C5: Internet

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Introduction

Every self respecting business and organisation now has a site on the Internet, while every streetwise keyboard-puncher has a growing geek speak vocabulary. What effect is all this having on our lives? It is probably impossible to know what the ultimate effect of this phenomenon will because the Internet is still in its early days and the most fascinating changes are still to come. However, it is worth visiting a few areas on the Net and then, with decidedly Jewish-tinted specs, analysing the issues they bring up. But first...

A byte about the Internet

The Internet is a vast international network of networks that enables computers of all kinds to share services and communicate directly, as if they were part of one giant, seamless, global computing machine. Begun more than twenty years ago as a U.S. Defence Department experiment, it escaped from the Pentagon and spread like wild fire during the personal-computer boom, nearly doubling in size every year since the mid-80s. Today millions of people in hundreds of countries are hooked up. Probably the main factor for the Internet's remarkable growth is its grass-roots structure. The Internet is an open democratic system. No one owns it. No single organisation controls it. It is run like a commune with millions of fiercely independent members. It crosses natural boundaries and answers to no sovereign. It is literally lawless.

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