Temptation by the Internet

    An old one, of the year 2002, accidentally dug up a screw, a small article written for some site, I don’t remember already. Six years passed, and, in general, nothing has changed, well, if only blogs appeared, and social networks like Odnoklassniki.

    In general, read.



    Try to answer the following question:
    A friend comes to visit you who knows a little about computers, and asks what the Internet is, show me the Internet. How do you answer him, and what do you show so that he understands and interests him?


    So, as you probably already understood, today we will talk about a matter of concern to all of us, what is, after all, the Internet. More precisely, you and I, like experienced Internet-staggering, have long known what it is, but now let's try to explain it and interest our relatives, friends, acquaintances and not so much, in short - everything, everyone, everyone.

    Actually, about a year and a half ago, I already faced this question when a friend came up to me and asked me “what is the Internet?” To which, after a little thought, I told her, let's call her, let's say, Natalia:

    “Just imagine, Natasha, are you interested in anything now?” Ask any question that you would like to find an answer to, try to ask about any thing that interests you, and I, having typed a few words in the search bar, will find everything that you wish.

    And you know what she asked to look for? She asked me to look for information about some kind of purely female illness, and even with such intimate details - that I really felt uneasy, especially since this lady was purely familiar to me, and not even a friend at all, that is, my embarrassment was quite justified, and in my place almost everyone would do that. So, the funniest thing in this story is that a detailed description of this disease was found, Natalya, standing behind me, long and thoughtfully read all these “diagnoses and anamnesis”, and I, red as a cancer, had to sit in front of the monitor , and look at all this medical disgrace with color photographs of the subject of the disease.

    In general, the acquaintance left satisfied and with the firm conviction that the Internet is good, and we understood for ourselves the first conclusion: if you want to interest a person in the Internet, tell him that there is any, or rather not just any, but absolutely any information from all spheres of human activity. True, there is a small reservation here, I just don’t remember who formulated it exactly, maybe Exler, maybe Voronezh: exhaustive information about, for example, the parameters of the Chukchi plague exists only if there was a fan of the Chukcheved in the world who was not lazy scan plague drawings and make a site about their structure.

    So, we examined the case if the person whom you need to "put on the Internet" was interested in some specific issue. And what if there is nothing question? It is necessary to quietly find out a few hobby questions of a person’s hobbies, addictions, and only then put him on a computer and begin to palm off sites of a relevant subject. Thus, we get definition number two: the Internet is a hobby, or rather an active help to it, be it a person’s passion for collecting stamps, some kind of rock pop jazz band, etc. etc.

    But this is all wonderful, in my humble opinion, only for a person, let's say, of a tender age, but for an adult who is constantly working, interested in all aspects of human society, the Internet can be useful as a giant, constantly and quickly updated newspaper. Well, or a magazine, someone like that. This was especially noticeable during the fall of the World Trade Center skyscrapers in New York in September 2001, remember, as soon as the planes crashed into the buildings, a continuous CNN live broadcast began on TV, which showed, in fact, one and also. It was possible to learn something about this terrible tragedy from printed materials only the next day, and even then only from newspapers, where, like on television, there was only coverage of events. Thoughtful comments, analysis of events and debriefing (Lord, what a cynical pun) could be read only a week later in serious magazines such as Kommersant. The Internet was good at the time of those events, which immediately allowed to find out details and opinions about events from different people, famous and not very famous, and to learn the history of the creation of these buildings and immediately see a lot of photos. Therefore, we derive the third definition of the Internet: the Internet is a large, instantly updated, newspaper without restrictions and censorship.

    The next issue of our program will be another definition, so the Internet is a gigantic and versatile field for communicating with people located both in your hometown and at other ends of the globe, and when communicating with them you will absolutely not see the difference in distance . As one friend of mine said: a computer that is not connected to the network is not a computer at all. Judge for yourself: e-mail, numerous chats and bulletin boards (WWW-Board), web pagers such as MSNMessenger and ICQ. Even in our Valdai intranet - a kind of reduced copy of the global network - even the most popular section is the chat, where you can find an interlocutor almost round the clock.

    Well, the phrase that I heard (read?) By me in one of the forums can serve as a completely banal definition of the Internet: the Internet is a giant CD with music and video recordings. Indeed, for something, and there is plenty of music on the Internet, the only thing is that you sometimes need to look for it, but your work will pay off. Just imagine - five minutes of downloading a file, and you have any song from any artist on the planet. The very understanding of this fact is simply mesmerizing.

    And the games! You and I almost forgot to give another definition of the world wide web: the Internet is a large playground. Imagine a giant sandbox, where hundreds of thousands of children constantly play with each other and singly in various online games, and you can get into this sandbox at any moment and join any game.

    So, let us once again list the definitions of the subject with which we want to seduce a future Internet-dependent creature:

    1. if you want to interest a person in the Internet, tell him that there is any, or rather not just any, but absolutely any information from all spheres of human activity;
    2. The Internet is a hobby, or rather an active help to it, be it a person’s passion for collecting stamps, some kind of rock pop jazz band, etc. etc.;
    3. The Internet is a large, instantly updated newspaper that operates without restrictions and censorship;
    4. The Internet is a gigantic and versatile field for communicating with people who are both in their hometown and on other ends of the globe;
    5. The Internet is a giant CD with music and video recordings;
    6. Internet is a large playground.

    That, in fact, is all.

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