The Information Highway Essay, Research Paper

The Internet has taken on a form of its own, if you just look at the number increases from 1992 to a projected 2002 you will see for yourself . With the growth of the Internet and progress we hope to achieve, we seem to be heading straight into the future of technology. What can this “information highway,” do for us regular day to day people? Students, teachers, small businesses, family, and even friends can stay connected and achieve a higher source of information then we could have twenty years ago. Many ways to communicate via the Internet are available to anyone with a computer. The first way; and they way I know very well would be e-mail but what exactly is e-mail? Electronic mail a.k.a. email, is a program that lets you send, receive and manage messages sent via the Internet . An e-mail address consists of two parts which are divided by the @ symbol. The first part is the person’s account name, the second part is the domain name, which is the location of the person’s account. Many different programs let you perform the task of e-mail such as Microsoft Outlook, Netscape Messenger, Juno, Hotmail, or Eudora. To figure out which e-mail program to use would be up to you and your preference. The only difference is that Juno is free and you do not have to have an Internet connection to use the e-mail program but that is all it does . The second way to communicate with other people could be a newsgroup or discussion group. These two allow people with common interests to talk to each other and discuss things or just get answers they are looking for. There are literally thousands of newsgroups that have wide range of topics including sports, Microsoft jobs or vacation spots. The only problem with newsgroups is that you have to go through tons and tons of other people’s messages and you may never find the answer you are looking for. Since newsgroups are where people type in a question or answer, you can imagine how many there are on a certain topic. A third way you can instantly communicate with people all over the world would be chatting. Chatting is a virtual community where people meet and talk about anything they want in an instant. Chatting is different then a newsgroup because it is instant and newsgroups are posted and replied to at a different time. The most popular chat program out there is mIRC, which they call Internet Relay Chat . This program is text based which in short means what you type immediately shows up on everyone’s screens. This is where nicknames come in handy; since you don’t actually know the person you are talking to you should know net safety. Net Safety is use common knowledge, do not give out your full name, address, or phone number. Chatting can be great fun and relaxing and another great source for information. I have been chatting for over five years and I have met about 100 of the people I have met via the Internet but always at a group party. Believe it or not, not all people are wacko like the way the media presents it.With the growing number of ways to access these programs above the most popular I seem to think would be the dial-up on your own way. This means you subscribe to an Internet Service Provider a.k.a. ISP and they give you a number for your modem to call this is where they will give you an account name that will become your email. These companies usually don’t offer anything else; you must have your own way of viewing the net. In the other case, there is the supposedly most popular on-line service provider American On-Line which offer there own internal links to stocks, chatting and other activities for kids. The only advantage to these companies is if you are new to the Internet and because you don’t really know how to maneuver the Internet. These companies give practice to the new people coming on everyday. A great site to visit to get information or to understand the corks of CompuServe, MSN, Prodigy, or A.O.L would be: http://www.pcworld.com/workstyles/online/articles/aug96/1408p122.html .

Speaking of searching the Internet there are many utilities out there to help you. The most known would be a search engine, which is a gopher that goes out and tries to match information to a key word you have typed in. My personal opinion is that most search engines are not as updated as they could be. If you go to 5 different search engines and type in any word none of the first few will be the same. Why is does this happen? Well because every company has there own gophers and since there is so much information out there some systems select what they want to display. I believe anyone can get on to the Internet in some shape or form. I can remember back about five years ago when I first found chatting in CompuServe I was on a 386 Dos based system with a 2400 baud modem and I had no idea what a computer was and what I really needed to get the full power of the internet. As for what you need to connect to the Internet to get information there is some hardware and software requirements. The most important one would be obvious you would need a computer that runs an operating system at least Windows 3.1. The most basic system that you would want to do this on is a 386; any less is torture with 4MB of RAM and a 100MB hard drive . On Windows 3.1, you will need to download a Winsock dialer (Trumpet Winsock for example) with any higher version it is built in. You will need is a computer that is capable of running an operating system that supports networking and TCP/IP, this is used to allow you system to *talk* to the system you are dialing up to. You will also need clients, such as a Web Browser that could be Microsoft Explorer or Netscape Navigator, these programs will allow you to surf the web. With the ever-changing times, there are now much faster ways to connect to the web such as a cable modem, or you can still connect the old standard way of a modem, make sure it is 28000 baud at least or your connection will be very slow. When you get a hang of the Internet, you will be glad you did. All the information you want can be found just be patient. Good Luck! http://www3.mids.org/mmq/601/mid/hosts_92-02_log_lines_col.html Matrix Information and Directory Computers Simplified MaranGraphics page 198 www.mirc.co.uk www.search.comwww.altavista.com www.hotbot.com www.yahoo.com www.lycos.com http://w3.one.net/ alward/guides.html The Information Highway