ShmoopTube

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Before we dive into the history of the internet… [Woman sat next to a pool]

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We’ve need to dish out some quick definitions.

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And you won't even have to wait a half an hour before we dive into the rest. [Kids waiting by the pool]

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So about one third of the roughly 7 billion people on Earth regularly use the internet. [Pictures of websites next to people]

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And of those that use it, a lot of them don’t even really know what it is.

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If somebody told them our internet powers came from a magic turtle orbiting the Earth… [Turtle beaming down the internet]

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…they’d shrug and say "weird, but sure…"

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Then they’d go back to Tweeting their every minor thought and buying crocheted dog sweaters [Dogs running around with sweaters on]

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from Lithuania on Etsy.

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The basic idea behind the internet started with people trying to find a way for computers [Computer screen talking]

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to talk to one another.

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Which kinda sounds like scientists wanted those lonely computers to share their feelings [A computer walks away from another computer]

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with each other, but that’s not exactly what we mean.

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Also, when computers start having feelings and sharing those feeling with each other, [Computer looks angry]

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the next stop is the robot apocalypse…

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So…yeah…best to avoid that. [Computer shoots people with laser beams]

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It’s probably most accurate to say that the internet is a global network that allows

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different computers to share information.

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There…that definition sounds pretty official, right? [Computers linked]

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So if we link a few computers together, we get a network… [Computers all connected together]

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But we don’t exactly have the internet yet.

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Still, the early experiments that created the first computer networks are what eventually [Computer network expanding]

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led to the big guy.

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So what did it take to create something worthy of being called the Internet?

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Well, they had to interconnect smaller networks all over world to make one giant global net. [Different networks are connected together]

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Kinda makes us think that we’ve all been caught by a cosmic poacher who’s come to [Planet Earth stuck in a net]

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claim our hides…

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But fortunately, that's not the case.

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So what exactly are we using to create the massive, worldwide network?

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Wires.

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Fiber optic ones, copper ones, but mostly…wires. [Wires going all over the world]

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And, of course, we can connect wirelessly as well, with our cell phones, laptops, tablets, [Different wireless devices appear]

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and whatever other new things they’ve come up with in the last 2 seconds.

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How do we do this?

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We bounce signals off of satellites that are orbiting the Earth. [Satellite sending signals back to the Earth]

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Yeah, it's not actually a giant turtle.

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Although that would be cool...

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So that brings us to a pretty big question: what's the difference between the Internet [Question mark appears]

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and the World Wide Web?

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The internet is the actual global network that connects everything, but the World Wide

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Web is what lets us access all that information.

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Without the Web, all of the internet’s data would be a formless series of files and code. [Folders without names appear]

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So the Web is sorta like a structure built on top of the internet that allows us to understand [The folders are organised by a net]

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what we’re looking at.

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World Wide Web also sorta makes it sound like the Earth is trapped in a giant spider’s [Planet Earth in a spider web]

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web, but we’re not going to let it keep us up at night.

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That’s what Melatonin is for. [Man falls to sleep]

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