Week 3: Clear

So week three in the readings were a bit more interesting for me at least. I knew that there was a difference between the internet and the World Wide Web but the text really put it into perspective! The web is just a service of the internet, weird but true, so e-mailing and web pages are not the "internet", they are web pages on the internet,confusing then check out, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet. So now when I am going to go on my computer I will say i am going to surf the web, because I am not just going on the internet. Haha.
I learned that the internet was started in a cool secret kind of way, ARPANET, was started by the U.S. Pentagon as a research project. It allowed scientist that were not near each other to communicate while working on military and scientific projects, through the internet. It started with just four computers, in 1969, located in four different places so that the researchers could collaborate, through e-mail. Today there are more then half a billion computer and all are doing much more then just sending e-mails. Fascinating to me! Its like a James Bond secret that has changed our lives!
Anywho...with the internet growing at such a fast pace, it is awesome yet a little disturbing that you can use e-commerce to buy anything for sale on the web. I do own a I-phone but I would never have thought that I would actually use it to do any sort of shopping. M-commerce the phase now coined to mean, mobile shopping, is where people on their blackberrys, I-phone, etc., and shop! I have bought a few things off of the web, but it sort of scares me to think how many people are on the internet and how, it is most likely, very easy to have your identity stolen.
There was a lot of information in the chapter but most information was a solid review or a more detailed look on things I have already known. The internet is a fascinately place, filled with so many options! It enhances the use of the computer 10-fold.