Reuven, The Internet, technically speaking, is a network of networks (an internetwork) all of which interoperate using the protocol known as TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). Each computer has an individual Internet Protocol (IP) address, although one computer can act as a host for numerous subsidiary IP addresses. So in order to be on the Internet, a computer needs two things: (a) connection via TCP/IP; (b) and IP address. Within those two simple restrictions, numerous types of data transfer and intercommunication have come to be associated with the Internet (and they all operate under those two principles as well): among them are electronic mail, newsgroups, instant messaging, file transfer (FTP), and the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web is a set of data transfer and display technologies developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in the late '80s and implemented in the early '90s. The Web operated "on top of" (if you will) TCP/IP and uses the protocol known as HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), which determines what happens when a user clicks on a hyperlink. HTTP works in conjunction with HTML (Hypertext Markup Language), much enhanced by other markup and display languages) to give us the nice displays we get in our Web browsers (which are technically called HTTP clients). So: The Internet is the big one, and the others, including the Web, operate as part of it. Anything that uses IP networking is also part of it, including such newer things as VoIP (Voice over IP), used for telephony. Hope that helps. Neil Randall Joanne (or others), as a newbie to the academic study of the Internet, with no tech background, could you explain to me what difference between the two is? Up till now, i've commonsensically used "the Internet" to denote, essentially, everything that i can access or receive and anyone i connect with when i "go online" (connect my computer to data that is not on my computer's harddrive). In other words, i've used "the Internet" to denote the sum of all that's online. I've always assumed commonsensically that "the world wide web" simply denotes the network of computers that are "online" (all or part of the time). Since what's online has to rest (or am i missing some basic tech fact?) on some computer, and since to access what's on a particular computer, that computer needs to connected to other computers, "the World Wide Web" and "the Internet" as i understood their meaning refer to the same referent. also, up till now i also thought of "cyberworld" as an a term interchangeable with the other two terms, but that leaves me with no term to denote the "life-world" of people online, as distinguished from "the Internet" as defined above. Could "cyberworld" be used to denote this "life-world", or will that be another gross carelessness with definitions (i can almost feel Thomas Hobbes standing behind me getting ready to slap me ... ) thanks, Reuven Shlozberg Political Science University of Toronto _______________________________________________ The Air-l-aoir.org@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/