Bogatikova A.E., Gukova M.V.,

DonNUET named after

Mikhail Tugan-Baranovsky

THE INTERNET

The internet is a global computer network, which embraces millions of users all over the world. And the main goal of it is to show how Web's freedom will help in development of education and democracy.

Internet appeared in our country just a few years ago but it had appeared in The United States in 1969 as a military experiment .At was designed to survive a nuclear war. Information sent over the Internet takes the shortest path available from one computer to another. Because of this, any two computers on the Internet will be able to stay in touch with each other as long as there is a single rout between them .This technology is called packet swathing. Owing to this technology, if some computers on the network are knocked out, information will just route around them. One such packet- switching network already survived a war. It was the Iraqi computer network which was not knocked out during the Gulf War.

Most of the Internet host computer (more than 50%) are in the United States, while the rest are located in more than 100 other countries. Although the number of host computers can be counted fairly accurately nobody knows exactly how many people use the Internet, there are millions, and their number is growing by thousands each month worldwide.

The most popular Internet service is e-mail. Most of the people, who have access to the Internet, use the network only for sending and receiving e-mail messages. However, other popular are available on the Internet: reading USENET News, using the World –Wide Web, telnet, FTP, and Gopher.

Nowadays we have a question: why do people want to be "on the Internet Answer is too simple. One of the mail reasons of this phenomenon is simple freedom. Yes people can feel freedom on the Internet. But what does this freedom of the Internet includes? Firstly it is equality. It does not matter what your race or age or nationality or wealth is you can post your message to the Internet and you will be heard. You will find a lot of people who will support you and who will not support you. You will find your allies and enemies there. And this is the freedom to express your opinion, which is the fundamental principle of the democracy. But some people believe that the influence of Internet is rather bad: “Internet users communicate only with the people on the Internet. They stop talking to their relatives and friends because they have only virtual friends. So, Internet destroys real human communication" Maybe someone's interpersonal communication was destroyed but now technology can give us an opportunity to communicate with our relatives and friends as if we are in a same room. People can be close to each other even being on different continents. And if a person is mentally normal he/she will never prefer communication with relatives to a computer.

In many developing countries the Internet may provide businessmen with a reliable alternative to the expensive and unreliable telecommunications system of these countries. Commercial users can communicate over the Internet with the rest of the world and can do it very cheaply. When they send e-mail messages, they only have to pay for phone calls to their local service providers, not for calls across their countries or around the world. But who actually pays for sending e-mail messages over the Internet long distances, around the world? The answer is very simple: a user pays his/her service provider a monthly or hourly fee. Part of this fee goes towards its costs to connect to a larger provider goes to cover its cost of running a worldwide network of wires and wireless stations.

But saving money is only the first step. If people see that they can make money from the Internet, commercial use of this network will drastically increase. For example, some western architecture companies and garment centers already their basic designs and concepts over the

Next is the freedom of choice. On the Internet you can choose the information to your own taste or need. Nobody can make you to look at something that you do not need or do not like. If you don’t like something you just type another address and in a seconds you are already there where you wanted to be. But what can you choose from these different resources? It may be pornography or silly games There are "tons" of very useful games, which will help you to understand the economy of the city, improve your language skills and vocabulary or at least you will get a better skills in using the "mouse".

There is also a freedom of movement. There are no borders in the Internet and you can travel all over the Internet without any prohibitions. If you need some information about some foreign country you will get it. You do not need any visas to explore web sites in foreign countries.

Also you can vote on the Internet. There are a lot of questionnaires where you can express your attitude towards something.

Internet is so free that it even may seem like anarchy. But what does this "anarchy" gives us? Firstly it is absence of censors. And as it said Harley Hahn, whose books' printout is 2,5 million issues and who is considered as an ace of the Internet: "The main rule of the Net is that there is no one-man management and no any censorship. And only because of this freedom there is such a great variety of different resources".

And we can use all these resources for our educational purposes. And as I said previously anyone can find information to his own choice. The Internet makes it easier to find books (for example for your research paper) or articles and now even listen and watch famous people. Harley Hahn also mentioned that "it has so much information in the Internet that nobody can imagine it" That is why you can choose it to your own taste or need.

Now teachers, students, professors, scientists, librarians, lawyers and priests use Internet to search for the useful information because it is the fastest and the most convenient way to do it. The Internet is the most important scientific instrument of the late twentieth century. We can get data for our research just in seconds after pushing some buttons. This is no small deal, since entire books can be transferred through Internet in a matter of minutes. Today millions of such files are available to anyone who asks for them.

Conclusion is that the Internet will help to develop our educational level due to its democracy and freedom. And after the people will find out what is freedom they will develop democracy in their country. After that the Internet will guide us to the one open society there will be no borders on the Earth any more. And we will live in peace and will respect each other like in the Internet.