What is the Internet?
While the internet is accessible to basically anyone anywhere, it most physically exists in the millions of servers housed in data centers around the world which store user data and host online apps and content. Although often used synonymously, the internet is not the same as the world wide web (web); the web is a large part of the internet but does not include things like email. The internet is a global network of networks, whereas, the web is a collection of information which you can access through the internet. Desktop applications, on the other hand, are not the internet. Word documents, PowerPoints, Excel spreadsheets, and pictures in photoshop, for example, are not the internet, but can easily be put on the internet if a user chooses to do so. According to Doug Dawson
At the highest level there are three distinct Internets today — the Internet of. people, the Internet of servers and the Internet of things. We are all familiar with the Internet of people, but we forget that a huge portion of web traffic data is machine-to-machine traffic. And soon, this is going to be swamped by the traffic from the Internet of things. Each of these three Internets coincide with each other only in the most basic levels of sharing the same system of IP addresses and similar web protocols. But other than that the three Internets are very different in how they function.
Looking at this through a lower level lens, however, the internet of today is made up of more than 40,000 different networks, so you could also say that this is the number of internets there are. The internet is becoming a one stop shop for everything you could ever need. All it takes is a google search to find any good or service you are looking for, and you can have it delivered to your home. You can find information, get the news, connect with people through social media, and even go to school through the internet.
The internet is alive in the sense that it is constantly growing and changing, but (to the best of my knowledge) not in the sense that it is self-aware. I love that the internet makes it so easy to connect with people and makes information so easily accessible, but, as we’ve seen in recent years, this can be dangerous. The ease with which false information can be spread and the willingness of people to believe anything they see has been a source of political polarization in the United States. Since no one controls the internet, anyone can share anything they want, which is a largely positive aspect of it, except when it comes to things like doxing, which can pose a very real threat to peoples’ safety. For the most part, the internet is a valuable tool that has changed many aspects of life since its inception, but it has a dark side too.
