The Internet

Just mention the Internet to most people today, and they'll likely tell you about a site with great information they saw, the great bargain they just bought online, or found on eBay, or Craig's List. It has become a part of everyday life to many, many people around the world.

But many Seniors throw up their hands .. and declare "I DON'T WANT INTERNET !!"
I guess they've heard and misunderstood horror stories about what might happen.
If you know someone like this, try to explain to them that two things the World Wide Web helps you do... Learn and Communicate.. are two of the most important things for your quality of life.
Oh, there's lots of other things, too, of course.

Someone else may say.. "Oh, I just couldn't.. I wouldn't ever use my credit card online!" because they don't understand. Please use this link to learn about online Financial Safety.

Browser

It only took a few years to develop the first Web Browser. That is a program that allows you to read website pages. There is a quick video about it.

There are several popular ones in use now. The Windows program includes Internet Explorer so it is widely used. A few others are Firefox, Safari, Opera and Google's new Chrome. These are all available free. To use a new one, you will have to download the program.
They all serve the same purpose, with differences in how they look, speed, security and reliability. They are constantly changing, being improved with new features or new ones developed (just about when you get used to your favorite).

The first thing shown on your screen when you click on your browser icon, is the Home Page of your browser. Later, read about customizing Your Home Page to give you the information that you want immediately.

Search

To use the Internet for information you need to know how to SEARCH it. (Click on the link to learn how.) For this purpose, Search Engines have been developed. You may recognize the names of Google, Yahoo, Ask or Bing. The Internet was created for scientific researchers to pool information and communicate, and at the time, they just didn't think that it would be in common use by ordinary people.
Wow! Were they surprised! People everywhere want to know!

Buying and Selling

Merchants were quick to see the marketing possibilities to sell to people all over the world. You can search for an item and find immediately who is selling it, where, and how much, then have it delivered to your door.
For this to work, online banking and financial safety had to be developed.
It wasn't long until people found the way to list their personal items for sale, and develop an online "Classified" ads, such as Craig's List.

Income

Entrepreneurs pushed this a bit further to find opportunities to develop income from all the ways in the business world, such as advertising, copywriting, auctions, all online. Enabling people, single parents, disabled.. to work-at-home, has been incredible. It has made a relaxed, home work environment possible.

Social

We have proven that people all over the world are more alike than different. The human is a social being, with irresistible desires to communicate and be heard (or read)!
This has led to personal websites, Blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Wikis, and Social bookmarking (see at the bottom of the page). New ways to use the Internet to communicate pop up so quickly it's hard to keep up with them. Not only do we want to write to our friends and strangers in cyberspace, play games with people all over the world instantly, but people post their own photos (often with little common sense), which brings me to Personal Safety.. often overlooked by both children and adults alike. Please read the linked page on Online Safety, it's very important.

Learning

Every classroom in the world, that has computers, uses the Internet. The younger generations take it quite for granted.. having grown up with it, learning from their friends what they can do with it every day.

This also means YOU have access to the best learning resources available, 24 hrs/day every day, with a variety of teachers! There are terrific tutorials on the Web, about almost anything to explain step by step "How To"... Just type it in the Search box. There are "Podcasts", which are audio recordings to listen to, and video tutorials on YouTube, and elsewhere.

Genealogy, the history of our ancestors, grew exponentially, as people realized they didn't have to physically travel to archives for documents. The information could be found online. Collaboration is easy and prevalent.

Do I sound excited?? You bet! What better thing could have happened to the world, besides stopping hunger and war?

If you'd like to know more about it, look at Background, a page about how it started, etc...

The Internet is without limits, and without restrictions,(except as imposed by certain governments). Therefore there is a lot of trash on it.. a lot of inaccuracies and lies, but as with all things, it's up to us to investigate and make informed judgments. Right now it exemplifies freedom. PROTECT IT!

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