By U Khin Maung (A retired diplomat)
What’s the internet?
- Today the world is witnessing ever-advancing Information Technology or IT, and IT applications can benefit the users immensely and greatly. So, we can say IT today has become something we can’t do without. We have IT tools such as computers, the Internet, electronic mail or e-mail and English language, etc.
- You may wish to ask me, what is the Internet? It’s a big question, nay it is the question of the day. To answer this, let me start with the most straightforward and simplest definition. The Internet is the network for the transmission and exchange of information. But younger people, with their tendency to shorten words, call it the Net. People who don’t know anything about it, but pretend to be experts call it “Super Highway” or such. And people who like to be cool and hip call it “cyberspace”, people who like to be prophetic call it the technological revolution. “However, technical people tend to stick to one word, the most accurate definition, the “Internet”.
The indistinguishable Internet
- “At present, a large majority of people talk about the Net as though it is some mysterious creature, an interesting novelty and a rather peculiar concept that isn’t a part of daily life. They might fling web addresses from advertisements and e-mail addresses on business cards, but it is quite easy to imagine a world without it.
- In the “here and now” the Internet is useful, but it is essentially a hobby, a pastime and most of all an experience. In the future, it will seem to be a practical tool and a necessary convenience. Just like a telephone or a microwave, although you could probably do without them, a practical tool, and a necessary convenience. Just like a telephone or a microwave, although you could probably do without them, they are in nearly every home, and most people use them every day.
The Internet and Real Life
- Well, I am sure, you cannot define this “network of networks” in a sentence, a page, a chapter or even a book. It’s like a virtual country. Although its many different parts have certain areas of commonality you can’t define IRC in the same way as UseNet: any more than you could say that Johannesburg is the same as Cape Town or LA is the same as San Francisco.
Real Life
- The Internet is part of real-life and it’s here to stay. The people who you type to on the Internet are not really any different to those you speak to every day of the week. What it does offer, however, is a means by which people can communicate in not only a much more efficient, but for now at least, a much more personal way, I would say categorically that is its greatest benefit. In conclusion, I would like to quote, Mr Kofi Annan, former United Nations Secretary-General, has said, “the Internet is the fastest-growing instrument of communication in the history of civilization and it may be the most rapidly disseminating tool of any kind ever.”
- Whatever your age, you should go on learning modern techniques, including IT tools. In any sense, no educative process is ever the end, it is always the beginning of more education, more learning, more living.1° Knowledge is power. Ignorance of Information Technology is no excuse in this age.
SOURCE: INTERNET
CULTURE IN EASY STEPS BY
MR JOHN SMITH.
(1) do without = forgo, manage without
(2)forgo (VT) = go without, relinquish, omit or decline to take or use (pleasure etc)
(3) ling (VT) = to move suddenly and violently, rush, dash
(4) cool = (slang) very good, pleasuring, excellent.
(5) hip = (slang) fashionable, stylish, sophisticated
(6) virtual (adj) = being such practically or in effect, although not in actual fact or name (a virtual impossibility)
(7) IRC = Internet Relay Chart. It is probably the most cultured of any method of communication on the Internet.
(8) UseNet = Users’ Network. The User’s Network is known by several different names. e.g., “Usenet,” “news” and “newsgroups”.
(9) cyberspace = It’s the electronic infrastructure of the late 20th century Cyberspace encompasses a virtual universe of ideas and information.
(10) Word power made easy by Norman Lewis.
TO BE CONTINUED
