Why Make the Journey into Cyberspace? Whether your impression of the Internet is that it's the most profound invention since the printing press, a helpful research tool, a few hours' entertainment or a complete waste oftime, you can't fight the numbers. Somewhere between 20 and 30 million people around the globe use the Net more or less regularly. The graphical portion called the World Wide Web is stocked with more than 22 million "pages" of content, with over one million more pages added each month, says Dataquest, a research house. Even the Internet's biggest fans worry about chaos and breakdowns. Indeed, as users crowd aboard the virtual bandwagon, busy signals and broken connections when dialing the big computers that make up the Internet have become an annoyance. Yet the democratization of the Net has also unleashed forces that have made finding your way around the Web and getting what you want out of it far easier than just a year ago. Thousands of self-appointed Web masters, many of them volunteers and hobbyists and other dollar-eyed entrepreneurs, have helped tame the sprawling beast. Cheap or free software "search engines" make it simple to track down sites where
you can find a topic of interest. You type in the subject or a key word, and these tools generate a list of sites. Many navigational Web tools like Yahoo! sprang from the minds of university whiz kids, some of whom have gone on to found successful companies that have earned the admiration of Wall Street and millions of dollars in initial stock offerings for their founders. But some of the newfound ease of use comes from the giant establishment online services like America Online (AOL), CompuServe, Prodigy and the Microsoft Network (MSN). Originally positioned as civilized alternatives to the disorganized, freewheeling Net, these services have been retooled to allow easy access to the Internet, even offering site recommendations. The evolution of personal computers also has accelerated the trip into cyberspace. Nearly every computer sold in the past couple of years has been online-ready. For the past six to 12 months, many have come equipped with relatively speedy 28.8 kilobit-per-second modems, which have made the Internet experience far less frustrating by reducing the time waiting for pages to appear. With the obstacles to getting there and finding your way around diminished, the
question is: So what? Why should Cousin Jeremy, who finds the microwave daunting, make the journey into cyberspace? See ifany of these answers work for him-and for you: • It's full of little surprises. Cruising the Internet is like browsing through a usedbook store, where rewards are serendipitous. A lotofjunkon the Net? Sure-and plenty of gems. When you turn one up, you can mark it. Over time you will develop a custom table of Web contents. Then you don't have to cruise aimlessly unless you want to. • You can get practical information. With home pages published by thousands of companies, universities, government agencies, museums and municipalities, the Internet can be an invaluable resource. Spending next weekend in Brattleboro, Vermont? Log onto the Web, plug "Brattleboro" into a search engine and you'll find a site with local restaurant menus, weather forecasts and movie listings-even sound snippets from a local rock band (http://www.brattleboro.com). • You'll meet kindred spirits. Check out the thousands of "newsgroups," where cybersurfers post public messages on common interests. You'll find whole communities of people who share passions for Mozart, sunflowers, old radios-you name it. • It's a unique experience. The truth is that metaphors about bookstores go only so far. Like some distant, exotic land, you can't comprehend the Internet fully until you've lived in it. Then you'll know why tens of millions of others take repeattrips. 0 About the Author: Mary Kathleen Flynn is aformer senior editor of U.S. News & World Report.