Entangled In The Web Essay Research Paper

Entangled In The Web Essay, Research Paper

While flipping through the old pages of a book on Speech and Communication, my eyes caught

the following lines of Marshall McLuhan: .Someday the whole world would be a global village.. He

was simply referring to the idealized concept of a diverse community where people of different races

and cultures would commune together (New York of today, for example). Little did McLuhan know

that his words will one day become literal.

That day is today! After the short .dial-up rattle.of my ISP, I loaded Netscape Navigator into

my Windows platform. Within seconds, I pulled out my customized newspaper filled with every story

that fits my profile in sources raging from local, regional, national to countless countries around the

globe; it took me much more time to make the coffee! .Desi437 has sent you an instant message;

would you like to accept it.. Oh! That.s my friend Nisha, from India. Flipping back and forth

between the browser and the Instant Messenger, I managed to pull out the stats I needed on Ireland,

for my History class; a native web site helped greatly. What Jules Verne struggled to do in 80 days, I

more or less, completed in about eight minutes. Thanks to one of the greatest discoveries of the

century – the World Wide Web!

Before an individual can understand the different problems that the World Wide Web faces, it is

necessary to understand what it is exactly and how it is structured. The World Wide Web (www) or

simply .web,. as it is passionately called among users, can simply be defined as: a large area database

with a universe of information, providing access to users around the world. Visualize a large file

cabinet; it is in fact so large that almost everyone in the world could easily access it. A user can put in

(upload) information as well as retrieve (download) it. That is what the web is, today. Simply put, the

world wide web is a critical component of the Internet, joining millions of users for information

interchange.

The web is structured in a concept of universal leadership; if there is information

available, any authorized individual could be allowed to access it, from anywhere in the world. The

web, more or less, runs on a client-server model. Client is the user.s terminal and the Server is the

terminal (mainframe) that the user is connected to. Not only does a connection exist between the

client and the server, the connections are cross-wired in such a way that clients are connected to each

other and servers are connected to each other. No particular unit is the key focus of the whole

system. If there is a technical difficulty affecting any server in the system, it does not affect the

system as a whole. Since there is no one main system, no one can pinpoint a geographical location, for

the web. No matter where the user is located, a POT line can connect him or her to the global

network.

The Web has changed dramatically since its humble beginnings. In 1989, CERN (Conseil

Europeen pour la Recherche Nucleaire), a group of scientists in complex Physics, Engineering and

Information Handling fields, realized the need for a network for fast access of information. Since they

had the financial resources for setting up such a system, within months, a network was established;

using simple browsers, scientists were allowed access into the mainframe and its vast contents. They

were also given the option of posting their own studies and adding to the material of the database. In

the early years, hypertext was a crucial component. The browsers were completely text-based and

hypertext (a text link) allowed the users to jump from one document to another. Tim Berners Lee of

CERN incorporated the ideas of Ted Nelson (inventor of hyperlink) and soon generated the idea of

The World Wide Web. As soon as it was opened to the public at the dawn of this decade, the web

received much acceptance and recognition and the response was tremendous. Since then, the growth

rate of the online community and its resources were rapid and today, it has become almost an

inevitable part of our daily lifestyles. (.World Wide Web People.).

Today, hundreds of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) are opening the gateway of the Internet for

millions of users around the globe. Connections are generally transmitted over POTS (Plain Old

Telephone Services) and connected to computers using modems. Internet does not simply consist of

the world wide web. There are many other components such as BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), FTP

(File Transfer Protocol), E-Mail (Electronic Mail), Information Services, Newsgroups and many more.

Today, with little or no cost, a user can setup his or her own web site. A domain address is assigned

according to the content of the site and once the files are uploaded, users around the world can access

the information from their terminals.

Our age is appropriately named the Information Age! Within the past decade, the computer

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