Meet the Internet
By Steve Wilent

The Internet is a worldwide network of computers that was first used in the late 1960s to allow universities, the military and other research organizations to communicate with each other. Today you can use this so-called World Wide Web to visit the "websites" of millions of companies, government agencies, universities and other organizations. A count of Internet sites in January 2001 found nearly 109 million sites. The good news is that, with a little practice, "surfing" the web is easy. You access the Internet with a computer, a modem, and telephone line or some other connection (cable TV line, satellite dish or computer network connection). These days, you can even use a cell phone. You'll also need an Internet service provider (ISP) to whom you pay a fee for providing Internet access. On your computer you'll use a browser, the software that lets one computer access the Internet and its sites. The most popular browsers are Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Internet sites are like magazines: they are collections of "pages" of information, except that you view them on a computer screen and turn pages with a mouse. A home page is something like a magazine cover and a table of contents. You click on underlined words or images called "hyperlinks" to go to other pages or move to another site. Websites can present text, graphics, video, animations, music and other media, including advertising. To go to a website, you either click on a link to it or type the website addresses into your browser. The address for the popular online bookstore, Amazon, is www.amazon.com, for example. Willamette Industries is www.wii.com. Every web address begins with "http://", which stands for HyperText Transfer Protocol, but you do not need to type it in-the browser will automatically do that for you. The last three letters of the web site address tell you what type of organization owns the site: