Simplifying Computers - 1

Let’s look first at the Internet. Put simply the Internet is the place where the sum total of all human knowledge can be accessed. You may say that actually human knowledge can be found in books, writing, pictures and articles, which all existed long before the internet.  This is true but the internet can lead you to where this information can be found. That is why I use the term "can be accessed" instead of "is stored".  But what is the internet? A common misconception is that it is a massive computer hidden in a mountain range somewhere in America or India or Russia. In fact the information is stored on thousands of computers all around the world. Information about one particular subject might even be spread across several different computers in different countries. Some individuals permit their own computers to be used to store information that other people can access. Don’t worry, however, that your own computer might be being used in this way. You would have to give explicit permission to allow this to happen. On the other hand, say that you share some information with others (perhaps by way of a post on Facebook for example), and the recipient then shares that with others, you can see how several versions of that information can exist around the world thanks to the internet. This may help you to understand that the internet is not one big computer “in the sky” but exists as a massive collection of computers all connected by electronic communication.  It is true that a great deal of the information is stored on massive computers. Amazon for example hold their information on lots of huge super computers (called ‘servers’) all interconnected.  While we are about it, the expression I used about computers “in the sky” is maybe the origin of the other term for the internet that you often hear – ‘the Cloud’.