Packet switching created a fast network, and as universities and other organisations joined Arpanet, people realised what an effective way it was of swapping information. Eventually, the US military disconnected itself from the network, leaving it open for a huge number of organisations around the world to join in. As it went international, it became known as the internet.
At the end of the 1980s, the internet was well established, but it was for specialists only. And there were so many different computers and kinds of data that access was effectively limited to a few terminals, severely limiting the potential for data exchange. Then, in 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a scientist at CERN, came up with the idea of the World Wide Web. This was the breakthrough the internet needed to really go global.
At the heart of the web are its sites, the places where computers connected to the internet put the data that others are meant to see, divided into electronic pages. Usually this is uploaded to a server, a junction computer linked into many other users. For home users, the server is typically provided by their Internet Service Provider or ISP; large business users often have their own. This separation between the web pages and the computer means that other computer users do not have direct access to the data on your computer.
To avoid problems with different formats and computers, all web pages are translated into a standard form or ‘protocol’. Originally, when the web carried just text, this was called HyperText Transfer Protocol, which is why most website addresses begin with the letters ‘http’. Now, however, all kinds of media are exchanged across the web, including video and sound, and hypertext is just one of a range of hypermedia links or hyperlinks.
What was amazing about this system is that it meant anybody could access information on any open website anywhere in the world without any specialist knowledge. The only problem was finding the page you wanted, which was solved by computer programmes called browsers which searched the net for particular pieces of data.[1]
The coming of the World Wide Web coincided with the introduction of inexpensive personal computers for the home and the office, and the combination initiated a growth of the internet more explosive than even its most ardent advocates could have foreseen. By the end of 2009, there were almost quarter of a billion separate websites, each with numerous pages, and a million new ones are being added each week. Moreover, the growth is accelerating.
All kinds of things are now predicted for the internet, some sane, some merely fanciful. One of the more down-to-earth is the airily named ‘cloud computing’. Cloud computing could make personal computers a thing of the past by harnessing a ‘cloud’ of servers linked over the internet. That way, the internet can provide all the computing power and software you ever need via a simple access device. It’s like turning on the tap to get water rather than storing your own – which is why some people call it, less glamorously, ‘utility’ computing. IT companies are all racing to develop it and Google is among the leaders, with its own online business software, Google Apps, already widely used.
One of the concerns about cloud computing is just how happy people are to put so much personal data online. Security on the internet is already a major issue. Some people believe the vast, ramshackle open, free-for-all nature of the net is its greatest strength. By making information freely and widely available, it’s breaking down the power of hierarchies and making the world a better place, they say. Governments and global corporations find it harder to get away with cover-ups when their actions can be broadcast on the web by just a single witness. In 2009, for instance, people began to talk of a ‘Twitter revolution’ in Iran, as dissidents kept the world informed of developments, although in the end it seems the story turned out to be hyped (another effect of the internet, which is to blow molehills in mountains in moments).
The flow of information on the internet is a worry for some governments, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. It’s well known that government organisations monitor internet traffic continuously. Indeed, the United Arab Emirates and India threatened to ban the encrypted Blackberry exchange system because their monitors couldn’t read it. Their motive was concern about terrorists, but China has been accused of monitoring the internet to target dissidents and of blocking access for its people to certain information.
Some people wonder if the days of entirely open internet use are numbered, as experts raise fears about ‘cyberwars’ in which enemy governments or terrorists exploit the internet to cause havoc by interfering with all the systems connected to it.[2] Viruses can already cause havoc, but the potential for interference is much greater with so much of the world’s everyday business, from the restocking of supermarket food stores to the running of trains, now dependent on the internet.
This is the extraordinary thing about the internet. Its power and reach have already become so great that it makes many people nervous. On the other hand, it’s that very same power and reach that others find reassuring and exciting, because it connects the world as never before. With so much information and so many experiences shared, we might be able to understand each other better, and realise how interdependent we all are. Some people talk about the internet turning humanity into a single giant brain, a single organism with billions of different cells.[3] That’s probably rather fanciful, but there’s no doubt that the internet has got everyone thinking.
[1] Back in 2004, two young American journalists made a spoof Twilight Zone-style documentary in which they imagined the world’s internet and media entirely in the hands of the sinister Googlezon corporation, an amalgamation of Google and Amazon. People smiled at the time, but could it have been disturbingly prescient? Google seems harmless. You just type a word or two into the search box and up pops a list of relevant websites. Nothing could be simpler – it’s so simple that people do it 70–80 billion times a month. That’s the number of searches conducted using Google – over two-thirds of all web searches. Yahoo!, by contrast, carries a paltry 9 billion.
For the average internet user, Google delivers, and its friendly cartoons and famous motto, ‘Don’t Be Evil’, portray it as a friend that you can trust. But just how does it work? The secret to Google’s success is ranking. In other words, it decides the sites most relevant to your search by ranking them. Just how Google ranks them is a secret, but people like using Google because it works amazingly well. It depends not only on the appearance of keywords on the site, but things such as backlinks, the number of links the site makes to other sites.
Every webpage owner wants their site to come up top on Google, and that’s where problems arise. Google claims its system is entirely neutral, but if you know how to play the system, you can slew results to ensure certain sites soar up the rankings. This has massive implications for both commercial interests and for the spread of particular ideas. Search the words ‘Global warming’, say, and near the top you get not a neutral site explaining the facts but a pseudo-science site portraying global warming as a myth. Google also gives its advertisers advice on how to exploit ranking to ensure their ads get seen. Could this mean that those who pay most get the most exposure while others are left out in the cold?
[2] Experts talk about cyberwars being fought by dropping ‘logic bombs’. Apparently, these have already been used, well before the internet. In 1982, at the height of the Cold War, American spy satellites detected a gigantic explosion in Siberia. It turned out to be a gas pipeline which exploded because of a malfunction in the computer control system that Soviet spies had stolen from Canada. What the spies didn’t know was that the CIA had tampered with the software so that it would break down after a certain time and wrongly reset the pipeline’s pump and valve settings.
[3] In August 2010, Arecibo observatory astronomers announced a new pulsar star in space, discovered by the combined power of 50,000 home computers acting in concert via the internet.
The Panel
The publisher would like to acknowledge the help provided by the panel that helped to determine the world’s 50 greatest idea
s that formed the basis for this book. The illustrious panellists were:
Philip Ball is a freelance science writer and the author of many popular books on science and its intersections with the arts. Philip has a BA in Chemistry from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Physics from the University of Bristol.
Merryl Wyn Davies is a writer and anthropologist. She is the bestselling co-author of Why Do People Hate America?, and Introducing Anthropology.
Fern Elsdon-Baker is an expert on Darwinian evolutionary theory and head of the British Council’s Darwin Now project.
Dylan Evans is an author and academic at University College Cork, Ireland. He is an expert in behavioural science and the author of numerous books including Emotion and Placebo.
Patricia Fara is the Senior Tutor of Clare College at the University of Cambridge, UK. Her latest book is Science: A Four Thousand Year History.
Cordelia Fine is an academic psychologist and writer at Macquarie University, Australia. She is the author of the critically acclaimed A Mind of Its Own and Delusions of Gender.
Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, UK. His latest book is Science: The Art of Living; his next book is Socrates vs. Jesus: The Struggle for the Meaning of Life.
Nick Groom is a Professor of English Literature at the University of Exeter (Cornwall Campus), UK, and Director of the research centre ECLIPSE.
Chris Horrocks is an author and principal lecturer in History of Art based at Kingston University in Surrey, UK.
Manjit Kumar is a scientist and bestselling writer. He was the founding editor of the Prometheus journal and his most recent book, Quantum, was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction 2009.
Anthony O’Hear is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Buckingham, UK, Director of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, and Editor of the journal Philosophy. He is also a prolific author and journalist.
David Orrell is a renowned mathematician and bestselling author. His work has been featured in the New Scientist, the Financial Times and by the BBC. His most recent book is Economyths.
Nick Powdthavee is an academic at the Department of Economics at York University, UK. His specialist area of study is the economics of human happiness and he is the author of The Happiness Equation.
Ziauddin Sardar is a writer, broadcaster, academic and cultural critic. Described by the Independent as ‘Britain’s own Muslim polymath’, he has written and lectured widely upon Islam, the sciences, literary criticism, art criticism and critical theory.
John Sutherland is Lord Northcliffe Emeritus Professor at UCL, a visiting professor at Caltech, newspaper columnist and former Chair of the Man-Booker Fiction Prize panel. He is the co-author of Love, Sex, Death & Words: Surprising Tales from a Year in Literature.
John Waller is an historian of science and medicine at Michigan State University, US. He is an author and expert on the history of modern medicine and life science.
Maryanne Wolf is the Director of the Centre of Reading and Language Research at TUFTS University in the US. She is an expert in the development of language and the brain and author of Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.
The World's Greatest Idea Page 29
