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May 1999
What Is the World Wide Web?
By Phebe Clark Mertes
The World Wide Web, despite the recent publicity about it being a source of violent recipes and hate group information, is still a powerful tool that is being used by God. "But to do good and to communicate forget not: for with such sacrifices God is well pleased." Hebrews 13:16
God can not make a difference in people's lives unless His word is taken forth, whether it be in preaching, books, tapes, television broadcasts, or as published works on the Internet. It is the word that brings salvation and restoration. "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek." Romans 1:16, KJV. The WWW, more properly called the Internet was actually a Government funded project started in 1963 by the Military to develop a computer network that could allow communications between different areas of the nation by more than one route or telephone line.
The Internet was used in the 1980's to allow academic researchers to transfer text documents back and forth world wide to collaborate on research. In 1993 the first Hyper Text Markup Language (html) browser was distributed. The Internet was opened for commercial use and today we have many browsers such as Netscape and Internet Explorer with new web pages being written in html daily. Using a common protocol and html, computers around the world can communicate with each other allowing users to view a huge variety of multimedia offerings and commercial services.
You can now see documents just as you would see them in a magazine. Gone are the days of text only reading, we can now see color, pictures, sounds, even videos. Multimedia is a force that captures our attention and feeds us information. Just as Television has already invaded our homes and programming spans all walks of belief, so does the information being published on the Internet. I am pleased to say that while attending the 1998 Inspiration Conference (see the announcement in this magazine for 1999) I met many church members who were taking the God inspired teachings and publications of their ministers out onto the Internet for all to find. There were testimonies of people finding their present churches when they moved to a new town using the Internet. Others told of prayer requests being sent out and their prayers being answered.
Trinity Broadcast Network even had an E-mail saying that a man in a country where Christian Missionaries were not allowed had watched their online broadcast and accepted Jesus Christ as his savior. There are more services through the Internet than just viewing published works. You can send and receive electronic mail. You can join a Chat room, a place where what you type in is presented immediately to people that are connected to the same service as you are. You can receive announcements on chosen topics by e-mail by joining a 'listserv' or e-mail group. The Internet is challenging the use of long distance phone calls because now you can type messages to people all around the world. The information on the Internet is not all good, just as on television and cable services; there is false information and bad information. However, there is a lot of good information as well.
As with any media you need to set guidelines for yourself and your children as to how to use the WWW and how to avoid web sites that are not edifying. Even web sites that appear to be Christian can also have false doctrines to lead you astray. Determine what you are seeking before getting online, and establish a method of accountability with someone to help you not be tempted to look at sites that do not edify you or the word of God. Next issue we will deal with why you should use the Internet.
BRIEF GLOSSARY OF INTERNET TERMS
Bandwidth: How much information can be sent at the same time through a connection to the Internet. Usually measured in kilo bits-per-second.
Bounce: If you send email and it fails to arrive at its intended recipient for any reason (wrong user name, network failure, etc.), the message "bounces" and returns to you. The subject line in a bounced message usually says something like: "Undeliverable Mail" or "Message Undeliverable."
Browser: A client program (software) that is used to look at various kinds of Internet resources. The two most used are Netscape Communicator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer.
Chat: an acronym meaning "Conversational Hypertext Access Technology." It is the sending and receiving of messages as they are typed from the keyboard through a special server. America Online's Internet Messenger is a specialized chat system for online communications.
Cyberspace: Term originated by author William Gibson in his novel 'Neuromancer.' The word Cyberspace is currently used to describe the whole range of information available though computer networks.
DNS: (Domain Name System)- The unique name that identifies an Internet site. Such as tfwm.com is a domain name.
E-mail: (Electronic Mail) - Messages, usually text, sent from one person to another via computer.
FAQ: (Frequently Asked Questions)-FAQs are documents that list and answer the most common questions on a particular subject.
Flame: A negative response to an email message or newsgroup posting. If you post an article or send an email to an audience that deems your message inappropriate, expect to get "flamed."
PPP: (Point to Point Protocol) - most well known as a protocol that allows a computer to use a regular telephone line and a modem to make a TCP/IP connection and thus be really and truly on the Internet. PPP is gradually replacing connection methods for this purpose.
Server: (see Client) - A computer, or a software package, that provides a specific kind of -service to client software running on other computers. The term can refer to a particular piece of software, such as a WWW server, or to the machine on which the software is running, e.g. 'Our mail server is down today, that's why e-mail isn't getting out.' A single server machine could have several different server software packages running on it, thus providing many different services to clients on the network.
SMTP: (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) - A protocol used to transfer email. SMTP transfers mail from server to server, and the end user must use POP to transfer the messages to their machine.
TCP/IP: (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol)-This is the suite of protocols that defines The Internet. Originally designed for the UNIX operating system, TCP/IP software is now available for every major kind of computer operating system. To be truly on the Internet, your computer must have TCP/IP software.
Telnet: The Internet standard protocol to connect to remote terminals. Telnet clients are available for most platforms. When you Telnet to a UNIX site, for example, you can issue commands at the prompt as if the machine were local.
URL: (Uniform Resource Locator)-The standard way to give the address of any resource on the Internet that is part of the World Wide Web @WWW. A URL looks like this: http://www.tfwm.com
Usenet: A worldwide system of discussion groups, with comments passed among hundreds of thousands of machines. Usenet is completely decentralized, with over 10,000 discussion areas, called newsgroups.
WWW: (World-Wide Web) - Two meanings-First, loosely used: The whole constellation of resources that can be accessed using Gopher, FTP, HTTP, Telnet, Usenet, WAIS and some other tools. Second, the universe of hypertext servers (HTTP servers) which are the servers that allow text, graphics, sound files etc. to be mixed together.
Phebe Clark Mertes; Mertes Internet Ministries; Email:phebe@web-ministries.org http://web-ministries.org
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