The Internet

[Sombrero]

I capitalise it because it rules.... most of us are in that weird situation where we've lived life without it, and now embrace it and use it for everything, shopping, booking tickets, research, social stuff etc etc ... our children will need the internet as they do oxygen...

Is The Internet as big as the Industrial Revolution?? (also capitalised)...

 

[jockscott]

Probably one of the biggest social revolutions in the 20th century. Almost certainly bigger than the Industrial Revolution. (and both invented, or came about by British people)

 

[JBR]

When our internet connection went down yesterday morning, I realised just how much we have come to rely on it.

My wife was 'working from home' yesterday, and I mean working not tossing it off. She had a lot of important stuff to do and decided she'd have to go into work. Despite the inconvenience of distractions at work - people wanting advice, etc. - there would also be a couple of hours lost due to travelling time.

Fortunately, the connection came back eventually, but as I understand it these failures can last for days. People who rely on e-mail and internet communications can be seriously affected.

 

[Nige F]

And the net goes down because of 20th Century wires etc owned by BT shareholders It weren`t any worse when PO Telephones ran it - and you had party lines Prove me wrong ( they won`t)

 

[JBR]

Well mine's fibre-optics. Just shows that everything goes wrong sooner or later.

 

[wobs]

And the net goes down because of 20th Century wires etc owned by BT shareholders It weren`t any worse when PO Telephones ran it - and you had party lines Prove me wrong ( they won`t)

Not here. Its owned by KC shareholders

Still over priced, and behind the times though. And thinner wire than BT cables.

 

[longdogs]

I think that whilst the internet has it's obvious down sides, on the whole it is a very useful tool. Apart from online shopping and ordering, just think how many libraries you would have to visit to find certain bits of information where as google does it in a few seconds.

My internet was down for a few weeks (courtesy of TalkTalk) and I felt completely lost.

 

[gregers]

Well mine's fibre-optics. Just shows that everything goes wrong sooner or later.

what directly to your house??
coz round here they have been replacing all the big green boxes with fibre,but its still copper to your house.

 

[JBR]

Well mine's fibre-optics. Just shows that everything goes wrong sooner or later.

what directly to your house??
coz round here they have been replacing all the big green boxes with fibre,but its still copper to your house.

Yes of course it's copper for the latter part of its 'journey'. Then it's copper from the junction box to my router. Then it gets all fancy and travels through the ether!

 

[chapeau]

Probably one of the biggest social revolutions in the 20th century. Almost certainly bigger than the Industrial Revolution. (and both invented, or came about by British people)

Well "The Internet" was invented by the Yanks. Strange thing is, there were already similar networked applications existing in Europe e.g. the French Minitel. But these didn't conquer the world, The Internet did.

So one has to ask why the Yanks were late to the party but ended up leading the way.

Though networking of all kinds is probably the biggest technological change in my lifetime. When I were a lad you had to book a call to overseas in advance, and if you wanted to call a different town you had to dial 0 for the operator to route it. Nowadays, the mrs can be sitting on the sofa and send a text and it will find me almost anywhere in the world within a second or two.

So networking of all kinds has made a remarkable impact on our lives. The Yoof of today will never believe we had to find a working phonebox to arrange our social lives. That would be used to phone the single person who had a landline who would co-ordinate. Or just turn up as arranged a few days earlier.

 

[JBR]

Probably one of the biggest social revolutions in the 20th century. Almost certainly bigger than the Industrial Revolution. (and both invented, or came about by British people)

Well "The Internet" was invented by the Yanks. Strange thing is, there were already similar networked applications existing in Europe e.g. the French Minitel. But these didn't conquer the world, The Internet did.

I thought I'd read somewhere that the internet was invented by the British, as Jock says.

http://www.computerweekly.com/opini...d-the-Internet-still-waiting-for-a-knighthood

 

[chapeau]

The title of that article is wrong. "The Internet" was invented in the States. Berners-Lee started off what is now sometimes called the World Wide Web.

"The Internet" existed before Berners-Lee did his work. Back in those days people used things like telnet, gopher, finger to communicate. In fact I remember having to use gopher to find stuff as there were no web search engines, the best gopher server was funnily enough hosted Imperial in London - not the states.

 

[FamilyPlumber]

I capitalise it because it rules.... most of us are in that weird situation where we've lived life without it, and now embrace it and use it for everything, shopping, booking tickets, research, social stuff etc etc ... our children will need the internet as they do oxygen...

Is The Internet as big as the Industrial Revolution?? (also capitalised)...

I think "The Internet" is as important as you emphasize it, but to say that we need it like breathing would be too much. Yes it is crucial, but this should not define us, it's a tool. We need it yes, but our children should be taught of what are the things to really value.

 

[EddieM]

The title of that article is wrong. "The Internet" was invented in the States. Berners-Lee started off what is now sometimes called the World Wide Web.

"The Internet" existed before Berners-Lee did his work. Back in those days people used things like telnet, gopher, finger to communicate. In fact I remember having to use gopher to find stuff as there were no web search engines, the best gopher server was funnily enough hosted Imperial in London - not the states.

The invention of the internet is complex, of course a lot of it stems from the American ARPANET of which version 1 was actually 1st run at the NPL Oxford England, central to part of it is the concept of packet switching which was pioneered by a Welshman. Tim Berners-Lee is credited with creating HTML, which is separate the the Internet, but is central to what we call the world wide web.

 

[itshere]

The internet is NOTHING like the Industrial revolution.

The IR increased productivity and reduced costs.

The internet massively decraeses productivity and increases costs.

I remember when desktop publishing was invented and this was before the internet existed on the general market. The pre-modem world of computers.
Everyone went wild as now reports could be IN COLOUR and with FANCY typestyles.
The truth is it did NOTHING meaningful and just meant reports took longer to produce.
It was a novelty thing.

The internet achieves nothing that could not be achived without it.

The ONLY thing the internet does is allow you to get porn without having to show your face in a shop.