Internet Introduction

Sociologists once prepared to mourn the death of letter writing skills, but scribes bounced back with the arrival of the fax and electronic mail.

Thanks to the computer, many children and increasing numbers of adults have excellent keyboard skills and are much more willing to put their thoughts into writing.

But computers have made people impatient. Why wait a week for the conventional mail when you can transmit your words electronically in an instant through electronic computer services such as Compuserve and the Internet?

Technologic has surveyed the riches of Compuserve already and soon will report exciting new bridges between Compuserve and the Internet. But what is the Internet? What can you gain from it? And how do you get into it?

Our planetary knowledge mostly lives in university libraries. The Internet is an immense tapestry of computer connections between those universities and thousands of other computer sites.

When you log onto the Internet with your computer and a modem connected to an ordinary telephone line, that knowledge can be tapped by transfering files from huge databases to your computer (FTP).

These databases exist in computers all over the world. But you don't need to worry about international phone bills. When you ask your computer's modem to dial a local Internet gateway, it is the computer you dial into that makes the international connection. You merely make an ordinary local telephone call.

These faraway computers brim with useful information. A lawyer can access legal databases throughout America and Asia as well as our own Sydney University Law School.

Farmers can feast on agricultural knowledge. The world's scientific learning - through biology, chemistry, astronomy etc - is ready for the picking.

Thousands of recipies await chefs. Environment, genealogy, government, health, historical, literary, journalistic and medical information abounds.

The pop culture information ranges from newspaper and magazine text to Monty Python and everything you ever wanted to know about The Simpsons. You can play or watch chess games across the globe, find out about sports from Aikido to windsurfing, or delve into just about any religious text.

It can't be overstressed that all this is only a tiny fraction of what is available.

The Internet also buzzes constantly with free electronic mail messages between users. These are either direct mail messages from one individual to another or general conversations in what are called news groups.

News groups - electronic discussion forums between thousands of computer users - tackle every area of our lives, from rock culture to politics, from sex to cinema. The law, medicine, computers - nothing is excluded from discussion, usually in a highly sophisticated manner by some of the world's brightest minds.

It is easier to show the value of being an Internet user than to explain how to plunge into the network. Domestic computer users have two options.

If there is a university student in your household you can likely open an extremely inexpensive Internet account and log on through the tertiary institution's mainframe. For example, the Melbourne University computer headquarters is opposite the campus near the corners of Faraday and Swanston Streets and opening an account there, if you are a student, is a quick and easy process.

Alternatively, anyone can join the Melbourne Apple Users' Group (AUSOM, tel: 796 7553) and for about $70 obtain a year's access - however, unlike a university connection, AUSOM only offers electronic mail and news group access, not file transfer powers.

Unfortunately, learning you may have acquired about DOS, Windows or your Macintosh will not be particularly helpful when you try to use the Internet because the two Internet gateways mentioned above use another operating system called Unix. Other Internet gateways may use further different operating systems even beyond Unix.

To master Unix you need to be quite determined. The AUSOM bulletin board (BBS) is the easiest Unix Internet gateway because it offers a user-friendly menu system that sits on top of Unix insulating you from Unix's complexities.

Very roughly speaking it is like what Windows does for DOS on a PC except without the goodlooking graphics or mouse support. In practice, you can choose fairly easy-to-understand options for obtaining news group information or your electronic mail from these menus.

The more powerful university system is far less helpful on-screen. Instead, the computer department offers a hotch potch of somewhat difficult but essential explanatory booklets. Having read the instruction pamphlets you manipulate Internet information manually at the Unix coal-face - which can take some getting used to.

A book such as Ed Kroll's The Whole Internet - User's Guide and Catalog ($36.95 from McGill's) is a big help. In 376 user-friendly pages it shows WHAT you can get from the Internet as well as how to DO it. But perhaps a summary would help...

When you log onto a Unix system, your computer becomes a porthole into the Unix world and the commands required to make things happen bear no relation to the usual commands you use on your own home computer - be it a PC or a Macintosh.

However, although the specific commands differ, there are many conceptual similarities. The real trick is to know what commands you are looking for.

Technologic has spent the last months working all this out. Next week we offer a birdseye view of how to use the Internet. Stay tuned.