The Internet. It seems to be everywhere these days. You read about it in the paper, see stories about it on television, hear about it on the radio. But what is The Internet? Internet 101 does a good job of demystifying The Internet and explaining it in terms that most people can understand.
Many books have been written to help people become familiar with The Internet. Most of them deal with the graphical interface to The Internet, The World Wide Web. While the “Web” is the most recognizable portion of The Internet, it is not the only piece. Internet 101 does a good job of explaining the basics of The Internet and progressing through many of its features and functions. Although Internet 101 is a bit outdated in some sections, the underlying content is very good. For example, don’t pay close attention to any references to modem speeds, processor speeds or memory requirements. This holds true for any computer book, since the figures are usually outdated by the time the book is available. Some of the basic fundamentals of The Internet, such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol), email, newsgroups and listservs are explained in this book, giving the reader a thorough understanding of these topics. Within an hour or so of reading this book and trying some of the examples, a novice user could become familiar with some of the basics of The Internet.
Internet 101 is broken into short chapters, each devoted to a fairly specific topic. It is written in a style that new users can understand and experienced users will appreciate. Internet 101 does not try to be an all encompassing guide to The Internet; rather it explains the basics and lays the foundation for the reader to learn through experience.
Internet 101 takes the reader through the process of learning about the Internet. It is broken into 6 parts, with each part having 3 to 8 chapters. Part 1 is a general overview of the Internet and its capabilities. Chapter 1 starts with The Internet 5‐Minute University. This is a good starting point for someone who is not familiar with the Internet, or someone that only uses the World Wide Web portion of the Internet and wants to explore some of the other features of the Internet. Chapter 3 discusses hardware and, as mentioned before, is quite a bit outdated. Chapters 5 and 6 deal with finding and getting things on the Internet. These chapters give an adequate description of Archie, Gopher, FTP and a few other tools, although due to the time this book was written it gives just a brief description of the World Wide Web and its search capabilities. Chapter 6 also gives some good FTP sites to explore. Chapters 7 and 8 discuss processing and viewing multimedia files and give examples of sites to look into. Part 1 of Internet 101 exposes the reader to many of the basics of the Internet, setting a good foundation to learning the fundamentals of the Internet.
Part 2 deals with Communicating. Chapters 9 and 10 discuss e‐mail. Internet 101 explains e‐mail concepts, e‐mail addresses and general guidelines on how to use host based e‐mail systems. Chapter 10 discusses choosing between Internet Service Providers and sending mail to other networks. Part 2 also contains an explanation of the use Internet Relay Chat and TALK as of the time of this printing. Part 2 concludes with Chapter 12’s discussion of Library card catalogues and includes an example of locating a book from a remote Library searching their card catalogue. Part 3 of Internet 101 is titled Working the net. This part has chapters on Newsgroups & mailing lists, Foreign language, reference works and words and music. These chapters all focus on the content of the Internet, or the information available and how to access that information. Each chapter gives examples of using that tool or feature.
Parts 4 and 5 of Internet 101 are geared toward College students. Part 4 has chapters on Room and board, Dating, transferring and graduate school. These topics are specific to College students or their parents in some cases, but each section gives examples that can be used for other topics. Part 5 has chapters on finding a summer job, travel and studying abroad. Surely the chapter on locating employment can be useful to almost anyone. Travel information, as discussed in Chapter 23 is available on the Internet. Now locating hotels, or finding out about your travel destination can be done on‐line.
Internet 101 finishes with Part 6. Part 6 has chapters that show the reader the fun side of the Internet, including games, movies and television, jokes and X‐rated content. Examples of games that can be played on the Internet and how to access them are found in Chapter 25, while Chapter 26 shows the reader how to locate information about their favorite movies and television shows. Chapter 27 gives examples of newsgroups and Internet sites that deal with jokes and drinking games. Chapter 28 explains to the reader that sexually oriented material exists on the Internet and can be found quite easily. It doesn’t point the reader to any Internet sites that have this type of material, but does list some of the news groups and listservs that discuss this type of material.
Internet 101 is a very good starting place to learn about the basics of The Internet. It is geared toward a high school and college age audience, but can be useful to anyone that is new to The Internet, or is in search of a better understanding of The Internet.
