Bypass Chapter Navigation
Contents  
Foreword by Walter Cronkite  
Introduction - The National Science Foundation at 50: Where Discoveries Begin, by Rita Colwell  
Internet: Changing the Way we Communicate
Advanced Materials: The Stuff Dreams are Made of  
Education: Lessons about Learning  
Manufacturing: The Forms of Things Unknown  
Arabidopsis: Map-makers of the Plant Kingdom  
Decision Sciences: How the Game is Played  
Visualization: A Way to See the Unseen  
Environment: Taking the Long View  
Astronomy: Exploring the Expanding Universe  
Science on the Edge: Arctic and Antarctic Discoveries  
Disaster & Hazard Mitigation  
About the Photographs  
Acknowledgments  
About the NSF  
Chapter Index  
The Internet: Changing the Way We Communicate
 

A Public Net

Graphic showing three dimensional model of thunderstorm - click for detailsThe Internet, with its millions of connections worldwide, is indeed changing the way science is done. It is making research more collaborative, making more data available, and producing more results, faster. The Internet also offers new ways of displaying results, such as virtual reality systems that can be accessed from just about anywhere. The new access to both computer power and collaborative scientists allows researchers to answer questions they could only think about a few years ago.

It is not just the scientists who are enthralled. While not yet as ubiquitous as the television or as pervasive as the telephone, in the last twenty years, the Internet has climbed out of the obscurity of being a mere "researcher's tool" to the realm of a medium for the masses. In March 2000, an estimated 304 million people around the world (including nearly 137 million users in the United States and Canada) had access to the Internet, up from 3 million estimated users in 1994. U.S. households with access to the Internet increased from 2 percent in 1994 to 26 percent in 1998, according to the National Science Board's (NSB) Science and Engineering Indicators 2000. (Every two years, the NSB—NSF's governing body—reports to the President on the status of science and engineering.)

In today's world, people use the Internet to communicate. In fact, for many, email has replaced telephone and fax. The popularity of email lies in its convenience. No more games of telephone tag, no more staying late to wait for a phone call. Email allows for untethered connectivity.

The emergence of the World Wide Web has helped the Internet become commonplace in offices and homes. Consumers can shop for goods via the Web from virtually every retail sector, from books and CDs to cars and even houses. Banks and investment firms use the Web to offer their clients instant account reports as well as mechanisms for electronic financial interactions. In 1999, the U.S. Census Bureau began collecting information on e-commerce, which it defined as online sales by retail establishments. For the last three months of 1999, the bureau reported nearly $5.2 billion in e-commerce sales (accounting for 0.63 percent of total sales), and nearly $5.3 billion for the first quarter of 2000. More and more, people are going "online to shop, learn about different products and providers, search for jobs, manage finances, obtain health information and scan their hometown newspapers," according to a recent Commerce Department report on the digital economy. The surge of new Internet business promises to continue, with some experts estimating $1.3 trillion in e-commerce activity by 2003.

 
     
PDF Version
Overview
A Constellation of Opportunities
A Public Net
From Modest Beginnings
The Launch of NSFNET
An End and a Beginning
Research on Today's Internet
Expectation for the Internet of Tomorrow
Fuzzball: The Innovative Router
Mosaic: The Original Browser
PACI: Computer Partnerships
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