What do you think about internet?

wel it has beeen a great source of comfort today....it has made the life of a person too good....hasnt it made u fell a bit comfortable than the old days?

Suddenly the internet is everywhere and you can get an account on most of the major online services and tons of small startup "on-ramps," dial in with your modem and access some internet services. But the internet is not another online service or even an extension of one, so people aren't getting the full picture. How does the net go beyond being just a big online service? Some people have suggested that the national debt could be paid off if they only put a tax on people who use the phrase information superhighway these days. Suddenly the much-hyped phenomenon of "media convergence" is itself converging with the network world's hype to produce a great deal of talk, and some very unusual plans. A large audience has just noticed the internet and its surrounding communities, which comes as a surprise to those who've been doing it for a decade or so. The place we've been living is has suddenly been "discovered" by the real world -- with overtones on that word similar to those on Columbus' "discovery" of the new world. There are many camps promoting many visions of an information superhighway, two of them quite large. In the first camp we have the cable companies. It amuses me to see people who can examine all this technology and think only that they could now provide 500 TV channels. From a business standpoint, it is understandable, since everybody knows that piping in movies and entertainment is a big business and a seemingly safe bet. But it's like horse-traders discovering the internal combustion engine and salivating over how quickly they'll be able to ship large numbers of horses to where they are needed. The other large camp has noticed the internet and the rest of the online world, and dubbed it the information superhighway. I'll admit some guilt there -- I've used the term to tell people what the internet is because it's an easy phrase to use. The most public members of that camp are the online service providers -- big ones such as America Online and medium ones like Netcom. The online service industry is also pretty old, and dates back to the first BBSs and online services in the late '70s. That world pretty much ignored the networking world of the ARPANET, USENET and the internet until 1992. It was academic and uncontrolled, it was competition and it was perceived as being free. It wasn't free, somebody else was paying for it, but it was actually remarkably cheap per user in terms of what it delivered. Particularly since those online services worked at 2400 bps or even less. Now that these services are positioning themselves as access portals to the internet, they're making a mistake in long-term thinking. While the value of the bridge they are providing is undeniable, it is a short term value. The error is to think of the internet as a big online service, or as the extension of one. The internet is of course very simple. All it really does is provide point to point communications for computers on top of a packet switched network. What people see, though, is the applications that people have put on top of this. The thing that makes the internet different is that it provides permanent virtual connectivity. It gives you the illusion that something far away is on the computer that's on your desk. Because the connection is (when done properly) permanent the wall between "on your computer" and "on somebody else's computer" breaks down. In many cases the connectivity doesn't have to be fast, but for many of the exciting cases it is. Indeed, permanent connectivity isn't everything. A lot of interesting things happen with plain old modems and BBSs and USENET. But the internet can do all those things as well or better, and it can do more. Sun Microsystems has an off-and-on slogan that they use: "The network is the computer." I think it's an excellent slogan. People used to think of processors as computers. When micros came, we learned to think of the hard disk as the real identify of a computer -- if you moved a hard disk from one machine to another, the new machine became the old one. Sun's slogan really refers to the local area network, and many people have already reached that state in their computer use. They feel that their computer, even if it has its own hard disk, seems crippled if it is ever taken off the LAN. Its identity comes from the LAN its on. The internet goes one step further, and changes your sense of what your computer is to be "the worldwide network." Once your computer is on the internet -- really on it -- suddenly it feels crippled when it is disconnected. Soon people may feel disconnected computers are almost unusable, which is part of what drives the wireless networking explosion. When the connection is permanent, things can happen without your intervention. On the online services, you use a computer like any other. You issue commands and things happen. You may interact with other users, which is a step up, but it's still a "session," with your active involvement. But once you have a permanent hookup, things happen even when you aren't there. Information comes to you -- you don't have to go to it. And if you have a fast, permanent connection, the information doesn't even have to come to you, it merely needs to knock and say, "I'm out here, and you'll see me the moment you ask for me." This means our computers can do more than just execute our commands when we sit in front of them. They can be out in the world as our agents and butlers. It also means that we get to interact at an equal footing. To be on the internet is not just the ability to use it and browse it, but the ability to have information on your computer available to other people as though it is on their computer. And while you can do this by buying space on an online service, it's not the same -- not as dynamic -- as having the information on your own machine, one you can change instantly, as you desire. People have already learned the immense difference from E-mail that's on the computer on your desk and E-mail on a dial-up online service. E-mail on your desk comes to you, it's like home delivery as opposed to a P.O. box. When you are working on the E-mail you have full access to everything you're used to on your own computer. If it's important it can beep at you in your home. People have conversations with live E-mail, and in fact some times it even goes too fast, because people come to expect a level of instant response that's too intrusive if you try to keep it up all the time. A real internet connection ups the ante like this for all applications. Now let's look at what this means for a number of key areas and applications.