With a current population of 20 million, if it were to continue growing at its present
rate, it would encompass the entire world's population by the year 2005.
It adds one million people every month.
It can be found in over 140 countries.
That is the Internet.
With over 2 million host systems located across the globe, the Internet currently transports
over 5 trillion bytes of information per month.
30% of the Fortune 500 companies are on the Internet.
The L.A. Times says, an address on the Internet is the latest gotta-have symbol in corporate
America.
The New Republic announces, surely you've heard of the Internet.
Almost surely you hadn't heard of it a year ago.
But what exactly is the Internet, and what can we use it for?
The Internet is typically described as a network of networks.
Tracing its roots back to the late 1960s, the Internet was started as ARPANET, a network
which linked the computers from a small number of universities.
Over the last 25 years, ARPANET has evolved and been updated.
New expansions and related networks include IBM's Bitnet, the military's MillNet, the
NSFNet, and the Commercial Internet Exchange.
These networks, combined with others, are collectively known as the Internet.
When we access the Internet, we have the potential to reach upwards of 2 million computers and
20 million people in over 140 countries.
This means we can send email across the world, access the Library of Congress, check for
references in the CIA Factbook, get advice from experts in almost any field, check news,
weather, and current events, and even see if the coffee pot in the Oxford Computer Science
Building is full.
To surf the Internet's cyberspace and avoid being flamed, you will need to understand
some basic Internet tools and follow NetCitizen guidelines.
Confused?
Don't worry.
By the end of this video, you will be using and understanding terms like these also.
The basic Internet toolset includes electronic mail used to send messages across town or
around the world, file transfer protocol, or FTP, which is used to transfer data or
programs between computers, and Telnet, which allows you to log on to someone else's computer.
Later, we'll deal with some other strange sounding tools like Archie, Gopher, Veronica,
Waze, and the Web, tools that further enhance the basic three.
We've all heard of next-day delivery service.
We've also heard of the prices.
We've all tried to decipher difficult-to-read faxes.
With the Internet, mail can be sent to a friend in Russia more quickly and easily and with
little or no cost to your Russian budsky.
The most important part of email is knowing your email address and knowing your budsky's
address code.
The best way to determine someone's email address is to call them and ask.
Unfortunately, there is no reliable Internet email operator.
There are some basic rules of thumb to use in sending email in the United States.
If you are mailing to a commercial address such as America Online, Prodigy, Genie, Delphi,
or CompuServe, the email address will end in .com.
Likewise, it will end in .edu for an educational institution, .gov for government facilities,
.mil for military, and so on.
There are a total of seven primary email suffixes.
Countries other than the United States also have email addresses which end in a two-letter
country code from .ad and .dora to .zw Zimbabwe.
This list of two-letter codes may give you an idea of the size of the Internet.
Okay, now before you get too upset with this list of rules, let me tell you my email address
is nightdave at aol.com.
This can be read from right to left as I have a commercial address on America Online and
my username is nightdave.
From this you can see that the email address isn't too complex, but you probably wouldn't
have guessed.
It's easiest to ask.
All those who understand raise your hands.
Good.
So a friend in the biology department of UCLA probably has an address like this, which reads
user computer jock on the biology vac system at UCLA, which is an educational center.
A Russian friend probably has an address like this.
It reads user budsky at the Computer Science Center, University of Moscow in Russia.
Now let's see what sending a message from America Online is like.
To mail to a friend at the Claremont Graduate School via the Internet, I choose compose
mail and address to my friend at cgsvax.claremont.edu.
When my friend logs on to the VAX, a message is waiting.
She types mail and read.
She can reply by simply typing reply and send.
As this CompuServe demo shows, every machine or commercial service is slightly different
but are fairly simple and straightforward once you know the other person's email address.
In addition to personal correspondence, email can be used to subscribe to what are called
email lists.
These can be small hand-maintain lists of people who share a common interest, or they
can be what are called listserv lists, which feature automated maintenance and subscription
and may include hundreds or thousands of subscribers.
When you subscribe to a list, any email that is sent to it by a subscriber will be automatically
sent to all other subscribers.
If you subscribe to a fairly popular list, you may receive 20 pieces of email per day
from the other members.
This is a partial listing of the currently available listserv lists.
As you can see, there are thousands of lists to which you could subscribe.
Subjects range from Isaac Asimov discussions to the homebrew list to the world-famous Chinese
plasma physics.
To join any of these, all you need is an internet email address and knowledge of a few simple
commands.
For example, say I'm interested in electric vehicles.
I find the email address of the computer which hosts the electric vehicle list.
Next, I start my mail utility and send the command subscribeev followed by my full name
to the email address listserv at sjsuvm1.bitnet.
Since the listserv addresses are for a network called bitnet, I must include the suffix .bitnet
to make sure my message goes to the right place.
Shortly after, I receive this confirmation note.
I then begin receiving email from other people on the list.
This is a sample of the mail I received from the EV list in just a few days.
Letters were posted from Czechoslovakia to British Columbia.
If I tire of electric vehicles, I can leave the list by sending the email message signoffEV
to the listserv.
To send mail to people on the EV list, I send to EV at sjsuvm1.bitnet.
My message will be forwarded to all the other list subscribers.
Commands should be sent to the listserv and mail sent to the list name.
Other useful commands include index listname, or in this case, indexev.
This command tells the listserv to send me a list of all files available for download.
As a new member, I may want to retrieve the FAQ or frequently asked questions file.
I do this by sending the command get filename file type, or in this case, get ev FAQ.
The file which is mailed to me contains answers to many basic questions I might have as a
new member of the EV list.
To temporarily turn off your listserv mail, send the command set ev no mail to the listserv,
and to turn it back on, send set ev mail.
A complete list of listserv addresses can be downloaded from the internet and most commercial
providers.
Remember the listserv addresses are usually for the bitnet network.
To find out what their internet equivalent address is, send the show alias command to
any listserv.
For example, to find the internet equivalent of homebrew, I send the command show alias
beer-l at ua1vm to a nearby listserv whose address I do know, like the electric vehicle
listserv.
The response tells me the internet equivalent address for bitnet's ua1vm is ua1vm.ua.edu.
The usenet netnews, or news, is another form for communication on the internet.
The news is similar to the collection of listserv lists, except that notes or articles are
posted to a news server.
They are not distributed to the readers.
To read the articles of interest, you must connect to a local server and tell your news
reader software to read the articles you choose.
They aren't automatically sent to you.
The news is divided into several general categories.
The most common are comp for computers, misc for miscellaneous, news for the network news
and software, and so on, through to the infamous alt for alternative groups.
And I do mean alternative.
There are also numerous special or regional categories.
At last count, there were over 6,000 news groups to choose from.
To access the news, we can use either a news reader or gopher, a tool I'll talk about later.
Whichever you use, this is what you'll see.
There are thousands of topics and files.
As you can see, the alternative interests can be rather bizarre.
If you are directly connected to an ethernet port, you can use a news reader.
From my Mac, I'll use news watcher.
A PC might use wind trumpet.
If you're on a modem, you could use gopher.
I'll start with this full group listing, which should look pretty similar to what you just
saw.
I imagine you could learn a lot about someone's personality by observing which news groups
they choose, with options spanning such diverse areas as philosophy, physics, politics, major
world events.
Well enough of that.
Here's a good one.
Alien visitors.
News watcher retrieves the posted articles for me.
This format lists the number of responses to the article, the name of the person who
posted the article, and the subject.
As we look down the list, we see articles on Mars, alien visitors, and alien travelers.
I'll select this sighting in Australia.
Notice the use of the greater than symbol, which summarizes the original posting so that
everyone knows what this is a response to.
As we close the article, you'll notice the article I've read has a check mark next to
it.
Let's leave this group and skip to the computer listings.
As you can see, there is a computer news group covering every aspect of every computer known
to man.
Having a problem with your one-of-a-kind machine?
Believe me, you can find a news group to post your questions to.
Feeling intelligent?
Skip down to the particle physics group, which leads off with a posting on quarks.
I'll select this posting on neutrinos.
Notice the header information, which gives the poster's name, organization, and so on.
The top right says this is article one of four in the thread.
This means there are three more postings relating to or responding to the subject.
I can go to the next article by using this menu.
You'll notice I'm now on article two.
I can jump to the next thread or subject by selecting next thread.
Now let's say I've just heard some interesting trivia about the Beatles.
Who could I tell it to?
Well, the rec.music.beatles news group, of course.
After selecting the news group, I choose post an article.
And I am warned.
Are you sure?
Thousands of people may read this throughout the civilized world.
It's funny, but it's true.
More people read these bulletin boards than read the LA Times.
I choose OK.
And now I'd fill in the header information, including the one-liner subject description.
I click OK, then type the posting.
Now since I don't really have any trivia, I'll cancel out and leave it to you to do
the insightful postings.
As an aside, email users have developed a language of symbols intended to better convey
emotion called emoticons.
You may recognize this sideways smiley face.
Others include the sad face, laughing, winking.
And the bizarre include the toupee, glasses, drooling, religious, someone died, and of
course, Mr. Bill.
You get the idea.
Finally, remember email and news postings are public.
Look before you send a message.
Remember your message could be forwarded and read by literally millions of people.
Sending profane or obnoxious messages is known as flaming and is strongly discouraged.
This is a copy of a letter of apology written by a flamer on one of the lists that I subscribe
to.
As you can see, flaming can lead to very negative consequences, including investigation by the
FBI.
OK, enough of the lecture.
By now we've discussed ways of sending messages to each other via email and ways of sharing
ideas in a common forum via the Usenet News.
But there are two other useful utilities provided by many members of the internet.
Telnet allows you to log on to someone else's computer and FTP or file transfer protocol
allows you to download files back to your computer.
As with people and email, all computers have an address.
FTP and Telnet require that you know the address of the computer you want to access.
This typically takes two forms, an IP number and a domain name.
Most people use the domain name because it's easier to remember, but all computers on the
internet have both an IP number and a domain name, so you can use either.
Now let's say I'm at home, hard at work.
I said hard at work.
Thank you.
And I want to Telnet or log on to check some references on solar photovoltaics.
I can use my modem to connect to a computer which has internet access.
Once I log on, I type telnet library dot Dartmouth dot edu.
This is the current Dartmouth Library welcome screen, which gives basic information on how
to use the system.
Since I'm checking references, I'll type find topic solar energy photovoltaics.
I'm told there are 51 references that match my query.
If I type display long, I'm given more detailed information about the selected references.
Once I get the information I want, I can type buy to exit from the system and return to
my host computer.
With Telnet, we can access other sources of information.
For example, let's say I want to do some research on the Hubble Space Telescope.
A good place to start might be the NASA News.
Instead of using a modem and typing Telnet as we did to Dartmouth, let's assume I have
a Mac or PC connected directly to an ethernet port which has internet access.
I can then use NCSA's Telnet software.
I select open a connection.
Under session name, I type the domain name of the NASA News computer and click on OK.
The NASA News welcome screen gives information on how to log on if you are a new user.
Since I've logged on before, I'll use my name and password.
You can make your own when you log on.
If we were to use our modem and Telnet, it looks exactly the same.
The direct ethernet connection just provides a much faster interface.
Once into the system, I get the main menu.
My options include NASA space link overview, current NASA news, space exploration, NASA
educational programs, and so on.
I'll choose number three, current NASA news.
My next set of options include NASA educational programs, shuttle status reports, and launch
dates and payloads.
I'll choose number 14, Hubble Space Telescope status reports.
This next menu lists options including Hubble fact sheets, software, star catalogs, and
GIF images.
I'll choose number eight for space science shorts.
Finally, on this last menu, I choose number seven, an article discussing the problems
with and corrections applied to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Choosing the view option, the article is displayed for me.
Once I've read the article, I can return to the main menu and choose option one to log
out from the system.
Although Telnet will allow us to use someone else's computer, it doesn't always allow
us to get the information back to our computer.
To do this, we must use FTP, or file transfer protocol.
FTP is similar to Telnet.
It connects us to someone else's computer, but once connected, its primary purpose is
to allow you to transfer files between computers.
To demonstrate FTP, I'll FTP to a site in Finland, which I know has an article on the
Space Shuttle to go with my Hubble Telescope article.
I've used my modem to connect to an internet-connected machine and type ftpnic.funet.fi.
Notice the last two letters, fi, the two-letter country code for Finland.
Most available FTP sites allow you to log on as anonymous, and so this procedure is
often called anonymous FTP.
Type login anonymous, and for the password, type your email address.
I'll do a directory, or dir, to see what's in the top, or root-level directory.
Oftentimes the pub directory contains publicly available information, so I cd, or change
directory to the pub directory.
Once again I type dir to see what's available here.
As the files scroll past, you should notice the first character of the left column indicates
the file type.
A D indicates it is a directory, a dash indicates it is a file, and an L indicates a link to
another location.
The far right column gives the file name.
The adjacent columns give the file size and date of last modification.
I change down three more directories to astro, slash text doc, slash news.
The file I'm interested in is called shuttle.txt, and is located in the directory slash pub,
slash astro, slash text doc, slash news.
To download the file I type get shuttle.txt, and tell it to name the file the same when
it is downloaded to my computer.
I am told an ASCII, or text transfer, has been initiated, and shortly after the file
transfer is complete.
Now that I'm downloading files to my computer, I decide it would be smart to get some virus
protection software.
I change directories in one step to pub, slash mac, slash virus.
Since I'll be downloading a non-text file, I'll tell FTP to use a binary format for file
transfer.
Sometimes this command is set binary, sometimes just binary.
I do a directory and see a number of files ending in suffixes like .sit, .bin, and .sea.
These all indicate files that have been compressed with one of a number of popular compression
utilities.
Here is a list of the most common, and what programs you need to uncompress the files.
If you haven't downloaded any of these utilities, you should stick to files that end in .sea
for self-extracting archive.
This is a file that will uncompress automatically on your computer.
Returning to the directory in Finland, I see a file called disinfectant34.sea.hqx.
The .hqx is a compression scheme used on the host computer that will be uncompressed before
I get the file, so I don't have to worry about it.
Since this looks like the correct file, I type get disinfectant34.sea.hqx.
The file type is binary, as it should be for any compressed file, and the file is downloaded
to my computer.
If you are directly connected to the internet, you can use more friendly software for anonymous
FTP.
One such program on the Mac is Fetch.
Let's use Fetch to find a picture of the Hubble to go with our shuttle and Hubble text files.
I'll open a connection to the Smithsonian's collection of online pictures at photo1.si.edu.
My username is anonymous, and I type my email address for my password.
I've also set the program to go to the slash pub directory by default.
I click on OK, and I'm connected to the Smithsonian.
Since nothing looks interesting in the slash pub directory, I go up a level to the root
or slash directory.
I choose the images sub-directory, and then open gif images.
I assume the Hubble picture is in the errand space folder, so I open it and get a list
of available images.
Scrolling down, I find hubble.gif.
Double clicking begins the download to my computer, just like the get command did with
anonymous FTP.
Clicking OK, the file begins to download to my computer.
The far right column indicates transfer rates and amount downloaded to my computer.
Eventually, the download is complete, and I have a drawing of the Hubble Space Telescope.
With the three basic tools, email, telnet, and FTP, you can access the resources of the
internet.
However, as you are probably beginning to realize, the internet is like a library without
a card catalog.
Without a search tool, we could spend a lot of time wandering and looking for the book
that we're interested in.
This is why more tools have been developed with the curious sounding names of Archie,
Gopher, Veronica, World Wide Web, and Waze.
Each of these tools is designed to make surfing the internet more productive.
Some bright folks at the University of McGill in Canada have created a program called Archie
that catalogs all the files available through the procedure we just learned, anonymous FTP.
The Archie database is updated every month, and it can be searched by you and I for titles
and keywords.
To access Archie, you should choose an Archie server that is closest to you.
For me, that would be archie.unl.edu.
I type telnet archie.unl.edu and log in as Archie.
No password is required.
Now let's say we wanted to search for more files on the Hubble Space Telescope.
The Archie search command is p-r-o-g.
I type prog hubble, and Archie tells me the search type is sub for subset, tells me my
queue position and my expected weight.
A short while later, Archie returns with a list of files or directories which have the
word hubble in them.
If I would have typed set search exact, I would only get files that contain exactly
and only the word hubble.
The Archie output gives the following information, the host computer name, whether the item it
found is a file or directory, the file protections, size, and what directory the file is located
in on the host computer.
If I want to download any of these files, I'd use FTP or fetch to connect to the host
computer, change directory to the given location, and get the file.
If you forget any Archie commands, you can always type help followed by the command that
you want help with, like set search.
Archie responds with the various options for the set search command.
You can even send email to the Archie server, archie at archie.unl.edu, with your search
command.
Archie will mail the results of your search back to you, which look exactly like what
we saw via Telnet.
The next three tools, Gopher, Waze, and WWW, are more recent internet tools that have attempted
to combine the resources of many information sources with more user-friendly interfaces.
Waze, and especially the World Wide Web, can provide very elegant interfaces, but require
ethernet connections and software on your machine to access the graphical interfaces.
Let's start with my favorite net surfing, or more properly, burrowing tool, Gopher.
Developed at the University of Minnesota, the Gopher software makes accessing other
computers and their software on the internet as easy as point and click.
With Gopher, you don't need to know IP addresses, or domain names, or FTP commands, or how to
access Archie.
To run Gopher from an ethernet connected Mac, I'll use Turbo Gopher.
When I start this free application, I'm connected to my local Gopher server, and a menu appears
which looks like this.
Almost all Gopher servers look similar.
Local Gopher server information is listed first, in this case, the Claremont Colleges.
Every college will have its own set of available information, from software, to articles, to
research, to campus events, and so on.
Further down in the menu, we see world events and information.
I'll select that folder.
Here we see arts and entertainment, consumer information, electronic journals, and so on.
Down near the bottom is the Usenet News.
Selecting the news folder, you see the same top level categories we saw earlier in the
news demonstration.
Returning to the top level directory, let's select the internet services icon.
Here you'll see many of the tools we've just learned.
We can access Archie, FTP, or Finger, another search and retrieval tool.
For now, let's select other Gopher servers and connect to the University of Minnesota
Gopher, the original Gopher server.
By double clicking, we've done something like Telnet, only the Gopher software takes care
of everything for us.
We just point and click.
The Minnesota server has Gopher and computer information, discussion groups, games, FTP
sites, and so on.
For now, I'll select other Gopher information servers.
This list begins to give you an idea of the enormity of the internet and the ease with
which Gopher allows you to burrow.
If I click on Africa, I get a list of Gopher servers available in Africa, likewise for
Asia.
To travel to Oxford, I select Europe, scroll down to the United Kingdom, and finally down
to a number of available Oxford Gopher servers.
I'll choose the Radcliffe Science Library, and now I can access Anthropology, Biology,
General Reference, and so on.
As you can tell, Gopher makes it easy to travel the world with a simple point and click.
Fortunately, Gopher also provides an Archie-like search utility called Veronica, designed to
help you find information on the worldwide network of Gopher servers.
By turning up the directory tree, I find, search Gopher space using Veronica.
I usually have good luck with the University of Manitoba system, so I'll select it and
try a search for solar energy.
Unlike Archie, Veronica allows Boolean commands like solar and energy, solar not energy, and
so on.
The Veronica help explains it all very well.
My search returns a number of titles, all of which sound interesting to me.
Double clicking on the first, I'm told it is a publication on solar technology, which
I can save to my disk.
Notice I don't need to know anything about Telnet or FTP or domain names, I just point
and click.
Let's use Veronica to find Stuffit, a popular utility for uncompressing files.
I'll search for Stuffit and SEA, since I want a self-extracting archive.
I don't want a compressed version, since I don't have my uncompressing software yet.
My search results in a long list of matching files.
I scroll down them and determine version 3.0.7 is the most recent.
I select one by double clicking and then save it to my hard disk.
The file transfer is monitored on the top left with number of bytes processed.
When the transfer is complete, I'll have my own copy of Stuffit expander.
I don't know where it came from, what computer or directory, all I've done is point and click.
Gopher can also be accessed from a modem.
Use your modem to connect to a machine with internet access.
Once connected, just type Gopher.
Your VT100 emulation will give you the same menu you saw earlier with numbers instead
of folders or files.
If I choose number 12, I can get to internet services just as I did before by pointing
and clicking.
Everything else looks pretty much the same.
Gopher's user-friendly interface allows you to seamlessly move from one computer to another,
but it may still be difficult to know which computer to move to or how to get there.
Use Veronica and feel free to play and explore with Gopher.
It won't be long until you can find your own Gopher burrows that contain information that
you're interested in.
Waze, or Wide Area Information Servers, serve a similar purpose as Archie and Veronica.
They help you find information, but Waze does so with an improved interface and more intelligent
search tools.
Waze is an entirely volunteer-supported system, and as a result, doesn't have access to all
the data available via Archie and Veronica.
If you have a machine connected to the ethernet, you can use a program like MacWaze or PCWaze.
You can also use Gopher to access Waze.
Initially, I'm asked which Waze servers I want to search.
I'll choose the two I have currently available and click OK.
This is the basic search screen.
In the first box, I type the search I want, say, Clinton and Healthcare.
MacWaze searches the servers I chose and comes up with a list of files which have Clinton
Healthcare in them.
They are scored on a 0 to 1,000 scale, where 1,000 has the most references to my search
words and is therefore believed to be the best reference for my search.
I'll choose the title with the 1,000 score.
The file is downloaded for me to view.
As I read it, I see this is a speech that Clinton gave to Congress on healthcare.
If I want, I can now save this to my computer.
Waze has other features described in the associated help files, which make it the most intelligent
search tool on the Internet.
Unfortunately, Waze is handicapped by a limited database.
The final Internet tool that I'll cover is the World Wide Web, or WWW.
The Web is an ambitious project which aims to link the resources of the Internet based
on a technology called hypertext.
Rather than try and explain what hypertext is, let's access the Web and try it out.
You'll understand as we explore the Web.
From a Mac or PC connected to the Ethernet, we could use NCSA's Mosaic to connect to
the National Center for Supercomputer Applications.
As data is downloaded to my computer, we are greeted by the NCSA Mosaic welcome screen.
Already, you can see the difference between Mosaic and every other Internet program we've
encountered.
Real-time color graphics are used.
As we scroll down from the welcome screen, you'll notice blue underlined text.
Any time we see a highlighted word, all we have to do is click on it and we will be connected
to the computer which contains that information.
The so-called hypertext is like a pointer to additional information.
I'll select the blue phrase, NCSA Mosaic Demo Document, and I'm connected.
As I scroll down, we see answers to basic Mosaic questions like what is NCSA Mosaic,
what is global hypermedia, and so on.
As we read, Mosaic continues downloading graphics information to the computer.
The small blue and red icons are replaced with real graphics as the data arrives.
Watch as the data for these two icons arrives and we have pictures of the NCSA Director
and Vice President Al Gore.
If at any time I click on the house icon, I am returned to the so-called home page,
the initial welcome screen.
Scrolling down again, you'll notice the NCSA Mosaic Demo Document text is now red, indicating
that we've already looked at it.
Let's choose the next line, starting points for Internet exploration.
Again, you'll see the demo document is in red.
As I scroll down, numerous highlighted phrases point me to various points of exploration.
I can click on any of these to begin a World Wide Web Internet adventure.
With Mosaic, you can also create your own list of places to go.
Under Navigate, I'll choose Internet Resources Meta Index.
Again, more highlighted phrases act as pointers to more information.
We can also access the tools we've already learned.
Here are Waze, Gopher, and Telnet.
Selecting the Internet Resources Meta Map gives me a graphical representation of what's
available with Mosaic.
I'll choose What's New on Mosaic.
Scrolling down, I see a link to videos and MPEGs.
Sounds interesting, so I select it.
This appears to be a list of animations and pictures available at various sites.
The US Army Research Center, Astronomical Pictures in France, and so on.
Eventually, I reach an interesting-looking site at the University of Manchester in the
United Kingdom.
I click on the blue text and connect to the Manchester facility.
This site has various solid modeling animations, including a coffee cup, a human head, and
a flyover of the Caribbean.
Finally, I see the movie that I was originally interested in, a flyover of the Maxwell Mountains
in Venus.
I select the icon, and the movie is downloaded to my computer.
The upper left corner tracks the data transfer.
With the movie downloaded, I click Play and watch the animation unfold.
Notice that while surfing cyberspace with Mosaic, I never needed to know anything about
the names or locations of the computer that I was connected to.
I just click on the highlighted phrase, and all connections are made for me.
It is actually easy to get lost while you're using Mosaic.
If you lose track of where you are, you can click here.
Scrolling up will list where you've been in the order that you went there.
To go back, all you have to do is release your mouse on the page you want.
You can also use these arrows to go back one page at a time.
There is always the home icon to take you back to the home page.
Believe it or not, you can try the web over a modem by telnetting to info.cern.ch.
This site provides a text-based method for accessing the web.
Instead of blue highlighted phrases, there are numbers next to the hypertext.
I'll choose number three, places to start exploring.
And number three again for service types.
Here we can see we can access any of the tools that we've just learned.
Waze, News, Gopher, Telnet, FTP, and others.
I type B to go back up one page to the general overview.
Next, I choose number one to view the virtual library.
Each of these links is organized by category and will connect me to the associated computer.
Aeronautics, Anthropology, Astronomy, Chemistry, Computing, and so on.
Scrolling down further, we reach the more important items like number 47, Tarot cards.
Let's see, my personal reading.
Hmm, interesting.
Well, anyway, at any time I can type help to find out where I am and what commands are available to me.
I've been transferred to a computer at UCLA from my starting point at the European Particle Physics Laboratory.
So this text-based version gives me much of the functionality of Mosaic without the fancy graphics.
In the last half hour, we've covered all the major Internet tools.
Email, FTP, Telnet, Archie, Veronica, Gopher, the Web, and Waze.
Don't be surprised if you're feeling a little overwhelmed.
The Internet is an overwhelming entity that is growing and changing constantly.
But you should have a basic understanding of all the tools required to do your own surfing.
And surf or burrow, you should, and explore the Internet.
But you may be wondering, where do you go to connect to the Internet?
How do you FTP or Gopher?
Email is available from a large variety of commercial dealers.
As of May 1994, Delphi is offering FTP and Telnet service,
America Online is prototyping Gopher, and CompuServe promises to provide similar services by mid-1994.
If you have access to any college or university computer, chances are they have full Internet connections.
So all you need is an account on their system or a modem and terminal emulation software to call in.
There are also a growing number of public access numbers or P-dial services,
which allow you to call in and for a fee, access the Internet.
Take a look at your local classified section or yellow pages for a listing of P-dial providers,
bulletin boards, and community free nets, which may offer Internet access.
Fees may range from $10 per month to $2,000 per month, depending on your needs and the number of users.
Most individuals will use commercial providers and bulletin boards,
whereas companies or schools may look to slip or dedicated lines for more high speed access.
Once you've entered cyberspace, you'll undoubtedly be amazed at the size and complexity of the Internet.
It is very important that as the Internet grows,
we all follow some simple guidelines to keep Internet performance up and restrictions down.
Please keep the following guidelines in mind.
The Internet resources are provided as a courtesy to you from many institutions.
Don't abuse your privileges.
Avoid the Internet prime time.
Don't FTP Monday through Friday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Avoid flaming.
Email is public.
Many, many people may read what you write.
Even private messages get transferred between many computers.
Don't write anything you wouldn't want on the front page of the newspaper the next day.
Remember, a flaming message could be forwarded and read by many people.
Look at frequently asked questions and archives before asking basic questions.
If you're new to a listserv like the list on Homebrew,
get an index before asking obvious questions like,
where do I get a beer kit?
Remember to send commands to the listserv and letters to the list.
To minimize listserv messages, avoid using the automatic reply button for email when possible.
Respond privately to individuals to minimize the network traffic.
Read a book and ask questions.
This is a 45-minute video which gives you the basics.
A book will help fill in the gaps and give you more specific information.
Send your comments and suggestions on this videotape to nightdave at aol.com.
And finally, enjoy and explore the wealth of the Internet.
Catch a cyberspace wave.