A computer network is a group of computers (or computer terminals) that communicate with each other (by phone or other cables or wireless transmissions).

The most popular computer network is the Internet. It connects computers all over the world, by phone lines and by other communication methods that are faster. You can connect your computer to the Internet, so you can access computers all over the world, peek at their hard disks, and transfer their info to your computer. The Internet transfers games, news, photos, love letters, chitchat, ads, and other info, public & private, to and from billions of workers, jokers, kids, and kooks across the country & around the world.

You can use the Internet to send & receive electronic mail and browse through announcements posted by folks worldwide.

The Internet gives you a huge sea of info. You stand on its shore, watch its waves coming at you, and get high by jumping into them. That’s called surfing the Net, which means “browsing through the amazing info available on the Net”.

You’ll get addicted to surfing the Net and spend many hours each day doing it. As you explore the Net, your electronic requests & their responses travel at electronic speeds around the world, on what Vice President Al Gore dubbed the Information Superhighway (I-way), propelling you through cyberspace (the vast, surreal world where all info and people are represented by bits, bytes, and electronic signals, as opposed to the “real world”, called meatspace, where people are composed of meat).

The Internet lets your mind fly around the world faster than an astronaut’s. Folks will call you an infonaut or Internaut or Internut or Net-head. You’ll have fun, while learning more about the world than any pre-computer human could ever imagine.

The Internet lets you read facts & opinions contributed by many people. If you contribute your thoughts, so they can be read by other people on the Internet and you’ve improved our world, you’re called a “good Internet citizen,” a netizen.

The Internet’s most popular feature is the World Wide Web (WWW).

 

The Internet arose because of the Cold War. Here are the details.

Cold War research

In 1957, while the US fought the Cold War against Russia, the Russians launched the first satellite, Sputnik. That made the US military realize it was dangerously behind Russia in scientific research, so in 1958 the US Department of Defense (DoD) created the Advanced Research Projects Agency (Arpa), which paid universities to do scientific research to help win the Cold War against Russia.

Arpanet (1969)

In 1969, Arpa created a computer network called Arpanet, which let university computers send data over phone lines using a sneaky method that would work even if Russians bombed the phone lines. The sneaky method was called packet switching.

At first, the Arpanet included just 4 computers: 1 at the University of Utah and 3 in California (at UCLA, UC Santa Barbara, and the Stanford Research Institute). The next year (1970), Arpanet added 3 computers in Massachusetts (at MIT, BBN, and Rand). The next year (1971), Arpanet added more computers (in California, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois), to make a total of 15 computers. The next year (1972), Arpanet expanded to more parts of the country, so 2000 people were using Arpanet — and they were starting to have fun, since electronic mail (email) was added to Arpanet that year. (Before that, Arpanet was just a big boring mass of technical documents & data.) The next year (1973), email became so popular that 75% of all Arpanet transmissions were emails; and research institutions in England and Norway joined Arpanet, so Arpanet became international.

On October 27, 1980, the entire Arpanet got shut down by a virus that was spread accidentally. The virus accomplished what bombs could not! Fortunately, the virus got eradicated.

Many universities around the world joined Arpanet because it was nifty, funded, and could be used for non-military purposes also, such as personal email.

Internet (1983)

Arpanet finally became too big to be managed simply, so in 1983 the military divided it into 2 networks:

To let those 2 networks communicate with each other, an inter-network communication method was invented, called the Internet Protocol (IP). That’s how the Internet began! IP came in several versions, the most popular being the Transmission Control Protocol for IP (TCP/IP).

At the end of 1983, the Internet included about 600 hosts (computers that had permanent Internet addresses and could supply data to other computers). The Internet grew fast:

Let’s see why it grew so fast.…

NSF (1986)

In 1986, the National Science Foundation (NSF) thought of letting researchers share 5 supercomputers by using Arpanet, but NSF changed its mind and decided to create its own network, called NSF Net. Like Arpanet, NSF Net used TCP/IP and was Arpanet-compatible, so NSF Net became part of the Internet. NSF Net ran faster than Arpanet (by running more phone lines between big cities, to form a strong Internet backbone), so universities switched to it from Arpanet. In 1990, Arpanet shut down permanently.

Arpa, which had created Arpanet, lived on but under its new name: the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa).

Packet switching is practical

Though packet switching was invented to avoid bombs, it has another advantage: it prevents any single user from hogging the Internet. If a “bad guy” tries to hog the Internet by sending a long message, the Internet divides his message into many little packets. Other users can squeeze their packets into the system without waiting for all the bad guy’s packets to go through. Any overloaded phone lines are automatically bypassed by routing packets through other phone lines.

Packet switching made the Internet “free for democracy” in 4 senses:

You can still wreck a country’s Internet if you’re evil enough to bomb all phone lines or send many long messages or force all Internet computers to censor transmissions. Though misguided folks tried such tactics, the Internet outlasted them.

Web (1990)

The Internet was a boring collection of documents, data, and emails until 1990, when Englishman Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web (WWW). To be briefer, folks call it just the Web. Here’s how it works:

To invent the Web, Tim was inspired by Ted Nelson.

Tim was the first person to take the ideas of Ted & Vannevar, apply them to the Internet, and make the whole system practical enough for humans to use.

Tim invented the World Wide Web while he was working in Switzerland at the Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (CERN, which was later renamed the European Laboratory for Particle Physics). Afterwards, Tim moved to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he directs the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), which plans the Web’s future.

Wartime use (1991)

The US’s allies copied Internet technology — and so did the US’s enemies:

Mosaic (1994)

To use the World Wide Web, you had to use a program called a browser. When Tim invented the World Wide Web, he invented his own crude browser. The first pleasant browser was Mosaic, invented in 1994 by Marc Andreessen, an undergrad at the University of Illinois’ National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA). Since his research was funded by the National Science Foundation, everybody was allowed to copy Mosaic for free. Later that year, he left NCSA and formed a company called Netscape Communications Corp., which invented an improved Web browser (called Netscape Navigator) and sold it cheaply ($50 or less, per copy).

Mosaic and Netscape made the Web become more popular. At the beginning of 1994, there were 600 Web sites (places on the Web that provide Web info); at the end of 1994, the number of Web sites shot up to 10,000; in later years, the number of Web sites continued to climb:

Mass market (1995)

In 1995, the Internet suddenly become more popular, for 5 reasons:

That year, the Internet got too big for the NSF to fund. The NSF stopped running NSF Net but gave grants to help universities buy Internet time from commercial networks that sprang up, such as Sprint, Alternet, and Performance Systems International (PSI). Consumers could use the Internet on their home personal computers by making their computer modems phone an Internet service provider (ISP), which was part of the Internet. Many companies sprang up to act as ISPs.

 

Several old companies invented their own networks for consumers by using a trick: they took non-Internet business networks (which were busy in the day but idle in the evening) and offered them to consumers at low evening rates.

When the Internet became popular (because it included so many email addresses and so many Web sites), those old companies modified their networks to include access to the whole Internet.

Unlimited access (1996)

Those old companies and new ISPs weren’t sure how much to charge consumers. At first, they charged $3 per hour. In 1996, most offered a better deal: unlimited access for $20 per month. (A few discount ISPs charged even less. A few business ISPs charged more, for superior service.)

Later came free ISPs, which offered free Internet service in return for forcing consumers to watch ads while using the Internet.

Who pays?

Here’s who invented and paid for the Internet.…

At first, funding came from the Defense Department (ARPA) and the National Science Foundation. To invent the Internet, much research was done by university professors (funded by government grants, student tuition, and alumni donations). Much research was done by student volunteers, who wanted to be famous by being helpful.

When consumer ISPs became popular, many consumers paid $20 per month per household. Many Web sites show ads, paid for by advertisers.

Many businesses pay for their own Web sites, in the hope that those sites will act as ads. The businesses also hope their Web sites will show lots of info online, so the businesses don’t have to mail brochures to customers and don’t have to hire employees to answer customer questions.

Many Web sites are created by startup companies who dream of greatness and convince investors to buy stock in that dream. Some of those dreamy companies succeed, and their stockholders get rich; other dreamy companies fail, and their stockholders lose their shirts. All those stockholders pay for the Internet and hope to reap rewards in return. While the stockholders wait for results, the company’s managers get high salaries (funded by stockholders), even though many of those startup companies haven’t earned any profit yet and never will.

In 1999, many such startup companies began. Investors sunk many millions of dollars into them, hoping the managers wouldn’t waste the money and would eventually turn a profit. Lots of jargon was invented to describe the situation:

Who uses the Internet?

When the Internet began, it was just for university scientific researchers, who were mostly men. But eventually the Internet grew, so people outside universities could get access. In the year 2000, women Internet users finally outnumbered men users, for 3 reasons:

Now the Internet can be used to spy on and control many things (such as appliances & cars), which are called smart devices and part of the Internet of Things (IoT).

 

To access the Internet, you can choose from 7 kinds of service.

Dial-up service

Some people still use dial-up service. Here’s how it works.…

To use dial-up service, your computer must contain a modem. (The fastest kind of modem is called a 56K modem.) Unplug your home’s phone cord from your landline phone, and attach the phone cord to your computer’s modem instead, so your computer can make phone calls. Yes, you’ll be using the plain old telephone system (POTS). Tell your computer to phone a computer belonging to an Internet service provider (ISP), which charges about $15 per month for the service, billed to your credit card. You might have to pay a $20 start-up fee also.

The phone number your computer calls is called an Internet dial-up access number or point of presence (POP). Make sure the POP is a local phone number, so you don’t pay any long-distance bills. To make sure it’s local, ask your local phone company whether the POP’s phone number is indeed a free call under your calling plan.

 

While your computer uses the Internet through this method, your computer is “tying up the phone line”, so if any of your friends try to phone you they’ll get a busy signal. You can solve that problem in 3 ways:

Of all the dial-up Internet service providers, the one with the best reputation is EarthLink, based in Pasadena, California.

To pay no money at all, you can try an ad-supported service. It’s the same as standard dial-up service, except you pay no monthly fee but must watch ads while you’re using the Internet. The main ad-supported ISP is Juno, which is owned by NetZero and limits you to 10 hours per month; phone 800-879-5866 for info.

Unfortunately, dial-up service is too slow to handle the modern Internet reasonably. Just 2% of people use dial-up service.

Cable-modem service

For faster transmission, try cable-modem service.

It resembles dial-up service, except you use cable-TV wires instead of phone wires (so you don’t tie up a phone line), get much faster transmission, and pay more (about $45 per month for the service, plus $25 for a Ethernet card (a network card you put into your computer, if your computer doesn’t have one already), plus about $50 for a cable modem (which attaches the Ethernet card to a cable-TV cord).

The cable-modem method has 2 advantages over dial-up service:

Since this method achieves its high speed by using a broad spectrum of frequencies for transmission, it’s an example of broadband transmission.

Cable-modem service is available just if your neighborhood is wired for cable TV and your cable-TV service company is modern. To find out, phone your local cable-TV company or a local computer store (such as your local Best Buy).

DSL service

If your neighborhood lacks cable, try DSL service.

A digital subscriber line (DSL) is a broadband transmission method that resembles the cable method; but instead of using cable-TV wires, it uses ordinary phone wires and makes them handle many frequencies at once.

To find out about DSL, start by calling your local phone company.

FiOS

Verizon (a local phone company) offers fiber-optic service (FiOS) in some neighborhoods. It’s faster than traditional cable and DSL. Inside each cable, Verizon shoots light rays instead of wires.

$70 per month (plus taxes) gets you 100 Mbps. That price also includes TV and phone service.

Cell phones

To access the Internet, you can use one of the cell-phone companies. (The biggest are Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint.) They send Internet signals from their cell-phone towers. Buy a smart cell phone (a smartphone), pay a fee to a cell-phone company, and have fun!

Using cell-phone towers can cost a lot per gigabyte. To save money, use cell-phone towers just when you’re not able to use other Internet methods.

Free-group service

To pay nothing for the Internet, try free-group service. For example, if you visit your local public library, you can use the library’s Internet-connected computers for free (though you might have to wait for other users to finish). While you’re enrolled in a typical college, you can freely use the college’s Internet-connected computers, which are in the college’s computer labs, libraries, and dorms. Many restaurants and cafés include free Wi-Fi hotspots, so you can bring your notebook computer and let it communicate wirelessly with the Internet.

Satellite service

If you can’t use cable, DSL, FiOS, or a free-group service (because you live in a rural area or boat that hasn’t been wired yet), try satellite service. It uses a satellite-TV dish to communicate with the Internet. It’s slower than cable, DSL, and FiOS. This service is financially attractive if you already bought a satellite dish to watch TV.

The main source of this service is HughesNet (800-428-9570), whose service you can also buy from resellers, such as SatelliteInternet.com (877-884-6795), which charges $40 per month.

 

The most popular part of the Internet is called the World Wide Web (or just the Web or just WWW).

The World Wide Web sometimes runs slowly. You can spend lots of time waiting for it to respond to your commands. Cynics call it the “World Wide Wait”.

To use the World Wide Web, you need a program called a
Web browser.

The first good Web browser was Mosaic, invented by a University of Illinois undergrad, Marc Andreessen, in 1994. Later that year, he left the university and formed a company called Netscape Communications Corp., where he invented a better Web browser called Netscape Navigator (or just Navigator).

In 1995, Microsoft invented a competing Web browser called Internet Explorer (IE).

Its recent versions (5 and later) are better than Netscape Navigator. They’re free, included as part of Windows. Windows 10 includes IE but also Microsoft’s newest Web browser, called Microsoft Edge (or simply Edge).

In 1998, Netscape Communications Corp. gave up trying to compete against Microsoft: the company sold itself to AOL, which wrecked Netscape Navigator by putting lots of AOL ads into it. But a group of volunteers called Mozilla.org (helped by funding from AOL) invented an improved ad-free Netscape Navigator called Mozilla then invented a further improvement, called Firefox.

For many years, people considered Firefox to be better than IE; but IE 9&10&11 are dramatic improvement over earlier IE versions, so they’re about as good as Firefox.

Another popular Web browser is Opera. It was invented in 1994 by researchers at Norway’s telephone company (Telenor), then spun off as a separate company (Opera Software) in 1995. It became famous for running faster than IE and Firefox and consuming less RAM. It consumes so little RAM that it can fit comfortably even in cell phones and the smallest videogame machines.

In 2005, a company called YouTube started putting videos on the Internet. In 2006, Google bought YouTube but was frustrated that IE was handling YouTube’s videos too slowly, so in 2008 Google invented its own Web browser, called Chrome, which handled videos faster.

The newest version of Edge partly imitates Chrome. That version of Edge is called Edge Chromium-based. It came out in 2020. Earlier versions of Edge are called Edge Legacy.

Apple’s devices (the Mac, the iPad, and the iPhone) come with Apple’s own Web browser, called Safari. Microsoft used to make Mac versions of IE but stopped when Apple invented Safari.

Though Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and Safari were each intended to improve on IE, many people still use IE or Microsoft Edge, because they come preloaded on most Windows computers and have been improved, so they’re about as fast & good as those other browsers.

Here’s what people actually use on normal computers (not tablet, not phone, not embedded):

This chapter explains the best Web browsers for Windows 10&11: Chrome (version 91) and Edge (Chromium-based).

I prefer Edge. I recommend you use Edge instead of Chrome. But a few Websites require Chrome instead. Try both of those Web browsers, so you become multi-Weblingual!

(The iPad’s version of Safari is explained later, in the iPad chapter. Internet Explorer and Firefox are explained in this book’s 32^nd edition, which you can get by phoning me at 603-666-6644.)

 

Get a computer that includes Windows 10 or 11. Read & practice this book’s Windows 10&11 chapter (pages 70-99), especially the Microsoft Edge pages (pages 76-77).

 

Windows 10&11 include Edge already. Here’s how to get Chrome:

 

Turn on the computer. To start browsing the Web, do this:

You see the browser’s window. Maximize it (by tapping its maximize button if not maximized yet).

Near the screen’s top-left corner, you see 3 arrows (an arrow pointing left, an arrow pointing right, and an arrow pointing in a circle).

You also see the home page.

Address box

Tap in the address box, which is the wide box near the screen’s top-left corner.

(That box is also called the address bar or location bar.)

In that box, type the Internet address you wish to visit.

For example, if you wish to visit Yahoo, you can type Yahoo’s Internet address, which is —

That’s Yahoo’s Internet address. It’s also called Yahoo’s Uniform Resource Locator (or URL, which is pronounced “Earl”). When typing an Internet address (such as “https://www.yahoo.com/”), make sure you type periods (not commas); type forward slashes (not backslashes).

The address’s first part (“https://”) tells the computer to use HyperText Transfer Protocol Secure, which is the preferred communication method used by the Web. The “www.” emphasizes that you’re using the World Wide Web. The “.com” means the service (Yahoo) is a commercial company.

But instead of typing “https://www.yahoo.com/”, you can be lazy and type just this:

In an Internet address, each period is called a dot, so “yahoo.com” is pronounced “yahoo dot com”.

Here’s another shortcut: you can type just —

but afterwards, instead of just pressing the Enter key, do this:

That “Ctrl with Enter” makes the computer automatically type the “.com” for you.

Here’s another shortcut: start typing “yahoo” (by typing “y” then “a” then “h”) but look below where you’re typing; if you see what you want (such as www.yahoo.com) because the computer successfully guessed what you wanted, click the computer’s correct guess.

Here’s another shortcut: start typing “yahoo” (by typing “y” then “a”) but notice that if it’s something you typed previously, the computer will complete the typing for you: if you’re satisfied with the computer’s typing, just press Enter afterwards.

Using any of those methods, you’ll eventually see the beginning of Yahoo’s home page, and you’ll see this in the address box:

Seeing the rest of the page To see the rest of the page, tap the scroll-down arrow (the 6 near the screen’s bottom right corner) or roll the mouse’s wheel (which is between the mouse’s buttons) toward you or put your finger in the screen’s middle and swipe up. To see the page’s beginning again, tap the scroll-up arrow (5) or roll the mouse’s wheel away from you or put your finger in the screen’s middle and swipe down.

Links

On Yahoo’s home page, you see many topics to choose from.

The screen’s left edge shows these 13 hot topics:

The screen shows today’s news & ads. The rest of the screen shows extra topics.

Each topic is called a link (or hot spot). Tap whichever link interests you.

As soon as you click — presto! — the computer shows you a whole new page, devoted entirely to the topic you linked to! Read it and enjoy!

While you’re looking at that new page, you’ll see its address in the address box. On that new page, you’ll see more topics that are links: places where the mouse’s pointer-arrow turns into a pointing finger. (The links are usually underlined or colored or bolded.) Click whichever link interests you, to visit a further page.

Back & forth

After admiring the new page you’re visiting, if you change your mind and want to go back to the previous page you were looking at, tap the Back button (which is near the screen’s top-left corner and has a left-arrow on it).

Then you see the previous page. (On that page, any links you clicked might have changed color.)

After tapping the Back button, if you change your mind again and wish you hadn’t tapped the Back button, tap the
Forward button (which is next to the Back button and has a right-arrow on it).

History To see a list of pages you visited in the last few weeks, do this:

You see a list of all pages you visited in the last few weeks. (To see the whole list, slide up.)

Which page do you want to visit? Click the page’s title (which is usually capitalized words), not the page’s www.

Favorites If you’re viewing a wonderful page, here’s how to make the computer remember that the page is one of your favorites and bookmark it.

Inside the address bar, near the screen’s top-right corner, is a star.

 

Pin If you find a Web page you like a lot, you can include it on the taskbar, by doing this:

That puts a tiny tile for your Web page onto the taskbar. Afterwards, whenever you want to use that Web page, just tap that tile. (You don’t have to go into Edge or Chrome first.)

Later, if you change your mind, delete that tiny tile from the taskbar by doing this:

Open something different

To switch to a completely different address, tap in the address box again then type the Internet address you wish to visit.

For example, if you wish to visit Google.com, type this:

At the end of your typing, press Enter.

If the screen says “www.google.com wants to know your location”, tap “Allow” (to get more accurate info).

In the screen’s middle, you see a white box, called the
search box.

Try this experiment: tap in the search box, then type a topic that interests you. For example, type:

Don’t bother capitalizing: the computer ignores capitalization.

At the end of your typing, press Enter. Google will find over 500 million Web pages mentioning Lincoln. Google will begin by listing, at the screen’s left edge, the Web pages that Google thinks you’ll find the most useful, plus maybe some ads. (Ads are usually in a box and say “Ad” or “Sponsored”.)

For example, if you asked for “lincoln”, Google will list several Web pages about President Abraham Lincoln, a Lincoln movie, Lincoln cars (made by Ford), Lincoln University (in Pennsylvania), the towns of Lincoln in Massachusetts & Nebraska, the Lincoln Financial Group (an insurance company), and Lincoln Street (if there’s a Lincoln Street near you). To see all those Web pages, scroll down to the bottom of the page by using your mouse’s wheel or the down-arrow near the screen’s bottom-right corner or sliding your finger up the screen.

Each Web page’s name is blue. Click whichever Web page you want — or click “Next” (at the bottom of Google’s page) to see a list of 10 more Web pages about Lincoln.

To be more specific, type more words in the search box. For example, if you’re interested just in Abraham Lincoln, type:

If you’re interested in just Lincoln cars, type:

If you’re interested in just Abraham Lincoln’s log cabin, type:

Google is called a search site, since its purpose is to help you search for other sites on the Internet. (Yahoo is also a search site, since it includes a search box, but Yahoo’s search box doesn’t work as well as Google’s.) Google and Yahoo are also called
Web portals, since their purpose is to serve as a grandiose door through which you pass to launch your journey across the World Wide Web.

Print

While you’re viewing a page, here’s how to print a copy of it onto paper:

That makes your printer try to print the whole page — even the part of the page that goes below the screen’s bottom edge and doesn’t fit on the screen.

If the Web page is wider than your paper, the computer squeezes the Web page onto your paper by printing a shrunken image of the page.

If the Web page is very wide, make the printer rotate the page 90 degrees, so it fits on the paper. Here’s how:

Simultaneous pages

Here’s how to make your computer’s RAM (memory chips) hold two Web pages simultaneously, so you can switch back and forth between those pages fast.

While you’re viewing a Web page, try one of these activities:

Near the screen’s top, you see two wide tabs: each tab contains a Web page’s name (title). To switch between the two Web pages, click their tabs.

When you get tired of having two tabs, here’s how to have just one tab again:

Exit

When you finish using Edge or Chrome, close its window (by clicking its X button).

 

 

Here are the 2 popular ways to search for a topic on the Web.

Search-box method

In a search box, type the topic you’re interested in, and then press Enter. That makes Google (or Bing) use its search engine, which searches on the Internet for pages about that topic.

Google has the best search engine. Here’s how to use Google’s search box. (Bing is similar.)

When you make Google search for a topic, Google typically finds thousands of pages about that topic. Google tries to guess which of those pages are the most relevant; Google begins by trying to show you a list of the most relevant pages (on a white background). That list is interrupted by some ads, which are marked “sponsored links” and have pastel colored backgrounds. The ads relate vaguely to the topic you requested, but you can ignore them. They’re listed first because the advertisers paid for such listing.

What Google ignores Google ignores capitalization, so don’t bother capitalizing. Typing “george washington” has the same effect as typing “George Washington”.

In the search box, type just words separated by spaces. Google ignores commas, periods, question marks, and exclamation points.

Google usually ignores these common words:

Restricting your search The more words you type in the search box, the more restricted the search will be, since Google will show you a Web page just if the page includes all the words you mentioned.

If you type “bush”, Google will list all Web pages that mention “bush”. Google will guess that you’re mainly interested in the British rock band called “Bush” or President George W. Bush, so it will begin by listing Web pages about them. Google will also mention Web pages about the Bush School (a prep school in Seattle) and the Bush Foundation (founded by Archibald & Edith Bush), and eventually many other people named Bush, a discothèque in Belgium called “La Bush”, any plant called a “bush”, and pubic hair (for which the slang word is “bush”).

If you’re more specific, Google will mention fewer Web pages.

The more words you type in the search box, the more specific your request is, and the fewer Web pages will match. If you get too few Web pages, try different words instead.

Try variations. If you’re interested in plants that are bushes, and you don’t like what you get when you search for “bush plant”, try searching for “shrub” instead, which will get you a different list: Web pages that mention the word “shrub”.

Google notices your word order. If you say “bush plant”, Google begins by listing Web pages that mention “bush” before “plant”; if you say “plant bush”, Google begins by listing Web pages that mention “plant” before “bush”.

Google searches for just the words you requested. For example, if you search for “airline”, Google will list Web pages that contain the word “airline” but not Web pages that contain just the word “airlines” instead. For complete listings, search for “airline” then search again for “airlines”.

If you type quotation marks around a phrase (such as “to be or not to be”), Google shows just Web pages containing that exact phrase.

Which Web pages are important To determine which Web pages to show you first, Google considers how closely each Web page matches what you requested — but also considers how important each Web page seems to be. Google considers a Web page to be important if many other Web pages contain links to that page, and if the Web pages that link to it are themselves important also (by being linked to from other Web pages).

Phone book In the search box, if you type a phone number (such as “603-666-6644”), Google will look through phonebook white pages and tell you who has that phone number (if the number is listed).

If instead you type a name (of a person or business) with a city and state (such as “Russ Walter Manchester NH”), Google will look through the phonebook white pages and tell you the phone number (if the number is listed), street address, and ZIP code. When you type a person’s name, you must type at least the last name; do not type a middle name; type the first name or first initial if you know how it’s listed in the phonebook white pages. Instead of typing a city and state, you can type a ZIP code if you know it.

Maps In the search box, if you type an address (such as “196 Tiffany Lane Manchester NH”), Google will show you a map of that address.

Here’s another way to get a map. Go to:

Type an address. Press Enter.

Pictures To search for a picture (instead of words), do this:

Single site If you want Google to search through just one Web site, say so. For example, if you want to search for info about Windows Vista just on Microsoft’s Web site (which is microsoft.com), say “Windows Vista site:microsoft.com”.

Who links to you? To find all Web pages that link to your favorite Web page, type “link:” then your Web page’s address, like this: “link:secretfun.com”.

Censor Google can censor the list of Web pages and pictures, so you don’t see pornography.

To change how Google censors what you see, click “Settings” (which is at the screen’s bottom-right corner) then “Search settings” then put a check mark in “Filter explicit results” (by clicking there) then the “Save” button (which you’ll see when you scroll down) then press Enter.

Translate Google can translate 80 languages (English, Spanish, French, and many others). Go to:

You see 2 big boxes.

What text do you want to translate? Type it in the left big box (or copy it there by using copy-and-paste).

If you type words (or sentences or paragraphs), their translation appears immediately in the right box. To hear the computer’s voice say the translation out loud, tap the right box’s Listen button (which looks like a speaker).

To translate a whole Web page instead, do this:

The translations are done by Google’s robots (which are computers). They make many translation mistakes but give you at least a rough idea of how to translate.

Cached pages When Google shows you a list of Web pages about your topic, that list is based on info that Google collected several months ago about the Internet. The list might no longer be correct. When you click on one of the Web pages in the list, the Internet might give you an error message saying the page no longer exists, or the Internet might give you a page different from what you were expecting.

Fear not! Though the original Web page might have disappeared from the Internet, Google’s kept a copy of that original Web page in Google’s cache. To see the original, go back to Google’s list of Web pages; but instead of clicking the Web page’s name, click the “‚” below it then click “Cached”. Then you’ll see the same original page that Google saw.

Experiment The Internet is huge. For a typical topic, Google will find thousands of pages about it. For the most popular topics, Google will find millions of pages.

If you try to fool Google by typing a short fake word (such as a nonsense syllable), you’ll be surprised: Google will typically inform you that the word was already invented by others and will show you several pages about it (because it turns out to be the name of a rock band, or an organization’s initials, or a word in a foreign language, or a word invented by a novelist to describe a splat-like sound). If you try to fool Google by typing several seemingly unrelated words or names (separated by spaces), Google will typically find a Web page containing them all (because the Web page is from a crazy novel or reading list or alumni list or dictionary).

Other search engines Here’s a list of popular search engines:

Try them! Each gives slightly different results.

Address-box method

Give your friends a sheet of paper and ask them to jot down the addresses of their favorite Web pages. (Or get lists of nifty Web addresses by reading computer books, magazines, newspaper articles, or ads.)

For example, here’s a list of excellent Web sites:

Type one of those addresses in the address box, then press Enter.

To understand how addresses work, consider the best driving-directions Web site, whose full address is:

The address’s first part (“http://”) is called the protocol.

The address’s next part (“www.MapQuest.com”) is called the domain name; it tells you which computer on the Internet contains the info. The typical domain name begins with “www.”, then has the name of a company (such as “MapQuest”). The domain name’s ending (called the top-level domain) is typically “.com”, which means “USA commercial company”. Some addresses have different top-level domains. Here are different top-level domains and what they mean:

Recently, these new top-level domains were invented: .info, .name, .biz (for business), and .ws (for website).

The rest of the address (such as “/directions/”) is called the page name; it tells which file on the computer contains the page you requested.

Type each address carefully:

 

To enrich your life, go to the best Websites. Here they are.…

Links

SecretFun.com is my own site. It contains info about the Secret Guide to Computers & Tricky Living. By clicking the links in the first pink box, you and your friends can read parts of the Secret Guide to Computer & Tricky Living free and jump to other sites recommended in this chapter.

General searches

Google.com finds the most topics on the Internet. If you type some words, then press Enter, you’ll see a list of the main Web sites containing those words. Its main competitor is Bing.com, which is owned by Microsoft. Try them both, to get 2 different views of your subject.

News

To find news headlines and the stories behind them, Microsoft offers these methods:

You can click a category or just browse through the sample stories that are already on the main page.

An alternative is to go to Yahoo.com, where the news is less organized but more fun.

Yahoo also offers a variant, at news.Yahoo.com, where the news tends to be more serious and adds this menu on top:

For a bigger collection of news stories, try Google News (news.google.com), which uses a computer (rather than humans) to decide which of the moment’s news stories are the hottest. The main stories are all in the central column, in bunches that have these headings:

Each bunch (except “top stories”) shows just 4 stories; but at the bunch’s bottom, you see “More”, which you can click to see 3 more stories from that bunch, then click “More” again to see another 3 more. If you click a story’s blue headline, you see the full story; but if you click a story’s black 1-or-2 line summary instead, you see competing stories about the same topic. The righthand column shows the most recent stories, weather, sports, and local news. It also shows 4 stories from one nice source; to change the source, click the “>”.

Weather

The easiest way to predict the weather is to use the
Weather tile (which is part of Windows 8, 8.1, and 10) or the weather app on your smartphone.

If you don’t have those, try these Websites:

An alternative is to walk outside, notice if you get wet or blown away, and guess the future. Your prediction might be better than the computer’s.

Time

Here’s how to find the exact time.

For time in the U.S., do this:

For time in many cities around the world, do this:

Travel

The Internet lets you explore the whole world!

Maps The best way to see maps online is to go to
Google Maps (maps.google.com).

You see a map of your neighborhood. If you click in the map then rotate the mouse’s wheel toward you, you see a map of bigger & bigger territory, until eventually you see a map of the whole world.

To see more details about a spot on the map, do this:

If you click “Earth” (which is at the screen’s bottom-left corner), you see an aerial photo of that spot, taken from a satellite. Yes, you can even see a photo of your own house’s roof! (Exception: summertime trees look like giant cabbages.) If you zoom in on a popular street, you can even see what a person would see when walking down the street. If you drag your mouse left or right (while holding down the mouse’s left button), you see what the person would see when turning his head. When you get tired of looking at Earth views, return to a normal map by zooming back out then clicking “Map” (at the screen’s bottom-left corner).

Driving directions The best way to get driving directions is to go to MapQuest Directions (MapQuest.com/directions).

Go ahead, have fun! See how MapQuest advises you to travel to your neighbors, your relatives, your job, and across the country. Mapquest’s advice might surprise you: it might find a faster route you hadn’t thought of.

If the screen’s bottom asks “Let mapqust.com use your location?” click “Yes”. If the screen’s middle asks “Let Microsoft Edge access your precise location?” click “Yes”.

Start typing the address where your trip starts (so it appears in the “Where are you starting?” box at the screen’s left edge) or click “Current Location” (if you want to start from where you are now). As you type, you see the computer’s guess about what address you’re going to type. Click the computer’s guess (if it’s right) or finish typing the address yourself (and press Enter).

Click “Where are you going?” then type the address where your trip ends and press Enter (or click the computer’s guess).

Click “Get Directions”.

Near the screen’s left edge, you see “Route #1” and how many minutes & miles it will take. You also see a map, with the route marked in green. If you click “Route #2”, you see an alternate route instead, which is usually worse but might appeal to your personality.

Which route do you prefer? Click your favorite: “Route #1” or “Route #2”.

Click “View Route Directions”. You start seeing the turn-by-turn directions. Scroll down to see them all.

Click “Print” (which is near the screen’s top, above the directions). Then you see route directions that are even more detailed.

To print onto paper, then click the green “Print” button then the “Print” that’s at the screen’s bottom-left corner.

While you’re driving, reset your car’s mileage counter to 0 each time you make a turn, so you can use the directions about how far to drive before turning — or if you prefer, try using the cumulative mileages that your printer adds for you.

Warning: the directions might mislead you (because highway exit numbers have changed, or the directions accidentally say “turn left” when they should say “turn right”, or construction makes you take a detour, or a vandal removed a street sign, or you didn’t notice a turn), so give yourself extra time to backtrack, ask neighbors for directions, and try to bring along a traditional map!

MapQuest started as a division of a printing company (R.R. Donnelley), then became independent, then became part of AOL, so now AOL owns MapQuest.

Different countries The US Government has a branch called the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), whose job is to spy on all other countries. For a summary of what the CIA found out about each country, go to:

You see start seeing an alphabetical list of 262 countries (and strange places), beginning with Afghanistan, Akrotiri, Albania, and Algeria.

When you finally see the name of a country (or strange place) you care about, click that name. Then you see details about that location. By scrolling and clicking, you can see the country’s flag, photos, maps, and this list of 12 topics:

Click whichever topic interests you.

Airplane flights If you want a cheap plane ticket and are flexible about what day you’ll travel, try CheapFlights.com.

Of the major airlines, Southwest Airlines (Southwest.com) and Jet Blue (JetBlue.com) tend to have the lowest prices. For other airlines, try going to Orbitz.com (a consortium of 20 major airlines), though Orbitz doesn’t handle Southwest, American Airlines, and Delta.

Hotels To find a hotel, try Kayak.com or Trivago.com, or rent a room in somebody’s home through AirBnB.com.

Reputable references

The Internet contains many reputable references, which you can use, free!

Encyclopedia Wikipedia.org is the world’s biggest encyclopedia — and it’s free!

To find an article, type the topic you want to search for (so it appears in the blue box), then press Enter (assuming your language is English). While you read the article, you can click any blue word to find a related article about that word.

The articles are written and edited by thousands of volunteers.

Old-fashioned professors required students to write “term papers”, but modern professors require students to write articles for Wikipedia instead.

The encyclopedia is based on the honor system: to keep it worthwhile, please edit responsibly!

Over 99% of Wikipedia’s articles are correct. A few are misleading, so you can’t trust Wikipedia completely and must double-check what you read there, but it’s a good starting point for your research on any topic, especially since most of its articles on controversial topics give a balanced view.

Health For info about health, start at InteliHealth.com. It contains info that’s reliable, easy to understand, and well organized. The Web site is owned by Aetna insurance company, but most of the info comes from (or is approved by) the Harvard Medical School and the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, with additional input from the National Institutes of Health (a government agency).

More details from the National Institutes of Health (and the National Library of Medicine) are at MedlinePlus (nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus).

Bogus health claims, from marketers of supplements and “natural cures,” are called “quackery”. To find out which health claims are bogus (false), go to QuackWatch.com.

 

Fact checking Often you’ll hear a statement that’s hard to believe: a rumor, exaggeration, or lie, from a friend, politician, email, or Website. Check it!

To check the accuracy of statements by politicians, you can go to FactCheck.org or, even better, The Washington Post’s
Fact Checker (WashingtonPost.com/news/fact-checker, written by Glenn Kessler & Michelle Ye Hee Lee).

To check the accuracy of other statements, go to Snopes.com, which analyzes pernicious rumors & lies (just as William Faulkner’s novels analyze the pernicious Snopes family). Here’s how Snopes.com works.…

At the screen’s top, you see a menu, whose most useful choices are “News” (to see the newest strange facts), “Top” (to see the 50 rumors & facts that are spreading fastest), and “Archives” (to see the complete collection of rumors).

If you click “Archives”, you see the heading “Fact Check Archives” above these rumor categories:

Click the category you want. Then you see a list of rumors; scroll down to see them all. (Above them and to the right of them are ads, which you can ignore.) Below each rumor, you’ll see a gray oval saying “True” or “False” or something in-between (such as “Mostly False” or “Mixture” or “Unproven” or “Legend” or “Labeled Satire”).

Another way to check for rumors is to click the gray search oval (which is near the screen’s top, to the right of “Snopes”, and says “Search Snopes.com”), then type the rumor’s main words. At the end of your typing, press Enter. You’ll see a list of rumors that relate to what you typed.

Snopes.com was started by David Mikkelson and his wife Barbara Mikkelson. She became the world’s best investigative journalist, but she fell ill, got divorced from David, and is no longer associated with Snopes.com.

Lawns For advice on caring for your lawn, go to a Web site run by the University of Illinois and called Lawn Talk (https://web.extension.illinois.edu/lawntalk).

Click on one of these 4 topics:

Then you see a list of subtopics. Click on your favorite, then read the lecture.

The details apply to lawns in northern Illinois, but the general principles apply to all lawns. Next time you argue with your neighbors or family about your lawn, here’s how to make them shut up: say “I took a college course on the topic.”

Government

You can reach your government through the Internet.

General site To explore the US government, start at USA.gov and follow the links.

Taxes For help with federal taxes, contact the Internal Revenue Service (IRS.gov).

At the screen’s left edge, you see a short list of popular forms & publications. If you want one of them, click it; if you want a different form or publication instead, do this:

Then you see the form or instructions or publication you requested (assuming your computer contains the Acrobat Reader program, so your computer can handle a PDF file).

To print the file onto paper simply, do this (assuming you’re using Windows 10 with Microsoft Edge):

When the printing has finished, click the Back button (which is at the screen’s top-left corner and has a left arrow on it) so you can see and print other forms and instructions.

Post office For info about how to mail a letter, go to the Web site of the United States Postal Service (USPS.com). It answers several questions.…

What’s the best way to write an address on an envelope? For example, if you live in the USA, what’s the best way to write your address? What’s your 9-digit ZIP code? What’s the best way to write your street name, house number, apartment number, etc.? You might be surprised! To find out all that, do this:

How much postage should you put on your letter or package? To find out, do this instead:

 

Classified ads

Craig’s List (CraigsList.org), which was started by Craig Newmark in San Francisco, is a list of classified ads that you can read — and you can create your own ad, free! The ads are highly organized, so you can find what you want fast!

Craig’s List is very popular. Each month, Craig’s List has:

To begin, look at the screen’s rightmost column, where you see a list of locations: click whatever country, state, or city interests you. (The menus let you choose from 700 locations in 88 countries.)

Then you see ads from that location, organized into 8 main categories —

and hundreds of subcategories. Click whichever subcategory you want. (Most subcategories are tame, but a few require you to be at least 18.)

For each ad in that subcategory, you see the ad’s headline. Click a headline to see its ad. When you finish looking at the ad, click the Back button (the left-arrow at the screen’s top-left corner), so you return to seeing the list of headlines.

While you’re looking at a list of headlines, you can create your own ad by clicking “post” (which is at the screen’s top-right corner). Posting your ad is free, except for some ads in these categories in U.S. & Canada:

Those few exceptions are how Craig’s List gets funded.

Shopping

The computer can help you shop.

Banks To compare banks in your city, state, and across the nation and find out which offer the best rates, go to BankRate.com.

In the screen’s middle, you see 6 popular categories:

At the screen’s top, you see 9 general categories:

Click any category you want.

Beware of these limitations:

Cars If you want to buy a car (new or used), visit these car sites to get smarter: MSN Autos (autos.msn.com), AutoByTel.com, Edmunds.com, and CarsDirect.com. To find the best prices, visit TrueCar.com, which compares dealers near you and gets them to bid low prices.

Housing To buy, sell, or rent a home, use the classified ads at Craig’s List (CraigsList.org), but also see the listings at Zillow.com.

Zillow’s top menu gives these choices:

But the fun part is to click the blank box in the screen’s middle, then type an address (such as your own home!), then press Enter. Zillow will tell you what it thinks the home is worth.

The real-estate industry’s main Website is Realtor.com, which resembles Zillow.com but emphasizes its own agents.

Books To buy traditional books quickly & cheaply, you can visit Amazon.com; but to find the best books at lower prices you’ll often have better luck at Walmart.com. (To buy this book quickly and cheaply, phone me at 603-666-6644 for better deals, or peek at my Website, SecretFun.com.)

Eyeglasses To buy eyeglasses cheaply, go to ZenniOptical.com.

Jobs To get a job, look at the ads at Craig’s List (CraigsList.org) but also visit Monster.com, Indeed.com, and CareerBuilder.com. Each of those 4 sites has a million jobs (plus advice), so you see about 4 million jobs total.

Buy a business Have you ever dreamed of being the boss and running your own business? But are you too chicken to start your own? Would you rather buy a business that’s already successful, and have the pleasure of running it? If so, go to the Web to find out what businesses are available for sale. A good place to start hunting is BizBuySell.com, which has 65,000 businesses for sale each year.

Arts

The Internet has lots of info about arts.

YouTube One of the most popular Websites is YouTube.com. It lets you watch thousands of videos (movies). Most are short (usually between 2 and 8 minutes long), contributed by amateur movie makers (mostly students in their dorm rooms). Many are hilarious. They’re much more interesting, per minute, than the stuff Hollywood churns out, and they’re free!

To use that site, you need a fast (broadband) Internet connection (cable, DSL, FiOS, or cell phone).

The screen’s middle shows many videos. Scroll down to see more. If you visited YouTube before, YouTube remembers what kinds of videos you liked, so it shows you videos that are similar. Click whichever video you want.

Most of the videos are tame. Some movies are raunchy but require you to register and confirm you’re at least 18 years old. Once you register, you can copy videos that you’ve created to YouTube.com, free, so all your friends and the whole world can admire what you’ve created!

While a video plays, try moving the mouse pointer to the video’s middle, but without clicking yet. Then you have these choices:

Each video has an ID, which is 11 characters long. While you watch a video, its ID appears in the address box after “YouTube.com/watch?v=”. If you know a video’s ID, you can see the video by doing one of these activities:

Here are my favorite amazing videos. Warning:

Classical music (which I’ve listed in the order the music was composed):

Advice: to see the whole Cat Concerto free & legally, go to supercartoons.net/cartoon/326/tom-jerry-the-cat-concerto.html then click “The Cat Concerto” (which you see when you scroll down).

Popular music:

Koreans:

Yodelers:

Wild situations:

Men trying to date women:

Surviving hard times:

Jazz:

Fast dancing:

Classic TV shows:

Abbott & Costello’s movies & TV shows:

Magic by spliced videos:

Videos written & acted by Melissa Hunter:

Movie database  To find out details about famous movies, go to the
Internet Movie Database (IMDb.com) then do this:

You’ll see lots of info about that topic.

The Website is extremely well linked. For example, if you look up a movie, you see links to each member of the cast and staff who created the movie; each such link takes you to a biography of that person. So if you’re watching a movie and wonder “Where have I seen him before?” just click on his link to find out! You can link back: each person’s biography contains links to all the movies the person was in.

Because of the good links and content, this Website is on everybody’s list of “the best Web sites ever created”.

Free music To hear your favorite music, you can use 2 free methods:

Rap Dictionary When you listen to rap music, do you understand all the slang? If not, go to The Rap Dictionary (RapDict.org), which defines about 5000 slang words. If you want the definition of a specific word, click in the Search box (at the screen’s top-right corner), type the word, and press Enter. If instead you want to browse through the dictionary, click either “Dictionary” (which starts showing you the main dictionary) or one of these dictionary categories —

or “Artists” (which starts showing you the list of who’s who in the rap biz) or one of these artist categories:

Classic books Did you ever wish you could walk into a library and find the greatest classic books, all in one place? They’re all together at Great Books Online (bartleby.com/index.html).

Math

To solve a math problem, go to WolframAlpha.com. You see a wide orange search box. Click in that box, then type a math problem. If you don’t see the answer yet, press Enter.

For example, if you type—

the computer will immediately say:

If you enter instead —

the computer will solve that algebra equation and say:

(To see that solution, scroll down.) Nearby, the computer will also show graphs about that equation.

If you enter a problem involving advanced algebra or advanced calculus, the computer will solve it, show you the exact answer using algebra & calculus symbols, calculate the answer as a decimal also, show you graphs of everything involved.

Then if you then click “Step by-step solution”, the computer will start showing you how it figured out the answer; but to see all the steps, you must create a Pro account, by paying either $6 monthly or $57 annually. The Pro account is useful: by copying those steps onto your homework paper, you can trick your teacher into believing you figured out the whole thing yourself!

Besides knowing standard high-school and college math, the computer also knows the other important numbers in life. For example, if you enter —

the computer will look up the birthdays of those famous people, realize the queen was about 8 years old when Elvis was born, and give the exact answer:

It can also convert units: inches & meters, quarts & liters, Fahrenheit & Celsius, dollars & euros (using today’s exchange rates), and anything else you can dream of. For example, it can solve:

It understands many topics. At the screen’s bottom (if the orange box has been empty) or when you click “Examples”, you see 30 sample topics:

If you click one of those topics, you see several subtopics (in orange). If a subtopic has “>>” next to it, click that to see
sub-subtopics. Along the way, you see lots of examples of what you can type in the orange search box, but those are just suggestions: in the orange search box, type anything you wish!. Type anything you wish in the orange search box; you’re seeing just suggestions.

That Website is starting to change how math is taught. Instead of getting bogged down in the details of algebra & calculus computations, teachers are telling students to let WolframAlpha do those details; students should concentrate instead on learning what the problems and answers mean and how to interpret them.

Trivia

For 3,000 strange but true facts about many topics, go to Useless Facts (AngelFire.com/ca6/uselessfacts). The screen’s left edge shows this list of 20 topics:

Click whichever topic you wish. Then you’ll see lots of strange trivia about that topic. Scroll down to see more. At the Web page’s bottom, click “next” to see even more.

Computer industry

For questions about the computer industry’s dominant company (Microsoft) and its products, go directly to Microsoft’s own Web site, Microsoft.com. Click a menu item, photo, or ad, or click the white box (at the screen’s top-right corner) then type the specific topic you’re interested in (and press Enter).

For info about Apple’s computers & products, go to Apple.com.

 

While you use the Internet, you’ll experience several hassles.

Delays

The computer might take a long time to switch from one page to another. Near the screen’s bottom-left corner, the computer prints messages about the switch.

How to stop

If the switch is taking a long time and you don’t want to wait for it to finish, tap the Stop button, which is a temporary X that’s left of the address box. Tapping that temporary X makes the computer stop switching.

 

“Switching pages” is called loading a new page. When you click the Stop button, here’s what happens:

How to try again

When you try to view a new page, the computer might get stuck because of a transmission error. To try again, stop the current transmission attempt (by clicking the Stop button) and then see what happens.

If you find yourself back at the previous page, try again to switch to the new page.

On the other hand, if you find yourself with most, but not all, of the new page on the screen, and you insist on seeing the entire new page, tell your ISP to try again to transmit the current page, by doing this:

Cache

Whenever you view a page, the computer secretly puts a copy of it onto your hard disk, in a folder called the cache (which is pronounced “cash” and is a French word that means “hiding place”). If you try to view that page again, the computer checks whether the page’s copy is still in the cache. If it is, the computer puts that copy onto your screen, because using that copy is faster than making your ISP retransmit the page.

When the cache gets so full that no more pages fit in it, the computer discards the pages you haven’t viewed recently. Also, the computer tends to clear the cache (erase the entire cache) when you exit from the browser (by clicking its X).

Whenever you tell the computer that you want to view a page, the page will come onto your screen fast if the computer uses the page’s cached copy. If the computer can’t find the page’s cached copy (because the page was never viewed before or because the cached copy was discarded), the computer tells your ISP to transmit the page and you must wait awhile for the transmission to finish.

Eat up your time

The Internet can eat up a lot of your time. You’ll wait a long time for your modem, your ISP, and Web sites to transmit info to you. If you try search the Web for info about a particular topic, you’ll spend lots of time visiting wrong Web sites before you finally find the site containing the gem of info you desire.

Along the way, you'll be distracted by ads and other seductive links to pages that are fun, fascinating, and educational. They don’t directly relate to the question you wanted answered, but they broaden your mind and expand your horizon, o cybercitizen and student of the world! The Internet is the ultimate serendipity: it answers questions you didn’t know you had.

Trust

Don’t trust the info you read on the Internet. Any jerk can create a Web page. The info displayed on a Web page might be misleading, dishonest, or lies.

Unlike the typical book, whose accuracy is checked by the book’s editor and publisher, the typical Web page is unchecked. An individual with unconventional ideas can easily create a Web page expressing those ideas, even if no book-publishing company would publish such a book.

Info on Web pages can be racist, hateful, sexist, libelous, treasonous, and deadly. Even though the Web page appears on your computer’s screen, the info on the Web page might not have the good-natured accuracy that computers are known for.

Freedom of speech The United States Constitution’s first amendment guarantees that Americans have freedom of speech and freedom of the press. The Internet makes that freedom possible, by letting anybody create a Web page that says anything to the whole world. The Internet is freedom unchained, uncensored. That’s wonderful but frightening.

Dictators in many countries have tried to suppress the Internet, because the Internet lets people say and speak truths from around the world and band together to protest against dictatorship. Nice people in many countries have also tried to suppress the Internet when they see how many lies are printed on the Web.

Fringe groups The Web is an easy way for “fringe groups” to advertise themselves and make their voices heard. In a dictatorship, the “fringe groups” are those who want democracy; in a democracy, the “fringe groups” are often those who want to create their own little dictatorships.

Unreliable advice Use the Web as a way to broaden your mind to different ideas, but don’t believe in them until you’ve thought about them and checked them against other sources. Some of the medical advice on the Web can kill you; some of the financial advice on the Web can bankrupt you; some of the career advice on the Web can land you in jail. About 90% of what’s written on the Web is true, but beware of the other 10%.

Who’s the source? When reading a Web page, consider its source. If the Web page is written by a person or company you trust, the info on that page is probably true. If the Web page is written by a total stranger, be cautious.

Errors If the Web page contains many spelling & grammar errors, its author might be a foreigner, an immigrant, a kid, or an idiot. Perhaps the ideas on the page are as inaccurate as the way they’re expressed. When researching a topic on the Web, don’t be surprised if one of the Web pages turns out to be just a copy of a term paper written by a kid whose teacher gave it an F because its info is all wrong.

Ads Even if a Web page is written by a reputable source, beware: it might include ads from other organizations whose motives are unsavory. When reading a traditional newspaper page printed on paper, you can usually tell which parts of the page are ads and which parts are articles, since the ads use different fonts; but when you’re reading a Web page, it’s not always clear which links are to “articles” and which links are to “ads”, since the entire Web is a vast jumble of fonts.

Parental controls Many parents are afraid to expose their young kids to wild sex, wild violence, and wild hate groups. Many Internet pages contain lots of sex, violence, and hatred, either directly or through the ads they lead you to. Many parents don’t want to expose their young kids to such Web pages. Many conservative religious people are afraid to expose themselves to such Satanic temptations.

You can get programs that censor the Internet. For example, you can get programs that stop your computer from displaying pages mentioning sexy words; but beware: a program stopping all references to “breast” will also stop you from researching “breast cancer” and “chicken breast recipes”. You can get programs that limit kids to just pages that have been reviewed and approved by wise adults; but then the kids are restricted from reading any newer, better pages that haven’t been reviewed yet.