files. Registered users may

upload an unlimited amount of video and build their own personal profile. YouTube claims that its users watch

hundreds of millions, and upload hundreds of thousands of videos daily.

Access
Common methods of Internet access in homes include dial-up, landline broadband (over coaxial cable, fiber optic or

copper wires), Wi-Fi, satellite and 3G/4G technology cell phones. Public places to use the Internet include libraries

and Internet cafes, where computers with Internet connections are available. There are also Internet access points in

many public places such as airport halls and coffee shops, in some cases just for brief use while standing. Various

terms are used, such as "public Internet kiosk", "public access terminal", and "Web payphone". Many hotels now

also have public terminals, though these are usually fee-based. These terminals are widely accessed for various usage

like ticket booking, bank deposit, online payment etc. Wi-Fi provides wireless access to computer networks, and

therefore can do so to the Internet itself. Hotspots providing such access include Wi-Fi cafes, where would-be users

need to bring their own wireless-enabled devices such as a laptop or PDA. These services may be free to all, free to

customers only, or fee-based. A hotspot need not be limited to a confined location. A whole campus or park, or even

an entire city can be enabled.

Grassroots efforts have led to wireless community networks. Commercial Wi-Fi services covering large city areas

are in place in London, Vienna, Toronto, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Chicago and Pittsburgh. The Internet can then

be accessed from such places as a park bench. Apart from Wi-Fi, there have been experiments with proprietary

mobile wireless networks like Ricochet, various high-speed data services over cellular phone networks, and fixed

wireless services. High-end mobile phones such as smartphones in general come with Internet access through the

phone network. Web browsers such as Opera are available on these advanced handsets, which can also run a wide

variety of other Internet software. More mobile phones have Internet access than PCs, though this is not as widely

used.An Internet access provider and protocol matrix differentiates the methods used to get online.

An Internet blackout or outage can be caused by local signaling interruptions. Disruptions of submarine

communications cables may cause blackouts or slowdowns to large areas, such as in the 2008 submarine cable

disruption. Less-developed countries are more vulnerable due to a small number of high-capacity links. Land cables

are also vulnerable, as in 2011 when a woman digging for scrap metal severed most connectivity for the nation of

Armenia. Internet blackouts affecting almost entire countries can be achieved by governments as a form of

Internet censorship, as in the blockage of the Internet in Egypt, whereby approximately 93% of networks were

without access in 2011 in an attempt to stop mobilization for anti-government protests.


Users
Internet users per 100 inhabitants Source: International Telecommunication UnionITU

"Internet users per 100 inhabitants 2001–2011", International Telecommunications

Union, Geneva, accessed 4 April 2012

Languages used on the InternetInternet users by language "Number of Internet Users by

Language", Internet World Stats, Miniwatts Marketing Group, 31 May 2011, accessed 22

April 2012

Overall Internet usage has seen

tremendous growth. From 2000 to

2009, the number of Internet users

globally rose from 394 million to 1.858

billion. By 2010, 22 percent of the

world's population had access to

computers with 1 billion Google

searches every day, 300 million

Internet users reading blogs, and 2

billion videos viewed daily on

YouTube.

The prevalent language for

communication on the Internet has

been English. This may be a result of

the origin of the Internet, as well as the

language's role as a lingua franca.

Early computer systems were limited

to the characters in the American

Standard Code for Information

Interchange (ASCII), a subset of the

Latin alphabet.

After English (27%), the most

requested languages on the World

Wide Web are Chinese (23%), Spanish

(8%), Japanese (5%), Portuguese and

German (4% each), Arabic, French and

Russian (3% each), and Korean

(2%).[49] By region, 42% of the

world's Internet users are based in

Asia, 24% in Europe, 14% in North

America, 10% in Latin America and

the Caribbean taken together, 6% in

Africa, 3% in the Middle East and 1%

in Australia/Oceania. The Internet's

technologies have developed enough in recent years, especially in the use of Unicode, that good facilities are available for development and communication in the world's widely used languages.

However, some glitches such as mojibake (incorrect display of some languages' characters) still remain.

Languages used on the InternetWebsite content languages "Usage of content languages

for websites". W3Techs.com. . Retrieved 30 December 2011.

In an American study in 2005, the

percentage of men using the Internet

was very slightly ahead of the

percentage of women, although this

difference reversed in those under 30.

Men logged on more often, spent more

time online, and were more likely to be

broadband users, whereas women

tended to make more use of

opportunities to communicate (such as

email). Men were more likely to use

the Internet to pay bills, participate in

auctions, and for recreation such as

downloading music and videos. Men

and women were equally likely to use

the Internet for shopping and

banking.More recent studies

indicate that in 2008, women

significantly outnumbered men on

most social networking sites, such as Facebook and Myspace, although the ratios varied with age. In addition,

women watched more streaming content, whereas men downloaded more.[53] In terms of blogs, men were more

likely to blog in the first place; among those who blog, men were more likely to have a professional blog, whereas

women were more likely to have a personal blog.

Social impact
The Internet has enabled entirely new forms of social interaction, activities, and organizing, thanks to its basic

features such as widespread usability and access. In the first decade of the 21st century, the first generation is raised

with widespread availability of Internet connectivity, bringing consequences and concerns in areas such as personal

privacy and identity, and distribution of copyrighted materials. These "digital natives" face a variety of challenges

that were not present for prior generations.

Social networking and entertainment
Many people use the World Wide Web to access news, weather and sports reports, to plan and book vacations and to

find out more about their interests. People use chat, messaging and email to make and stay in touch with friends

worldwide, sometimes in the same way as some previously had pen pals. The Internet has seen a growing number of

Web desktops, where users can access their files and settings via the Internet.

Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace have created new ways to socialize and

interact. Users of these sites are able to add a wide variety of information to pages, to pursue common interests, and

to connect with others. It is also possible to find existing acquaintances, to allow communication among existing

groups of people. Sites like LinkedIn foster commercial and business connections. YouTube and Flickr specialize in

users' videos and photographs.

The Internet has been a major outlet for leisure activity since its inception, with entertaining social experiments such

as MUDs and MOOs being conducted on university servers, and humor-related Usenet groups receiving much

traffic. Today, many Internet forums have sections devoted to games and funny videos; short cartoons in the form of

Flash movies are also popular. Over 6 million people use blogs or message boards as a means of communication and

for the sharing of ideas. The pornography and gambling industries have taken advantage of the World Wide Web,

and often provide a significant source of advertising revenue for other websites.Although many governments

have attempted to restrict both industries' use of the Internet, in general this has failed to stop their widespread

popularity.

Another area of leisure activity on the Internet is multiplayer gaming.This form of recreation creates

communities, where people of all ages and origins enjoy the fast-paced world of multiplayer games. These range

from MMORPG to first-person shooters, from role-playing video games to online gambling. While online gaming

has been around since the 1970s, modern modes of online gaming began with subscription services such as

GameSpy and MPlayer. Non-subscribers were limited to certain types of game play or certain games. Many

people use the Internet to access and download music, movies and other works for their enjoyment and relaxation.

Free and fee-based services exist for all of these activities, using centralized servers and distributed peer-to-peer

technologies. Some of these sources exercise more care with respect to the original artists' copyrights than others.

Internet usage has been correlated to users' loneliness. Lonely people tend to use the Internet as an outlet for their

feelings and to share their stories with others, such as in the "I am lonely will anyone speak to me" thread.

Cybersectarianism is a new organizational form which involves: "highly dispersed small groups of practitioners that

may remain largely anonymous within the larger social context and operate in relative secrecy, while still linked

remotely to a larger network of believers who share a set of practices and texts, and often a common devotion to a

particular leader. Overseas supporters provide funding and support; domestic practitioners distribute tracts,

participate in acts of resistance, and share information on the internal situation with outsiders. Collectively, members

and practitioners of such sects construct viable virtual communities of faith, exchanging personal testimonies and

engaging in collective study via email, on-line chat rooms and web-based message boards."

Cyberslacking can become a drain on corporate resources; the average UK employee spent 57 minutes a day surfing

the Web while at work, according to a 2003 study by Peninsula Business Services.[61] Internet addiction disorder is

excessive computer use that interferes with daily life. Psychologist Nicolas Carr believe that Internet use has other

effects on individuals, for instance improving skills of scan-reading and interfering with the deep thinking that leads

to true creativity.


Politics and political revolutions
The Internet has achieved new relevance as a political tool. The presidential campaign of Howard Dean in 2004 in

the United States was notable for its success in soliciting donation via the Internet. Many political groups use the

Internet to achieve a new method of organizing in order to carry out their mission, having given rise to Internet

activism, most notably practiced by rebels in the Arab Spring.

The New York Times suggested that social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter helped people organize the

political revolutions in Egypt where it helped certain classes of protesters organize protests, communicate

grievances, and disseminate information.

The potential of the Internet as a civic tool of communicative power was thoroughly explored by Simon R. B. Berdal

in his thesis of 2004:

“As the globally evolving Internet provides ever new access points to virtual discourse forums, it also promotes new civic relations and

associations within which communicative power may flow and accumulate. Thus, traditionally ... national-embedded peripheries get entangled

into greater, international peripheries, with stronger combined powers... The Internet, as a consequence, changes the topology of the

"centre-periphery" model, by stimulating conventional peripheries to interlink into "super-periphery" structures, which enclose and "besiege"

several centres at once.”

Berdal, therefore, extends the Habermasian notion of the Public sphere to the Internet, and underlines the inherent

global and civic nature that intervowen Internet technologies provide. To limit the growing civic potential of the

Internet, Berdal also notes how "self-protective measures" are put in place by those threatened by it:

“If we consider China’s attempts to filter "unsuitable material" from the Internet, most of us would agree that this resembles a self-protective

measure by the system against the growing civic potentials of the Internet. Nevertheless, both types represent limitations to "peripheral

capacities". Thus, the Chinese government tries to prevent communicative power to build up and unleash (as the 1989 Tiananmen Square

uprising suggests, the government may find it wise to install "upstream measures"). Even though limited, the Internet is proving to be an

empowering tool also to the Chinese periphery: Analysts believe that Internet petitions have influenced policy implementation in favour of the

public’s online-articulated will ...”

 

 

Philanthropy

 

The spread of low-cost internet access in developing countries has opened up new possibilities for peer-to-peer

charities, which allow individuals to contribute small amounts to charitable projects for other individuals. Websites

such as DonorsChoose and GlobalGiving allow small-scale donors to direct funds to individual projects of their

choice.

A popular twist on internet-based philanthropy is the use of peer-to-peer lending for charitable purposes. Kiva

pioneered this concept in 2005, offering the first web-based service to publish individual loan profiles for funding.

Kiva raises funds for local intermediary microfinance organizations which post stories and updates on behalf of the

borrowers. Lenders can contribute as little as $25 to loans of their choice, and receive their money back as borrowers

repay. Kiva falls short of being a pure peer-to-peer charity, in that loans are disbursed before being funded by lenders

and borrowers do not communicate with lenders themselves.

However, the recent spread of cheap internet access in developing countries has made genuine international

person-to-person philanthropy increasingly feasible. In 2009 the US-based nonprofit Zidisha tapped into this trend to

offer the first person-to-person microfinance platform to link lenders and borrowers across international borders

without intermediaries. Inspired by interactive websites such as Facebook and eBay, Zidisha facilitates direct

dialogue and microlending transactions between individual web users worldwide and computer-literate, low-income

entrepreneurs in developing countries. Zidisha members can fund loans for as little as a dollar, which the borrowers

then use to develop business activities that improve their families' incomes while repaying loans to the members with

interest. Zidisha borrowers access the internet via public cybercafes, donated laptops in village schools, and even

smart phones, then create their own profile pages through which they share photos and information about themselves

and their businesses. As they repay their loans, borrowers continue to share updates and dialogue with lenders via

their profile pages. This direct web-based connection allows Zidisha members themselves to take on many of the

communication and recording tasks traditionally performed by local organizations, bypassing geographic barriers

and dramatically reducing the cost of microfinance services to the entrepreneurs.

Censorship

 

Some governments, such as those of Iran, North Korea, Burma, the People's Republic of China, and Saudi Arabia,

restrict what people in their countries can access on the Internet, especially political and religious content. This is

accomplished through software that filters domains and content so that they may not be easily accessed or obtained

without elaborate circumvention.

In Norway, Denmark, Finland, and Sweden, major Internet service providers have voluntarily, possibly to avoid such

an arrangement being turned into law, agreed to restrict access to sites listed by authorities. While this list of

forbidden URLs is supposed to contain addresses of only known child pornography sites, the content of the list is

secret.[71] Many countries, including the United States, have enacted laws against the possession or distribution of

certain material, such as child pornography, via the Internet, but do not mandate filtering software. There are many

free and commercially available software programs, called content-control software, with which a user can choose to

block offensive websites on individual computers or networks, in order to limit a child's access to pornographic

materials or depiction of violence.

Source: Wikipedia

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