Analytical essay on the Internet

Essay by xay01University, Bachelor'sA+, July 2002

download word file, 3 pages 3.9 1 reviews

Downloaded 222 times

The Internet has become among the greatest social transformation and contains the largest information databases as well as commercial medium; insurance of privacy and security over the Internet is left to the government. The growth of cyberspace is inevitable and will continue to grow at an amazing rate. Who could deny or resist the Internet or cyberspace of its resources, the place of mass medium, which attracts millions of people. The Internet, also known as cyberspace, has the ability to transmit multimedia information over the long distances virtually instantaneously. The Internet is defined as a network of interconnected computers, which means, anyone who is on-line is connected and his/her computer becomes part of the network until he/she disconnects from the Internet. Each computer on the network has a unique IP (Internet Protocol) number which distinguishes itself from other computers on the network.

The original goal, in the 1960s, was a sharing of resources.

Soon the Internet became a reference medium, where research papers could be read by anyone on the network. It was the World Wide Web that brought the Internet into the consumer marketplace. (McGrath, pg.73) But today the Internet itself is being transformed into something closer to a market place. (McGrath, pg.73). As vendors and marketers crowd their way into cyberspace, the Internet could be on the verge of becoming more mass commercial medium than informational medium. One example of commercial medium mentioned by McGrath is the amazon.com Web site which has created a successful market niche by selling books. The model is essentially mail-order retailing. As of today, when we get on-line, almost everywhere we go on the Internet we see ads and banners on web sites. Probably an estimate about 85% of all sites over the Internet have some kind of commercial medium such as pop...