Lecture given at an NiAA Workshop, November 1995. (I have not, since I gave this lecture, attempted to keep the many links in the text up to date as the pages pointed to have moved or disappeared.)

THE INTERNET

The term Internet is used in various ways:

An Internet is a computer network or, more likely, a set of interlinked computer networks, that use the Internet Protocols, and provide such services as electronic mail, file transfer, remote execution, etc.. (Many companies have such private Internets.)
The Internet is a world-wide "network of networks" that is currently estimated to be doubling in size every year, and to link computers in 90 countries illustrated here, possibly some five million computers (see Growth of the Net) and thirty million people in all by now.
Confusingly, the Internet is a term which is often taken to include the (in many cases free) services provided by the computers that are linked by the Internet, and the amount and variety of interesting and/or important information they thus make available. (Note that by information I mean anything in digital form - text, pictures, music, movies, etc.)
However, the Internet, to most users and companies, is now synonomous with the World Wide Web. This is a world-wide facility based on freely-available easy-to-use software which can be used to explore and utilise the Internet.

The World Wide Web

Web users can view documents and databases held on computers all round the world as though their contents have been linked together into what appears to be a single very large document. This "document" can in fact include not just text, but also pictures, sound and video. Users can browse through it, copying or printing off anything of interest to them. They need not even be aware of the fact that multiple computers and computer networks are actually involved. Users "move" around the Internet merely by selecting and "clicking" on words or images that act as links, and so causing the replacement of the current page of information on their screen by the one that the link was pointing to.

The World Wide Web, or WWW as it is often called, originated at CERN and was publicly announced in 1992, but really took off in 1993 when graphical interface software (the Mosaic Web "browser") was developed by NCSA at the University of Illinois, and made available as freeware for UNIX, PCs and Apple Macintosh computers. The main growth was at first in the United States, but in the UK over the last year there has also been a dramatic growth: Growth of Web Browsing.

"Some 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada alone are already on the Internet -- fully 11% of the North American population over age 16, according to the new [October 1995] survey by Dun & Bradstreet Corp.'s Nielsen Media Research unit. An impressive 17.6 million people use the World Wide Web . . . The study also found that the World Wide Web is already a thriving market for business applications. Roughly 2.5 million people have purchased products or services over the Web."

EXPLORING THE WEB

Exploring the Web is so easy, that terms like "net surfing" and "cruising the web" have come into vogue to describe it.

FROM NEWCASTLE TO THE WORLD

Let's step back, a step at a time from our position here.

From my department at the University of Newcastle we find a very convenient "Active Map" of the UK & Ireland, which we can use to find information about this city: Newcastle upon Tyne, or any of the other places marked, such as London. And in fact a huge amount of information has been gathered together to allow one to be a "virtual tourist", able to go almost anywhere in the World.

TO A SCHOOL IN ALASKA

Zooming down in, let's explore North America, choosing Alaska, and from here go to the town of Fairbanks. Here we find a rather fine Web site set up by An Alaskan Elementary School, and lots of information set up by the pupils, such as this page entitled Fairbanks - what's it like here

LIBRARIES AND MUSEUMS

The Internet allows us to reach vast amount of freely available information, in academic and public institutions all over the world.

LIBRARIES

We can use the Internet to interrogate hundreds of library catalogues, some of them huge - the largest I know contains almost 30 million items. But we can actually "visit" some of the world's great libraries, such as the British Library and from amongst its current Exhibitions choose that on John Keats, where we find, for example Ode to a Nightingale'

MUSEUMS

At the Science Museum we can find, among the Science Museum's Treasures one of the telegraph devices that enabled the creation of the distant forerunner of the Internet.

We can even "visit" a museum that doesn't actually exist - such as the WebMuseum, where one of the current exhibitions is on Gauguin.

THE MEDIA

The Web is in fact an entirely new publishing medium - one that is providing a host of new opportunities (and challenges) to existing publishing channels.

There are now several hundred newspapers and journals being published on the Web, such as The Electronic Telegraph and a version of the The Economist, or in France of the journal Libération.

Also very actively exploring this new medium is The BBC, for example using it for distributing news items such as: Newsflash, where one of the main stories is, unfortunately, still The War in Bosnia.

And many thousands of individuals (by no means all self-publicising American graduate students!) are using the Web to become independent publishers - in some cases simply by performing the valuable service of bringing together links to lots of useful information on a particular subject, e.g. this one on France and all things French.

SEARCHING FOR INFORMATION

Exploring, in the sense of wandering around, the Web is exceedingly easy - finding particular things, say information on a given subject, can be more difficult - though one soon builds up a valuable personal address book of useful pages.

The Web is immense, chaotic and ever-changing - but some powerful and simple ways are being developed of trying to locate information in it. For example, one of several so-called "search engines" is Infoseek, which is in Santa Clara County, California. This provides a simple method of searching essentially the entire Web.

Here is the result of searching for documents on the Web which contain the words "Telematics", "North" and "England" - 17 were found. Each of these could now be readily fetched and inspected. And it was one of these that led to me a very useful listing of local government Web sites that I had not come across before.

COMMERCE

Though the Internet started out as a vehicle for academics and researchers to communicate and cooperate, the majority of its use is now by commercial organizations. The same is rapidly becoming true of the Web.

At present the main commercial use of the Web is for what might best be described as advertising, but its use for actual commercial transactions is growing rapidly - and will grow even more as improved means of ensuring confidentiality and integrity are developed.

The (American) Internet Shopping Mall is a huge virtual shopping centre. Possibly the first virtual shopping mall in Britain is called Barclay Square. Among the shops here are Sainsbury's Wine Direct and Toys 'R' Us.

As just one example of the many individual shops on the Internet, there is The Internet Book Shop, with its huge "stock": Searching the Internet Book Shop.

But you can already do more than look at advertisements, and order products, via the Internet. One example must suffice - the company Federal Express provides a facility for its customers to track the packages they have entrusted to the company for delivery.

One of the more interesting of the many computer-related businesses on the web is JHC plc, because of the variety of Web-based services they are providing.

THE NORTH OF ENGLAND ON THE WEB

The amount of information about the North of England on the Web is as yet comparatively limited, but already there are a few small but rapidly growing information services.

The most advanced is Quay Information's North East OnLine, which hosts Web pages for such organizations as: Northern Development Company, and Horton Grange Country House Hotel as well as for NiAA.

North East Online also has a page of links to North East Businesses on Line, which provides a convenient way of reaching such organizations as Northern Electric, North West Water, Quality Software Products, MARI, and Prism Technologies.

Two other local online information serices are North Of England Business "On-Line", which hosts Jobs North-East Online, and On-Tyne.

In Middlesborough there is the Onyx Service provided by Octacon, one of whose customers isa bakers shop Elizabeth Botham & Co.

Local government here in the North is starting to have a presence on the Web. For example, the Technology Applications Group provide information on behalf of Newcastle City Council and North Tyneside Council, while Tynedale District Council have some information pages for Roman Wall tourists.

We can expect to see the use of the Web increase here in the North of England, in line with everywhere else. But much needs to be done if the North is to take full and timely advantage of the Web - and NiAA could play a major role in promoting and coordinating such activities.

Almost finally, for the record here is NiAA's home page on the Web.

RECREATION

Let's end on a light note by showing how the Web is still as much a place for recreation as for commerce - from genealogy to gymnastics, and from philately to football.

CONCLUSION

And so the tour is ended - but:

Remember that even just a couple of years ago the Web barely existed. So the thought of what things might be possible in another couple of years, leave alone by the end of the century, is literally mind-boggling. Not for nothing did The Economist, hardly the most sensationalist of magazines, recently describe the advent of the Internet as being as important as the advent of printing.