The Internet is a "network of networks" which links some 10,000 other computer networks, and several million individual computers--from university and governmental supercomputers to individuals' personal computers--into an electronic web that permits information to be transferred directly from computer to computer via telephone lines. Computers in at least 50 countries are linked into the Internet, and up to 30 million people may use some aspect of it (though this estimate may be greatly exaggerated).
The Internet has also become a popular symbol of the age of computerized communications and has become almost synonymous among the public and the mass media with the idea of an "automated information superhighway." This Internet-as-symbol is based upon and related to the actual Internet, but they are not the same thing, and one of the purposes of the following discussion will be to clarify the differences between the popular perception and the actual Internet system.
This study will proceed by first outlining the Internet's history, organization, and relationship to other computer networks. It will then go on to survey the ranges of uses to which the Internet has been or can be put to use, its characteristics from the point of view of users, its possible future developments, and some of its broader social implications. The Internet was established in 1969 by the Advance Research Projects Agency of the Department of Defense, and its original name was ARPANET (Kantrowitz, 1994). The original scope of the system was quite limited; it linked computer installations at UCLA and three other research sites performing research work for the Pentagon (Mills, 1993). The intent of the network in its original form was to allow computer programs and data to be transmitted electronically among these sites, reducing the delay involved in physically sending tapes or packs of punched cards (the typical computer media of the period) from on...