My eighth wonder of the world - Internet

Internet is one of the most expanding things in the present. And after the other seven worlds wonders it’s my eighth wonder.

Why? Today it is the fastest way of sending and receiving a lot of information. For example you can buy much things – from computers, cars, books .. to simple pizza. You can also communicate with your friends and family from all parts of the world. It isn’t a problem to know the latest news about your American cousin. E-mail provides you easy way to connect with him. Ten or twenty seconds – and your messages are from Slovakia in United States of America. Or do you want information about Indian climate or weather forecast for next hour? Nothing is simplest. One click in program or one telephone by FreeTel (of course, it’s by Internet). And you know the answer.

Also, you can search things what you want. E.g., if you are searching anything about ancient worlds, simply write www.altavista.com, add your key words and click Search. Afterwards less than ten seconds you can see, in most of the cases, more than 10,000 pages with required word(s). And you can surf on all of them. Nobody says that it is all free. There are cases, when you’re asked for paying money. If you pay (e.g. by Visa), you get username, password and account to their databases. Or you can look for any encyclopædias, what can be more than 20 books, atlases together and also hundreds minutes of video, sound and thousands photographs. That’s all in one encyclopædia. They’re also available on CD-ROMs, but one of big pluses of Internet is its price. In many cases it’s zero. For CD you must pay ten, twenty dollars… but also hundred dollars, too.

There are also hackers, which could damage all the net if they want. For example, they send a lot of various e-mails to ordinary people. In those mails are viruses. When you open the file, attached with e-mail, there can be the virus. You open the file and virus starts his tour through your computer. Viruses can be very dangerous, but also very funny and useful. If the virus is already on your computer, there can be a simple way to repair it. You can run one of the antiviral programs. In 85% it can help you. E.g. Melissa or OneHalf are very “famous” in computer community.

Slovak Internet is now in Pampers. Really. US Internet level was yesterday there, we will be (maybe) tomorrow. An electronic business in Slovakia is like newborn. You can buy some books or TV at all.

But in USA they can make transactions on financial trades. Or they can choose and order any type of pizza on interactive Internet page, and after 20 minutes pizza is on their table. Payments are made from their electronic accounts.
There are many ways of connection to Internet. You can dial-up by modem. It is the cheapest way to get Internet. But it’s the slowest solution. Much faster services are hard link, ISDN, satellite connection… But they’re more expensive too. For example – for night dial-up now you pay 99 Sk per month (and you must add payments for telephone impulses), and the cheapest hard link costs about 10,000 – 15,000 Sk per month (but you mustn’t pay impulses).

In these days Internet celebrates his 30th birthdays. The first computer net has connected universities in Salt Lake City, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Stanford on 20th October 1969. One of the Internet fathers Leonard Kleinrock in this day sent a message to his friend to Research centre in Stratford near San Francisco. It consisted of only two letters – L and O – the first two alphabets of word LOG. ““Did you got L?” “Yes, I got it.” “Did you got O?” “Yes, I got it.” “Did you got G?” Answer didn’t come back. The connection was interrupted.“ By these words professor Kleinrock comments this historical-epochal moment. Internet was born.

Internet boom wasn’t always very fast, as we know it today. Only four computers in the world were registered with Internet address in 1969. After next ten years it was about 100 computers. In 1989 it was over 100,000 and in present it’s more than 65,000,000 computers. 200,000,000 people a day surf on Internet and more than 1,000,000 new documents are added on the net. In 2002 it’ll be more than 8,000,000,000 documents published on the web.

If we combine all pluses and minuses, verdict will be surely good for Internet. We can forget all bad things, because pluses, which Internet provides, are much, much more. If you don’t believe me, remember my words, when you will be writing the next e-mail to your sons and grandsons in New Zealand….