What do you know about the Internet?

1. Electronic mail

Electronic mail, or e-mail, lets you electronically "mail" messages to users who have Internet E-mail addresses. Delivery time varies, but it is possible to send mail across the globe and get a response in minutes. LISTSERV is a special interest mailing list which allows for the exchange of information between large numbers of people.

2. USENET newsgroups

USENET is a system of special interest discussion groups, called newsgroups, to which readers can send, or "post" messages which are then distributed to other computers in the network. (Think of it as a giant set of electronic bulletin boards.) Newsgroups are organised around specific topics, for example, alt.education.research,alt.education.distance and misc.education.science.

3. Information files

Government agencies, schools, and universities, commercial firms, interest groups, and private individuals place a variety of information online. The files were originally text only, but increasingly contain pictures, graphics, sound, videos and simulations that are both static and interactive.

The beginning of the Internet goes back to the early 1960s when the world was still in turmoil with two superpowers competing for world dominance. The US Department of Defence wanted an electronic system/network that would protect government communication systems in the event of a military strike. This network was referred to as ARPANet (after the Advanced Research Project Agency that developed it). The network employed a set of standard protocols to create an effective way for these people to communicate and share data with each other.

ARPAnet's popularity continued to spread among researchers and in the 1980's the National Science Foundation, whose NSFNet, linked several high speed computers, took charge of what had come to be known as the Internet.

In 1991, the U.S. High Performance Computing Act established the NREN (National Research and Education Network). NREN's goal was to develop and maintain high-speed networks for research and education, and to investigate commercial uses for the Internet. From this start, a tool that set out to serve the government and research community has found a role in economic, social, individual, national and global development through innovations such as the World Wide Web and the associated technologies like Yahoo, Google, You Tube, Twitter, My Space, Facebook and many others.

Vinton Cerf, the graduate student at UC Berkley and his associate Robert Kahn, who were the main actors in repurposing ARPANet into the Internet are still active - the former is at Google, employed as an Internet evangelist and the latter is a Founder - CEO of the Corporation for National Research Initiative, a not-for-profit agency that supports research on the US National Information Infrastructure also sometimes known as the Information Super Highway.