As we approach the 21st century, a new means of communication is emerging.
This technology uses computer networks to link people on every continent.
If we are destined to live in a global village, one day we will all be connected to the Internet.
Okay, some people describe the Internet as the prototype for the information superhighway,
but I just don't get it.
You know, this information superhighway stuff sounds like a lot of superhype to me.
Well, of course it is, but the Internet does represent a new form of communication, and
this is the best part.
You don't have to be a computer geek to take a spin on it.
Hey, watch it, John.
Some of my best friends are geeks.
The Internet show is made possible by support of the Compact Computer Corporation, through
the Compact Foundation, developing technology for developing minds, and by annual financial
support from viewers like you.
Oh, John, watch that.
Oh.
You know, just because we're talking about the Internet and the data superhighway doesn't
mean we've got to bore people with talk of on-ramps and off-ramps and all that stuff.
Of course not.
Let's just say it's a way to connect to people all over the world.
You can learn new things, you can have fun, you can use resources in far away places.
Oh, John.
Hold the wheel.
Sorry.
Are you ready?
Gosh, I guess so.
I'm Gina Smith, and I'll be one of your Internet tour guides.
I'm John Levine.
Together, Gina and I will be offering some driver's edge for the information superhighway.
We'll be guiding, no, driving you non-geeks on the world's largest computer network,
the Internet.
We'll be explaining to you how it works.
We'll show you how some people are using it, but most importantly, we'll show how you can
begin using it yourself.
John, that's our exit.
We're headed for the Fondren Library on the campus of Rice University here in Houston.
This is really appropriate since the ability to reach university resources like this library
here is one of the major reasons for the Internet.
Academic institutions around the world are making their storehouses of information available
on the Net.
Students at Rice can easily reach the Internet through a campus-wide computer network.
For example, they can search for books in this library without even leaving their dorm
rooms.
Furthermore, Rice has created a regional computer network that allows computers here on campus
to reach the rest of the Internet and vice versa.
Now, maybe you've read or heard about the Internet, but you're still not exactly sure
what it is.
Well, if that's the case, don't worry.
In no time at all, you'll be able to impress everyone with your amazing techno-savvy.
The first thing you need to understand is what a computer network is, and that is simply
a bunch of computers linked together so they can communicate and share information.
The Internet, on the other hand, is a collection of computer networks on a local, regional,
national, and even international level.
Put simply, the Internet is just a network of networks.
Simple the Internet isn't, but using it can be rather easy.
In some ways, it's a lot like your car.
You don't have to know how every single part works in order to drive to some wonderful
places.
All you need to use the Internet are a computer and a network connection.
That connection could simply be a phone line and a modem like this one.
A modem is just a device that lets your computer communicate over a phone line.
Oh, and you'll also need an Internet account, but we'll explain more about that later.
Oh, and one other thing.
There is no Internet corporation.
No one owns the Internet.
No one group controls or finances it.
It's the result of a cooperative effort by a lot of organizations and people, at least
most of the time they cooperate.
Now, at some points, we might find ourselves lapsing into the jargon of the Internet.
And if we do that, don't worry.
We affectionately call it geek speak.
When we do, we'll sound the nerd alert.
And that's when we'll explain in plain English what we're talking about.
For example, a nerd is someone whose life is focused on computers and technology.
But a geek is someone whose life is focused on computers and technology and likes it that
way.
We'll have plenty to explain and plenty to talk about because the Internet is full of
neat stuff.
The variety on the Internet is one of its most incredible aspects.
And there are literally hundreds, if not thousands, of neat things you can do on it.
For example, just say you have a trip planned to Paris and you want to know how to get around
on the metro.
That's the Paris subway system.
A man named Pierre David set up a way for you to connect with his computer in Paris.
Ask how to get from point A to point B on the metro and get an answer.
For example, here we have a map of Paris with the Eiffel Tower being here, Montmartre where
I want to go, over here.
Click on this screen here.
I'm coming from the Eiffel Tower, going to Montmartre, and it tells me it'll take 25
minutes.
I take line six, then I take line eight.
I'm all set for my trip.
Talk about pre-planning.
He also has subway maps for New York, London, and a lot of other major cities.
Another neat thing is keeping up with friends in faraway places.
Just suppose you wanted to send a message to a friend in Hong Kong.
Well, you can use electronic mail on the Internet and your friend can be reading your message
on the computer a few minutes later.
You can check out all kinds of graphic images on the Internet.
For example, lots of people translate photographs into computer images that you can display
on your machine, but I'm partial to some Internet comic strips.
Some people call them NetTunes.
Here's one of my favorites called Dr. Fun.
Now here's something seriously neat.
It's called the Online Career Center.
It has career information and a database of all kinds of jobs from all around the country.
The center is run by a nonprofit cooperative of major companies in the U.S.
Or maybe you want to pick up a little spare cash and get rid of some of that junk around
the house.
Well, there are even places on the Net to do that.
Hey, John, I saw you write that address down.
Don't lie.
We have a lot of other neat things to show you, including how you can pick up free software
for your computer.
That's coming up later as we demonstrate just how easy it is for you to become an internaut.
Oh, this isn't a hard one.
An internaut is someone who travels the Internet, boldly going where, well, millions of people
have gone before.
An internaut is the cyberspace equivalent of an astronaut.
Cyberspace was a term invented by a science fiction writer to describe a fictional environment
where computers and people lived and worked together.
On the Internet, cyberspace means roughly the same thing.
It includes the computers, the network connections, and the software and computer data that make
up the Net.
Okay.
Now that we know what these words mean, we thought it would help to explain a little
bit about how the Internet works and how it came to be what it is.
The predecessor of the Internet was a child of the Cold War, first developed by the Defense
Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency, or ARPA, partly to ensure that data communications
could survive in case of a nuclear attack.
Founded in the late 1960s, ARPANET first connected four computers at California and Utah campuses
using a new networking technique.
It allowed researchers to run programs on remote computers.
Later, other research institutions and military sites were added.
The idea was that even if one part of the system were damaged, the rest would still
function and it worked.
By 1990, the network, by then known as the Internet, had developed to the point where
ARPANET was no longer a significant part of it.
So ARPA dropped out and organizations such as the National Science Foundation started
maintaining the Internet.
And for the first time, commercial users began joining it.
The story of the Internet is still unfolding.
Today, there are over a million computers and more than 20 million people on the Internet
and it's growing at something like 10 percent every month.
People on every continent...
Including Antarctica use it.
The people on the Internet use it for their businesses, they use it for their studies
and they even use it for fun and games.
They also use all kinds of computers from PCs and Macs and Amigas all the way up through
giant super computers.
But they all use the same networking technique.
It's called packet switching and it works sort of like our transportation system.
Journalists are hyping you day by day, information highway is your name they say.
Now let's pretend for a moment that our information super highway quartet is really a message
that we're going to send across the country on the Internet.
All four of the Golden Throats have laryngitis and have had to cancel out of New York tonight.
I said we'd fill in for them.
That is pretty short notice.
How fast can we get to New York?
How fast can we get to the airport?
Within the confines of their own city, transport is pretty easy since the roads they have to
take are all connected.
That's why their car has no trouble negotiating the route to the airport hub.
In the same way, a computer file has no trouble reaching its destination on a local computer
network because such networks are designed to accommodate movement of files.
Once our file reaches an Internet hub, the switching computer may assign parts of it
to different paths because routes are too full to accommodate the entire file all at
once.
So the file is divided into packets of information.
Everything else was booked, you have to fly to Denver, change planes, fly to Chicago,
change planes again.
Because our quartet hasn't made travel arrangements in advance and the planes are nearly full,
they have to split up too.
Members of our quartet board planes that take different routes also, but they all arrive
at the same destination.
On the Internet, a computer reassembles the message so you can use it.
Our quartet reassembles too, and that's an illustration of how the Internet moves data
from one place to another.
Now that we've come in for a landing, when Internauts are online, what's their favorite
activity?
Now I bet that's a rhetorical question and now you're just going to have to tell us,
right?
That's what I'm here for.
You can do a lot of different things on the Internet, but more than anything else, people
use it for electronic mail, or email for short.
Email consists of messages sent through a computer, and on the Internet, you can send
email to the millions of people who have Internet addresses.
This includes people who have accounts with commercial services such as CompuServe, America
Online, Prodigy, Delphi, and the like.
In order to send mail, you have to first understand Internet addresses, which are based on the
domain naming system.
Let's show you what we found when we went out with our camera.
The abbreviated word on the right, GOV, means this is part of what's called a government
domain.
NASA is a sub-domain, as is JSC, which stands for Johnson Space Center.
Now see how the words are separated by a period or a dot.
Now notice that the name on the left is separated from the rest by an at symbol.
That's the username.
Sometimes people use their real names as usernames, and sometimes they use nicknames, like astronaut.
COM means this is part of the commercial domain, either a business that's directly on the
Net, or a provider of Internet access for business people.
In this case, IECC is the company providing access to the Net.
Another domain you'll see on the Net is EDU for education.
It's used by faculty, students, and administrators at educational institutions.
And if you send mail overseas, you'll find that addresses usually contain a two-letter
abbreviation for the country, such as TN for Tunisia, or UK for the United Kingdom.
Now e-mail has several advantages over regular mail, or snail mail, as the internots like
to call it.
One of the biggest advantages is that messages reach their destinations, what we call electronic
mailboxes, almost instantaneously.
Let me show you.
Now I can bring up my mail here, and you can see I have a message from a coworker who wants
to see if there's a day next week I can fly in for the budget review meeting.
Well, I hate budgeting, and so I'd better reply right away.
I can do that just by clicking on this reply button here, and I'm going to make up some
sort of excuse, sorry, I have the flu.
Maybe he'll buy it.
Now I can also insert information from his message, so he'll remember what I'm talking
about, you see include original, and put it right here, and I can send it along.
And he should be getting it right about now.
Now he knows when I want to meet with him, which is definitely not next week or any time
soon, and it all happened within a minute or two.
Even though he's in New Jersey, and I'm here in Texas.
If other coworkers need to see that message, you can with just a few clicks or keystrokes
send it on to them.
Or maybe you want to send the same message to a number of people.
That is no problem.
And you can attach computer files to your notes so you can forward a lengthy letter
without having to retype it.
That means that email really is much more efficient than regular mail or faxes.
But there is one thing we should point out, and that is that your computer screen may look
a lot different from what we've shown you here.
We've shown you screens that use color and graphics, but many services on the internet
are text-based and may just appear in black and white, like this screen we're showing
you here.
It really all depends on who's providing your internet access and on what software you're
using.
The internet has many different looks, but whatever the screen, the concepts are more
or less the same.
Let's look in a little more detail at what's involved in sending and receiving electronic
mail.
I've switched to my mailbox here, and what do you know, here's a message from Doug.
So I'll click on the View button here, light up this message, and it says, Gina says she's
too sick to come to the meeting.
Can you come instead?
Well, how about that?
So now I specifically click on Reply.
That's addressed it.
It says to D. Evans, which is his electronic mail address, has a topic about the budget
meeting.
So now I'll just type in an answer.
I'll see how she feels tomorrow.
I don't have to sign it.
It automatically puts my return address on it, so I send it.
Before I do anything else, let's just take a quick look and think, Gina didn't look so
sick.
I'll make a new message here and send it to her.
So I have to address this one specifically.
This goes to Gina.
Then I have to set a subject.
How sick are you?
And type in a message here, Doug says you called in sick, you looked OK kayaking yesterday.
Before I send this off, I want to make one more change.
I'm going to send a copy of it to myself to keep a copy for my files.
Set that.
So now I'm sending it to Gina, sending a copy to myself, set the subject, and send it off.
So that's really all there is to sending electronic mail.
It's as simple as that.
People like email because it changes the way they communicate for the better.
In West Virginia, junior high students in the small and isolated town of Harts used
email on the internet to get help with challenging science projects.
The students love the internet.
They love to communicate to people all over the country, all over the world.
Eighth graders in Carol O'Connell's class at Harts Junior Senior High participated
in a program called Science by Electronic Mail that was sponsored by the Marshall University
School of Medicine.
They conducted experiments with the help of scientific mentors who had agreed to communicate
with the students by email and to provide guidance.
Even if you're in a big city, how many times do you meet an astrophysicist that you can
talk to about black holes or talk to about their research and find out what they do?
The mentorship was wonderful because they found out, yes, these people are real people.
They just went to school.
They have an education and they're working on something important in their lives, and
I can do this too.
In one project, the students measured blood pressure of male and female students at the
school.
They sent their results by email to the faculty and the medical student at Marshall University
School of Medicine in Huntington, West Virginia.
The medical professionals checked the results and then provided feedback via the internet.
At the completion of the study, the students learned that their female subjects had slightly
higher blood pressure rates, but for many students, the most significant thing they
learned was how to communicate over the internet.
The students also struck up friendships with other students as far away as Austria and
New Zealand via electronic mail on the internet.
Susan Demaswita, who helped lead the program, saw other benefits as well.
Working with these young people brought a lot of satisfaction in that in a small way,
hopefully I encouraged some children to seriously consider being a scientist or a physician
or an engineer.
And some children in this rather isolated part of our nation got a glimpse of a wider
world.
Most people use the internet for communications, but that can mean a lot more than just emailing
messages to friends.
One of my favorite parts of the internet is Usenet.
Let's say you're into world travel or bird watching or making beer.
Or ancient civilizations or talking about parenting relationships or maybe you're into
nude sunbathing.
I hoped you weren't going to mention that, but on Usenet you can read messages from and
send messages to people who share your interests, whatever they are.
Usenet has thousands of discussion groups on diverse subjects.
They're called news groups.
Now you can subscribe to any news group you like.
As for me, I'm partial to one on the environment listed as Sci.Environment and I get all the
messages posted to that group.
Let's look at what's waiting for me now.
I just click here on my news reader and you can see there are lots of messages here on
the environment.
People are commenting on isotope ratios and deep ecology and the conference in Geneva.
But here's one from someone who's seeking help on the Northwest forest fires.
And he says he's just looking for information and I can click here and see all the responses
and of course everybody is putting in their two cents worth.
It's pretty interesting to check out what people have to say about these things.
You can also post messages to news groups.
Keep in mind that posting an internet message is a lot like tacking up a message on a corkboard.
Everyone can see it and on the internet those people are all over the world so be prudent.
Now here's a news group I like.
It concerns telephone systems.
It's a little technical but the stuff can be interesting.
So I'll switch here and I'll click on its name which is comp.decom, originally datacommunications.telecom.
There's a few seconds pause while it goes and reads through the titles of all the lines
to make a list of them.
And here's a typical question.
Someone's wondering how many telephone companies own cross continental telephone lines and
they have an estimate here.
I can go through and find a few more messages.
Now I actually think I happen to know the answer that the number of transcontinental
telephone lines is 42.
Maybe it's right, maybe it's not, but I want to tell everyone.
So I'm going to press the post button.
I'm going to type in a suitable topic here and I'll type in my response here which is
I'm sure the answer is 42.
It'll automatically add in my signature.
I click on the post button.
There is a delay of a few seconds while the message is sent out to the network and as
soon as that box goes away, now that message is sent out and in a few hours people all
over the world will be able to see it.
It's as easy as that.
One thing you should know is that censorship is not a part of the internet culture.
In fact, technically speaking it's pretty much impossible.
That's why the internet might contain some material that seems offensive to you and it
also explains why you might get spammed.
Now spam as we all know is a meat related food product, but on the internet spamming
means sending thousands of copies of the same message to people all over Usenet.
Now some people have done it in the mistaken belief that it's an effective way to advertise,
but take it from me, it's not.
So because there's no censorship, you may find some newsgroups devoted to topics you'll
find offensive and the easy answer to this is just don't read them or at least don't
look at their pictures.
But the vast majority of newsgroups offer a wonderful way to communicate with people
all around the world on nearly every conceivable topic.
This communication can even have some influence on history.
For example, when Russian officials attempted a coup against President Gorbachev in 1991,
the internet played a crucial role in thwarting it.
The plotters struck while Gorbachev was on vacation.
They hoped to expand their limited support by controlling the flow of information to
the West and particularly to the Russian people.
They censored the news and most Russian media and restricted phone links to the West.
Television was reduced to playing just operas and old movies.
But the plotters forgot about a Russian computer network named Relkom.
Mikhail Gorbachev is now on vacation, he's undergoing treatment.
It was kind of, you know, when you see TV going up with all those faces reminding Stalinist
ministers, it's kind of a chilly feeling, like a flashback to the past.
Some of Yeltsin's helpers were running around the city trying to find photocopiers.
The first piece of paper we got was the first decree by Yeltsin, and we simply sent it to
the network and made copies they wanted when we got quite a lot of requests for more information
from people on the net.
We contacted Yeltsin's people and asked them to provide us regular information.
Vadim was glad to hear from friends in the West who wanted to help.
One was a California professor who used the internet to contact Relkom.
They asked me to just summarize the news as we were seeing it in the West, so I listened
to the radio and every couple hours I would make a summary, type that as an email message,
and then send that to Relkom, and then they would circulate it within the Soviet Union.
And at the same time I was doing that, a colleague, Jonathan Gruden, was in Denmark at the time,
and he was doing the same from that point of view.
Ordinary Russians also provided eyewitness reports to the engineers and technicians at
Relkom.
These stories, along with the Western media reports, began to provide a steady stream
of information to people across the Soviet Union.
Relkom workers also posted the decrees of Boris Yeltsin, even though Russian media was
mostly silent about Yeltsin's defiance.
Basically people who planned the coup were expecting that as soon as they say the mass
media they will create impressions they already won, and the regional officials will line
up to swear allegiance to them.
By providing alternative information, we made it clear that the question is still not decided
who is on the top.
President Gorbachev returned to Moscow and overcame the coup attempt, and the extraordinary
reform movement that led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union survived.
Another way to find groups of people who share your interests is through mailing lists, or
lists for short.
Lists serve pretty much the same function as Usenet.
People send messages back and forth to other people interested in the same topics, but
with lists the messages are delivered straight to the electronic mailboxes of the recipients.
For example, here's a list called Dairy Elle.
It's a list of interests to dairy farmers.
There's topics on flies in the barn, milk marketing, diseases that cows get, and lots
of other topics that actual dairy farmers, of whom there are a surprising number on the
net, are interested in.
Subscribing to this list is very simple.
All I have to do is send a brief email message to the list administrator.
So here I send a message to the administrator, which is named listserv at umdd.umd at the
University of Maryland.
The subject doesn't matter.
And the contents of the message is, subscribe, Dairy Elle, and my actual name.
Send this off, and now I'll get all the messages from that list.
I subscribe to lots of other mailing lists as well.
Two others I like are called Frequent Flyer for people who fly a lot, and one called ComPriv
about the future of the internet as it moves to private commercial operation.
Another great example is a list for movie reviews and comments.
But watch out.
Some active lists could dump as many as 100 pieces of mail in your mailbox every day.
Subscribe to a few lists, and you might end up canceling the rest of your life just so
you can keep up with your email.
Fortunately, it's just as easy to unsubscribe as it is to subscribe in the first place.
Nobody has a complete list of all the mailing lists on the internet.
I don't think there is a complete list of anything on the net.
But a good place to start is with a computer at MIT.
Its email address is mailserver at rtfm.mit.edu.
Let's send it a message.
I create a message.
I set the address.
The subject doesn't matter.
Now I'll send it this message, send usenet slash news dot answers slash mail slash mailing
dash lists slash part one.
In this case, you have to be careful that the message says exactly what we're showing
you here, because we're not sending this to a person.
Really, we're sending it to a very simple-minded computer.
This message will get the first part of the list of mailing lists and the email address
of each list administrator.
In this long list, you can get an idea of what's out there.
Later, you can ask the computer for parts two, three, and so on from the extensive 14-part
list.
The catalog of lists at MIT is updated every month, so you may want to check it every now
and then for new lists.
And if you don't find the topic you're just dying to discuss, well, you can start your
own mailing list.
Sometimes, leaving a message on a computer just doesn't cut it.
You want instant feedback.
Well, the internet has something for that, actually a couple of somethings.
One is called chat.
Chat lets you talk online with other people who are online at the same time.
All kinds of people.
Jennifer Sutton works at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C.
Because she has been deaf since she was 12 years old, Jennifer sometimes has difficulty
communicating with the majority of people who are not deaf.
Often, they can't use American Sign Language, and it's not always possible for Jennifer
to read lips.
But Jennifer has found a new way to communicate with people at work and at home.
Gradually, I started hearing more and more about internet, and I decided to try it out.
I've used it a lot for email and a little bit to talk to people.
Sometimes I use IRC or talk or something like that.
Jennifer has met literally hundreds of people on the net, people who talk to her by typing
messages on their computers.
I think IRC really helps me to develop new interests and new contacts.
I've met a lot of people through IRC who are working in the same field or have the same
beliefs.
Most of the time, people don't realize I'm disabled.
I just type, they type, there's no way for them to know that I have any kind of disability.
It never really comes up unless a person asks for my phone number, and then it comes up,
but the rest of the time, never.
Quite a few deaf people use the internet, but you're not likely to know it when you're
chatting with one unless he or she decides to tell you.
The most widely used chat program is something called the Internet Relay Chat, or IRC.
If your system permits, you simply type IRC or you click on it like this to start it right
up.
Once you're in, you'll often find hundreds and hundreds of simultaneous conversations
going on.
To get a list of what the topics of these conversations are, you simply type slash list
and enter to get a list that is here in this little box.
Now I happen to know that there's a discussion group here called TV Show, and I open it up
and you can see there are people here talking.
Just to let everyone know I'm here, I'll say hello, are you there, and we'll see if we
get an answer.
You know, this is a lot like the old CB radios, because what you're really doing is all talking
to each other on the same channel for a while and people come in and have your arguments,
etc.
And there are a lot of other commands you can do here.
You can find out what they are simply by typing slash help at the prompt, and it's as easy
as that.
Chat is mostly used for gossiping, which can be fun, but some of the people whose job it
is to keep computer servers up and running regard chat as a computer resource hog and
not very useful.
For that reason, some systems don't provide any chat software at all.
However, you can reach chat programs by using another program called Telnet.
We'll tell you more about Telnet later.
Besides chat, you can use another program called Talk to communicate with others.
Talk is sort of like making a personal phone call to an individual, except it's by computer.
Now, to do this, you simply type talk plus the other person's name and address.
In this case, I'm calling my friend Tom, and he happens to be at Rice University, which
is where we are.
And let's see if he picks up.
This is kind of like a telephone ringing.
There he is.
He's talking to me.
He says, hi there.
Hi.
Hello, yourself.
What's for lunch?
And hopefully, it's not pastrami.
Now, we each have a split stream, and we can see what we both type.
Of course, in many instances, I'm not sure that this is better than talking on the phone.
In fact, obviously, it's not.
But it is a great way to save on long-distance charges, particularly on overseas calls.
And it can help if the other person doesn't speak your language very well.
Is work piling up at the office?
Is that report due tomorrow?
Well, hey, it's time to take a break.
And the internet has some serious time-wasting fun available.
First, how about a joke we can tell the boss when he gets just a little testy?
One news in that news group is called wreck.humor.
But often, the funny quotient is a lot higher in another news group, wreck.humor.funny.
Let's take a look at what's in that group today.
Here's a bunch of jokes.
Let's take a look at this one.
I'm on a bus.
The driver announces that smoking is prohibited and punishable by a fine of several hundred
dollars.
Suddenly, a baby starts crying.
Come on, kid.
You're six months old.
You can make it without a cigarette.
Well, tastes vary.
But you get the idea.
Has anyone ever said you live in a fantasy world?
People create their own on the internet all the time, and they use them to role-play with
other internats.
Maybe you remember a game called Dungeons and Dragons.
Well, a generic term for these kinds of games on the internet is multi-user dungeons, or
MUDs for short.
Somewhere in the world, someone has devised an artificial social environment on a computer.
It might be in the year 3000 on the planet Jupiter, or it might be the ninth century
AD in a mystical land on Earth.
Good players can join that society and take roles within it.
They interact with other players.
Many of the games involve combat and other forms of violence.
You may face trolls and other horrible creatures in order to gain the hidden treasure or the
fair damsel.
But other MUDs are much more peaceful, and you don't have to worry so much about being
killed all the time.
In fact, one thing you should definitely remember is that this fantasy world is in your own
head.
In reality, you're only typing words on a computer screen.
Just keep telling yourself that, no matter what.
I like to jolt myself back to reality with a caffeine-laden soft drink.
And there's something of a tradition about this among computer geeks.
Some like their fizzy water so much that they have engaged in some serious time-wasting
and created online soda machines.
Here, for example, I'm going to connect to a machine at Carnegie Mellon University in
Pittsburgh.
Looks like it's empty.
Must have been a long night last night.
If you're a serious hacker, you want to know if the machine is out of your favorite beverage,
or maybe you've set up a charge account so that, even if you're out of change, you can
still buy a cold one.
Or if you're into coffee, there's a well-known online coffee pot at Cambridge University
in England.
It has a video camera trained on it all the time.
So just in case I need a cup during my next visit to England, there's one cup left, I'd
better hurry.
Every community has its own standards of behavior and manners, and the internet is no different.
The first thing you should remember is that communicating by computer has its own limitations.
Because you're writing rather than speaking, people don't get to see your facial expression
or hear your tone of voice, and that could change the meaning of the actual words.
So pay careful attention to what you write and how you write it.
For example, messages written in all caps are taken as though you're shouting.
That seems awfully rude.
And speaking of rude, there's flaming.
Flaming.
Unusually pointless and excessive outrage in electronic mail has become so common that
it's now got its own name, flaming.
If you receive an angry message, you've been flamed.
Unfortunately, a few people seem to enjoy sending these kinds of messages.
My recommendation is that even if you get a really offensive message and you just have
to reply, don't.
In 20 years of using electronic mail, I have never regretted not sending an angry message,
and I have regretted sending a few.
Now why would anyone send an angry message to you?
Well, there are a few things that make internets grind their teeth, and one common mistake
that newbies make all the time is to...
Newbies.
That's a term for newcomers to the internet.
Like most newcomers to any society, newbies tend to make a few social mistakes or violate
a few customs.
And, of course, people who got there slightly ahead of a newbie sometimes like to lord it
over them.
Okay.
Now, a common mistake that newcomers make is to leap into newsgroup discussions without
first observing the dynamics of a particular group.
What's an acceptable comment to one group may not be acceptable to another.
It's best to read what others are saying for a while before you join in.
Hanging around like this is called lurking.
Remember, lurking is good.
Another bit of netiquette revolves around FAQs, or frequently asked questions.
Nearly every Usenet group on the internet has a list of FAQs and the answers to them.
While people on the internet can be extremely helpful, they really don't like wasting their
time answering the same question that's been asked over and over before.
So please, read those FAQs.
If your question is computer-related, you could read the manual first, and if you can't
get the answer that way, then ask.
And if you want to send a message with a little humor in it, there's a way to show that intention
too.
You can type what we call a smiley.
Here's one.
Now just turn your head sideways, and you can see how it works.
There's a variety of these things.
They're called emoticons, and lots of intranauts use them.
Okay.
We've told you about newsgroups, about chat and talk.
Now if what you really want is to find and get cool stuff like free software on the internet,
well, you might need a gopher, or maybe Archie.
And if you like Archie, you should definitely get to know Jughead and Veronica.
The internet is growing so rapidly that it's difficult to keep up with all the resources
available to us intranauts.
That's why it's a great idea occasionally to surf the net, just to see what's out there.
And once you find something neat, you'll probably want to bring it home.
One major internet surfboard is a program called Gopher.
It's called that either because it will gopher files on the net, or maybe because it was
created at the University of Minnesota where the mascot just happens to be a rodent known
as the golden gopher.
It's easy to reach Gopher on most internet providers.
You simply click on Gopher like this, or if you have a text-based screen, you want to
type it and press enter, and a menu comes up.
Now, Gopher is called a menu-based program because it always shows you a list of the
items that you can possibly choose from.
Okay, let's travel through Gopher space to Oxford University.
Gopher space is the total of all the information you can get by using Gopher.
And since Gopher is a very popular service, Gopher space is a huge and expanding part
of the internet.
Anyway, at Oxford University in England, they have a magnificent library.
Now they're making some of the world's great books even more available through a really
cool Gopher site.
They've stored many of the great works of literature in a computer.
They have the writings of Shakespeare, H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, on and on.
So let's go there, go to the Oxford libraries, some bibliographic information, the catalog
of electronic texts, and let's look at the actual catalog.
And let's choose something that's not too large, like, say, the Charge of the Light
Brigade by Tennyson.
I click on it here, and in a few seconds it should pop up on the screen where I can read
it directly.
If I don't want to read it on the screen, I can copy it to my own computer.
And here it is, half a league, half a league, half a league onward.
I'm interested in traveling to Wales, so I'm going to see what I can learn about that
part of Great Britain by using Gopher.
Now, when using Gopher, it's likely you'll get another menu, which will lead to another
menu, which will lead to another menu, and so on, until maybe, just maybe you'll actually
reach what you're looking for.
Sometimes you may never reach what you're looking for, but along the way you can find
several useful things you never would have thought to look for, like this.
Here we have the A to Z of public houses in the Aberystwyth area.
We have a restaurant guide.
We have a guide to recommended local real ale pubs.
You know, if we're going to go to Wales, this sounds like some pretty useful information.
Town was born in the 13th century when they built the castle, the English built the castle.
And the row was arrived in the 1850s, and the college itself started in the 1870s.
We're on the prom in Aberystwyth on rather a windy day.
Town's got about 10,000 people in it, and students in term time, and holiday makers
in the summer.
Jeremy Perkins works at the University of Wales in Aberystwyth.
He's also a member of the Campaign for Real Ale.
Real ale is easy to find around here, if you know where to look.
He does, and he's shared that information on the internet.
We are an educational establishment, so the main reason for having an information service
here has to be to provide information to staff and students about the university.
But it's always been in my mind that a function of a university is to encourage as many students
as possible to actually use computing during their time here.
And so I've always taken the approach that to have a bit of fun on an information service
is going to pull more people in, and hopefully after they've had a smile, they're actually
going to start using it for serious things.
Of course, Jeremy thinks real ale is a serious matter too.
I mean really, it's meant one has to visit every pub in the area over time to check them
out, to see what the landlord's like, to see how comfortable they are, to see how he keeps
his beer, which is obviously of key importance, and what range he's got.
I mean, there's an enormous range of real ale available in Britain, and people like
to have a change every now and again, so all that has to really be checked out.
You want one for yourself, seriously, yeah?
Yeah, sure.
A few years ago, the big brewers decided that real ale, like this marvellous pint, was too
much trouble, and they started to market what they called keg beer, which was pasteurised
deadbeering kegs served by carbon dioxide cylinder.
But that's when the campaign for real ale was formed, and bit by bit, consumers have
said, no, that's not good enough, that really is rotten old beer, and proper beer has come
back into the pubs, and that's one of the reasons I started this list.
So if you're looking for vital information like the best ale at restaurants in an area,
Gopher is usually the fastest and easiest way to find it.
And one of the most fun.
Gopher also lets you display files, copy them to your own computer, or mail them to yourself.
The biggest problem of Gopher is that since it's been so successful, people have created
many, many menus, so you can get a bit lost sometimes when you're looking around.
But some clever computer guys came up with another way to search Gopher space, a program
called Veronica.
Why is it called Veronica?
Well, someone once claimed that it stood for very easy rodent-oriented, net-wide index
to computer archives.
But I think they were just probably reading too many comic books.
Veronica works with that rodent, Gopher.
And with Veronica, you can conduct a word search of menu titles or file titles found
in Gopher space.
Let's say we wanted to check out what information is available on a medical problem, like, say,
back pain.
As you can see, I'm clicking here.
I'm going to connect here to a university in Germany.
And I've searched for back and pain, and pressing OK.
And what we're seeing here is a listing of articles and messages relating to back pain.
So you can see that Veronica will save you a lot of time in Gopher space.
Veronica lets you search all of Gopher space.
Her friend Jughead lets you conduct the same sort of search, but lets you restrict your
search to one particular part of Gopher space.
And if you like Veronica or Jughead, you'll really like Archie, another way to find stuff
on the net.
Some big and fast computers called Archie Servers search the net every night for information
scattered in computer archives around the world.
These files are available to people who call up and want to download them.
That means copying information or a program from a remote computer to your own.
Don't you think that horn is a little bit loud?
It's obnoxious.
Oh.
Well, anyway, lots of public domain software can be found on the net through Archie Servers
and then downloaded to your computer.
It's very simple to begin an Archie search, but you should know that Archie Servers are
usually busy during the day.
Also, you may want to make a couple of adjustments to Archie's settings before you begin.
We're going to click on Archie and we're going to search for a keyword.
You may want to place limits on this.
Here we're looking for education software.
You may also want to place some restrictions on the number of responses Archie gives you
since it sometimes finds an overwhelming number of files.
Once you're ready to search, you type the words for what you're searching, then click
on the search button as Gina has already done.
Archie will tell you how many other people are in line ahead of you and how long it thinks
your search will take.
Normally, though, because Archie is so popular, your search could take a long time, several
minutes, and it's really boring to watch a computer work.
So a way to avoid that is to send the Archie Server an email message with the necessary
commands to start your search.
That way, when it finishes, it just drops the result in your return email mailbox.
Now, Archie won't get a file for you.
It'll simply tell you where it is.
To transfer a copy of that file, you may want to use a program like FTP.
Let's download the program we found right now.
Now what we want to do is select FTP, or you might want to type it and press enter if you
don't have a graphic interface like this, and then you want to follow it with the name
of the computer that has the file you want.
FTP will make a direct connection and let you navigate the other computer's directories
and select files for transfer.
Oh, by the way, you can't look at the contents of the files until you get them to your own
computer.
When you connect, the computer at the other end will ask you for a username and password.
Many computers are willing to let anyone look at some of their files, and on these computers
you may log in as anonymous.
This is called anonymous FTP.
Another cool way to find stuff on the net is to use the World Wide Web, or is it sometimes
called the Web or WWW.
The Web is an attempt to organize information as a set of hypertext documents.
Hypertext.
Hypertext documents are documents linked to one another by keywords or graphic images.
Anytime you come to a keyword, you can jump to another document with additional information
on that subject.
The new document will also have hypertext links, so you can search for information in
an interactive manner.
Using hypertext is the strength of the Web and its limitation.
For example, here on my screen is a hypertext document.
It's the home page of the Information Systems Department here at Rice University.
I can click on text or on pictures on this screen to move to other places at Rice.
For example, exhibits about the campus, the founder, and the history of the university.
The links found in each document let you skip from one point of the net to another.
And the Web does all that work for you.
It's a neat way to do research, but the number of hypertext documents available on the net
is still somewhat limited, so you may find more on a subject in a gopher search.
Now if you're a control freak like my buddy John here, you'll love what I'm about to
tell you.
There's another service on the internet called Telnet.
It allows you to reach remote computers and control them with your computer.
You can run programs that the remote computer provides just as though your machine is a
terminal on it.
Let's try it out.
I'm going to telnet to the Library of Congress in Washington.
It's a wonderful library.
They have the largest collection of books in the world.
I just want to make sure they have all of my books in their catalog.
I tell it to look at the catalog, at books in English, tell it to look for books by me.
Here's a bunch of my books.
If I look again, it has a few more.
Well, it's got most of them, but it's missing a few.
Just as I suspected, there are a few books behind.
Well, I'll have to send them an email message about it.
Telnet is very simple to use.
I just clicked on Telnet, typed in the address of the computer at the Library of Congress
to get to it.
Then when I was done, I clicked on disconnect to exit from Telnet.
We've been telling you how cool the internet is, but there are some problems you should
be aware of.
You may encounter some of these problems and it's better for you to know about them now.
The first problem relates to ease of use.
Many first time users of the internet feel like strangers in a strange land.
Much of the net is based on the Unix computer operating system, and if you're familiar
with PCs or with Macintoshes, you'll need to learn a few new commands.
Another secret is that not all programs react consistently to your commands.
Some programs just don't translate very well from one type of computer to another, and
the people who make these programs are constantly tinkering with them, so slightly different
versions of one particular program may be in use on different parts of the net at the
very same time.
Also, various parts of the internet can often be hard to get to, and when you arrive there,
you may get the net equivalent of a busy signal.
The internet is growing so fast that its computer resources are becoming strained.
But at the same time, email is so easy to use that some people have been overwhelmed
by the volume of messages they get from friends and associates.
Earlier we mentioned the phenomenon of flaming, where people hiding behind the anonymity of
the internet tend to go overboard in expressing their outrage.
Well, there are a few people who use that anonymity to lie about who they are, and even
to engage in illegal acts.
But that's a tiny minority of the people on the net.
And despite these problems, the internet is well worth the trouble it can occasionally
cause you.
And using the net has gotten easier.
That's why millions of people, from scientists to business people to students, are using
it every day.
Well, there's this big crisis in cosmology right now, and we're on a long-term program
to try and get the data to resolve that crisis, which in the end may point to the existence
of another process other than gravity that has built the universe that we observe today.
Greg Bothan is one of many astronomers who want to determine why the distribution of
matter in the universe seems more clumpy or clustered than is predicted by the Big Bang
Theory.
This basic question has a lot of implications for science, because one possible explanation
is that there is another force in the universe of which man is unaware.
To help them understand this phenomenon, astronomers around the world are trying to measure what
the distribution of mass is in the nearby universe.
Dr. Bothan's team at the University of Oregon uses the internet to operate and retrieve
data from a telescope 10,000 miles away.
For years, Bothan regularly traveled to an observatory in Chile.
The Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory is one of the best places on Earth to gather
such data, but it's located in an isolated area, the foothills of the Andes Mountains.
Well, prior to the internet, one had to physically go to the facility, that involved 30 hours
of travel time at a cost of about $2,000, often to go there to sit under cloudy weather.
With the establishment of the internet, one can schedule time in advance, stay home, conduct
the observations remotely, and deliver the data back to your home site directly through
the internet.
Bothan analyzes the images while working at his desk.
He also uses the internet to check hourly satellite photos of weather conditions around
the observatory.
The end result?
He's a lot more efficient in gathering the data he needs.
And as more telescopes get on the internet, astronomers like Greg Bothan will find it
easier to study our universe.
Scientific research is an important use of the internet, but in the business world, the
net is fast joining the telephone, the telex, and the fax machine as a standard means of
communication.
While there's been some controversy over how a few businesses have tried to use the
net, most companies have found a way to offer goods and services without offending those
who think that advertising on the internet is inappropriate.
Flowers in cyberspace, it's a new enterprise for a traditional florist in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
Well, it was something new that had never been done before and we didn't really know
what was going to happen.
We've been real pleased with this.
We came online in February and by Mother's Day, this system was generating almost as
many orders as what we were receiving from our FTD wire service.
Anyone with the ability to receive graphic images via the internet can view a variety
of bouquets offered by Grant's Flowers.
Find something you like and you fill out an electronic order form telling where and when
you want them delivered.
Payment is by credit card.
Well, the biggest thing is it's convenient for people.
They don't have to leave their offices or businesses.
They don't have to go to the phone.
A phone is fine, but on the computer, they can see what they're buying.
We are able to fill the orders in-house if they're coming for a local delivery or we
use our FTD wire service for those orders anywheres in the world, really.
Grant's Flowers is part of an electronic mall created by a small internet provider in Ann
Arbor, John Zief, of Branch Information Services.
Zief's mall offers advertising from a variety of small businesses, including a bookstore,
a lawyer, and a company selling exotic teas.
I really feel we're on the edge of something.
When we started, we were making cold calls and trying to convince people to do this and
now they call us and we're growing very rapidly.
At Grant's Flowers and Greenhouses, they believe they have planted a seed which will
blossom into a major moneymaker.
To view the bouquets offered by Grant's Flowers requires a bit more than a plain vanilla internet
account.
You must have, at a minimum, what's called a slip or a PPP account.
Now what those initials mean isn't important, but with either account and software for receiving
graphic images, you'll find the internet is an even greater resource.
The software that we use to view the flowers is one of the coolest programs for internet
users.
It's called Mosaic, and although it's true that you're likely to see more advanced
internet using it, Mosaic actually makes the internet a lot more user-friendly and is really
good for beginners.
It's a program that works as a browser with the world wide web, letting you find information
more easily.
Second programs like it are the future of the internet.
These programs make it easier for non-geeks to use the net.
Okay, so what if you want to join the intrepid band of internauts as they search for the
golden fleece of cyberspace?
The golden fleece of cyberspace?
I mean, what if they want to get on the net?
That's better.
The first thing to figure out is whether you're already part of an organization that's already
on the net.
This could be a college or a school or maybe the corporation you work for.
Just ask.
But even if that isn't the case, most cities of any size have internet providers, companies
that will let you dial into their computer, which is linked to the internet.
A typical price for this is a flat fee of around $20 per month.
The Internet Network Information Center, or INTERNIC, has a hotline for information.
It's 619-455-4600.
They'll provide you basic information plus a list of the closest internet providers in
your area.
Oh, and one other thing.
You probably ought to buy a book on the internet to help you through any of the rough spots.
I think there are about a gajillion of them on the market.
In fact, maybe even John wrote a couple of them.
Part of the internet's future is wrapped up in technology.
The rest is sociology.
As the equipment linking computers on the net permits faster and faster connections,
the door opens for more use of graphics in full motion, film, video, and even live action
events.
Besides making the internet more attractive, heavier use of graphics also makes it a lot
easier to use.
This technology is available now, but it's just not that practical an option for many
users.
But this is changing.
Many telephone companies are beginning to offer digital phone lines for homes at more
affordable rates.
And a few cable television firms are also offering this service on a limited basis.
And the availability will only grow.
The internet also represents a new type of communication.
One that permits people in separate places to meet in a new territory called cyberspace.
It's an electronic landscape where people can interact, conduct business, and do whatever
they normally do elsewhere.
When one's access to it becomes widespread, the internet will likely turn what we call
the global village into the global street corner.
Predicting what's to come is hard, but when we think about the future, I think it's probably
worth looking at the present for clues.
For example, Telluride Colorado is a community that hopes it's wired for the future.
Telluride sits on the western side of Colorado's Rockies at an altitude of more than 9,000
feet.
It may be geographically isolated, but the small town is directly linked to a much wider
world because of the internet, and because of a community computer network called the
InfoZone.
The reason we created the project was with all the hype about information highways.
We felt we were a little information byway, a little off-ramp, and we're really concerned
about the social implications of an information society.
And rather than just talk about it, we decided to model what that might really look and feel
and taste like.
The Telluride Institute, a non-profit research group, helped fund the InfoZone.
It maintains the equipment to link Telluride and surrounding communities directly to the
internet.
It also provides public access sites.
The Steaming Bean Coffee House is one place where anyone may use the computer to reach
the InfoZone and the internet.
The InfoZone project has brought global internet connections here for local dial-up access
and also provided a community network that provides information about health services,
education, government, and other community activities, as well as a place to talk and
conference and have conversations about issues.
Like a lot of people who live either in or around Telluride, I have two or three jobs
to be able to afford to live here.
There are just so many ways of making money in town.
Peter Lert is an aviation and technical writer as well as a commercial pilot.
He uses the internet in all of his work.
As a writer in general, I get assignments over the internet via email.
Typically, I'll submit copy via internet email because, of course, in this day of electronic
typesetting, they would much rather have copy come in electronically than have to be keyed
in after it comes in on paper.
I get all of my weather briefings over the internet or via computer.
I do a lot of my flight planning and flight plan filing on the computer.
For example, right now, I'm working with some people and we're setting up an expedition
to Nepal next year with a motorized glider for some weather research, and we're corresponding
both among ourselves and with Nepal on the internet.
The county library is another public access site.
Anyone may use the computer, but frequent users of email are encouraged to open their
own internet accounts.
The library is an information source for the whole community, and without the internet,
we would be restricted to what we have right here in the library.
In a small rural community like Telluride, we really need to reach out and find out what's
in other communities, talk to other people, and get information from sources all over
the world.
Ms. Clark also says the internet connection has made a difference in her personal life
as well.
As a single person, it is hard to meet people in a small community like Telluride.
There are just not very many people here.
I found that I've met a number of people on the internet and formed some very nice relationships.
I happened to post an ad, actually, to one of the listservs called Alt Personals, and
I had about 40 people answer my ad.
Some people believe that communities like Telluride will become the norm in the future.
They believe that the internet will help create a new social landscape where people work,
learn, and maybe even fall in love.
The internet is a work in progress.
We can't tell you everything about it because it's changing every day.
That's right.
In fact, the best advice we can give you is get on it and start exploring.
Let's go.
The Internet Show is made possible by support of the Compact Computer Corporation, through
the Compact Foundation, developing technology for developing minds, and by annual financial
support from viewers like you.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.