The Internet

3. 3 The Domain-Name-System (DNS) 8 4. The Internet Indigestible data flow or all-embracing library 4. 1 To much data but no information 10 4. 2 Simple search strategy, based on search services 10 4. 3 Case study: The status of the Queen in the Canadian 11 constitution 4. 4 Case study: Output of renewable energy sources in 12 the USA 4. 5 Conclusion 13 4. 6 Advanced search strategy, without search services 13 5. An outlook into the future 14 Appendix A. Used literature and Internet sites 15 B. Increase of Internet hosts 16 1. Introduction Every new important technology has rung in a new era. Fire, the alphabet, the discovery of gunpowder, the steam engine or electricity. With every new era there was a change in society. The last important change was the discovery of electricity and the steam engine. They led humanity into the industrial revolution. People moved into the cities to find jobs in the new growing industries. Their social behaviour changed, since they lived in an anonymous huge city and no longer in a small town. But the eighties and nineties of our century show, that the industrial era is coming to an end. A new technology, which is somewhere in the order of industrialisation, is taking over the control over mankind s destiny. The information age has just started. This change goes hand in hand with the digitisation of information.

Digitisation means, that every kind of information (text, audio or video signals) can be expressed in bits and bytes. So a computer is able to display, store or manipulate this information.

Nowadays, computers are already capable to replace TV, radio, video, newspapers or books. For the arithmetical skill of computers, they are employed in nearly every office to process the enormous amount of incoming data. You only need to imagine a stock of thousands of tools and a craftsman who searches only one special tool. How to find it without a computer? For exactly the same reason computers are used in science. Or how many men would be necessary to calculate the exact trajectory of a spaceship? However people work with computers even in their leisure time. Games, formerly only played as broad versions, are more and more converted into interactive multimedia spectacles. The number of computer players grows constantly and rapidly. Scientists declare that the reason for human predominance in nature can be found in communication. Communication means the exchange of information.

Communication enables the creation of a social order which is a condition for a peaceful coexistence of all individuals. Since technical progress has made computer communication possible, utilizability of computers seems to have multiplied. LANs (Local Area Network) link many PCs (Personal Computer). So employees of a company can share documents, information sources ...