The Internet is an extremely integrated part of our daily lives, but only few people actually know much about it. Should we be worried? Maybe. As we are becoming even more dependent on electronic devices that are connected to the internet it might be a good idea to know just a little bit. This article presents some information and statistics about the Internet to better understand what it actually is that we are using every day.
What is the Internet?
The Internet is a vast network that connects computers all over the world. Through the Internet, people can share information and communicate with one another miles apart in seconds. In a more physical sense, the Internet is a mass of cables, computers, data centres, routers, servers, repeaters, satellites and wifi towers that allows digital information to travel around the world. It is the infrastructure that let us shop online, share our life on social media, stream series on streaming services, email relatives overseas, and search the web for answers on literally everything.
What is the world wide web?
The web is basically websites.
Google handles more than 40,000 searches per second, and has 60% of the global browser market through Chrome. There are nearly 2bn websites in existence but most are hardly visited. The top 0.1% of websites (roughly 5m) attract more than half of the world’s web traffic. Among them are Google, YouTube, Facebook, the Chinese site Baidu, Instagram, Yahoo, Twitter, the Russian social network VK.com, Wikipedia, and Amazon.
How BIG is the Internet?
If you begin thinking about the size of the internet, your brain might start to hurt. Although we might never be able to fully understand the depths of the World Wide Web, one way to get an indication of its size is through byte-sizes, which is a unit of digital memory. It is estimated that four companies alone (Facebook, Google, Microsoft & Amazon) collectively store at least 1,200 petabytes. That is enough data for 1.2 quadrillion minutes of music, equivalent to more than 2.2 billion years of audio. Unbelievable.
Another way to grasp the mightiness of the Internet is to look at users. As Smart Phones – particularly with the introduction of Apple’s iPhone in 2007 – became able to access the Web, the number of Internet users worldwide exploded form about one sixth of the world population in 2005 to more than half in 2020. As of January 2021 there were 4.66 billion active internet users worldwide – 59.5 percent of the global population. Of this total, 92.6 percent (4.32 billion) accessed the internet via mobile devices.
It is clear that communications connectivity will become bigger in the future as more machines and devices are getting interconnected. Thus, notice “Internet of things” (IoT), which refers to the collective network of connected devices and the technology that facilitates communication between devices and the cloud, as well as between the devices themselves.
How will the whole world get online?
A major challenge is to get affordable internet to poor, rural regions. However, US tech firms hope to make inroads by setting up connections in underdeveloped areas. For example, Google’s parent company, Alphabet, scrapped plans for solar powered drones and is now focusing on high-altitude balloons to provide the internet from the edge of space. Elon Musk’s SpaceX and a company called OneWeb have their own plans to bring internet access to everyone in the world via constellations of microsatellites, while Facebook has worked on drones being the solution.
My own perspective on the Internet
I am not in doubt. The Internet, as we know it today, still has an enormous potential. We need to pay attention to it.
This is my first reflection, and it is one (of the many) main reasons why I decided to create this personalised website. I believe it is the future. I enjoy the fact that I gain technological skills, get to create and design my own product, share my own perspectives on topics I find interesting, etc. through this website.
This personal website is meant to be this single platform where I am in control of the format to grow all my interest.
- Could you image a future (10 years from now) where conventional social media platforms were abandoned in favour of personalised websites or Apps? We have seen several cases where content has been censured based on the policies of the social media platform. Control could also be seen in the light of data as no one really knows where one’s personal data ends.
- Idea: a personalised social media platform.
Abbreviations:
PC – Personal Computer
WWW – World Wide Web
IoT – Internet of Things
