SUN ET: Cocktail conversations: Net VS Web

Net: It all started with the Yanks getting spooked by the Soviets. In October 1957, the Commies lobbed a satellite (called Sputnik) into outer space. This froze the relationship between the two countries, which were anyway cold post-World War II. In the race to upgrade tech prowess, the US pumped in money to set up a decentralised (as opposed to a centralised telephone exchange model) communications network that would not be wiped out in an N-strike. So was born a network of millions of computers in the 1960s — private, government, commercial — all linked together and through which “packets” of information could be exchanged in real time. The information zips through ordinary cables, high-speed optic fibres or satellites. But the best thing about the net is that nobody owns it and it is free. Some basic technical rules are there but that’s about it.

Web: While the Net is the hardware —made up of PCs, mainframes, optic fibres, etc — the Web is one of the many uses that the Net is put to use. Other uses include transferring files and email. The Web is basically a collection of “pages” that can be accessed from anywhere in the world. And to access these pages one needs a web browser — software like Internet Explorer, Mozilla and Opera among others. Web pages are coded by designers in a language called “html” — hypertext markup language. These coded pages are then connected to one another through what is known as hyper text transfer protocol, or http for short. Whereas earlier web pages had just plain text, now pages have images and audio and video clips. With so much information a click away, no wonder we’ve become so cool.