Watch out for that paradigm shift!

In 1993 I wrote an article for the December issue of "Unix News & Views", a publication of a friend of mine, Dan Sonnenschein, here in Vancouver. The article was titled "The Internet - What Is It?"

Since that time, barely 6 years ago, the Internet has grown to be the number one force for change in the personal and business community in the world. It has surpassed both the telephone and fax in its overall impact on commerce and lifestyle, and it has not even truly begun.

The article was republished as the feature of the first issue of the Digital Rag, available elsewhere on this site (July 1994 issue). At the time it was written, the Internet was still mostly a text character based facility. The graphical Web had only just started to evolve and very few computers had the capability to connect to it in that way. By the time it was republished 7 months later, the Web had just started to take off.

Today the Internet is the World Wide Web. Most people don't even realize that there ever was (or still is) a text based set of facilities underlying their Netscape or Internet Explorer web browser. The closest they come to the realization is when they deal with E-mail - and even that is evolving to include web (HTML) formatting and pictures.

It is now time to do an update of that article and put the Internet into the context of today's technologies and business (and personal) environments.

The problem is that there is now so much to talk about that there is no way that I can cover it all in a single article. I've said in other places this month that I mean to get back into the groove of doing monthly articles again, and this makes an excellent hook to hang the articles on...The Internet - What Is It?

I deal with all types of businesses and not a small number of individuals, all of whom have or want some connection to the Internet. In most cases the people I speak with have some idea at least of what the Web part of the Internet is all about, but in many cases they don't quite understand how it can help them in their day to day lives or business dealings. There is a lot of hype out there from the various ISPs and computer vendors. There are Web URLs on almost every ad and billboard (I can remember the first time I saw a URL on a billboard - September 1994) and the local news anchors no longer doggedly pronounce the "AITCH TEE TEE PEE COLON, Back Slash, Back Slash, WWW DOT ..." since now everyone knows what they are talking about.

Well maybe they do and maybe they don't. For a bit of background on what a URL is, see this month's Basic Internet

While the Internet will thread its way through most of the articles, the topics will cover all aspects of business and personal use of technology in general and computers in specific. This leaves me quite a lot of room since there are computers in virtually every electrical and mechanical system in use today; cars, TVs, toasters, and of course offices, faxes, and telephones.