Internet

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Internet

Emerging from the integration of computer and communications technologies, the Internet is a text- and graphics-based communications system that supports people and organizations in the performance of multiple activities. As such it has the potential to transform the worlds of work in industry, government, education, and entertainment as well as everyday life. A variety of ethical issues arise with this technology, involving not only individual users, but also corporations and governments.

There are two basic meanings associated with the word Internet. In a narrow sense, the Internet is a global network inter-connecting computer networks, from which the word derives. Hence it is a complex network connecting large numbers of devices such as computers, file servers, and video cameras, by means of telephone lines, satellites, and wireless networks. In a broad sense, the Internet also includes that which such technological infrastructure makes possible, which some refer to as cyberspace.

For present purposes the Internet will be characterized as constituting a digital habitat where people increasingly live. Habitat denotes here an environment in which people carry out activities, possibly in interaction with other people, involving specific actions and things. Because the kinds of things people interact with in the Internet are not material in the usual sense of the term, but rather electronic and digital, the Internet may be termed a digital habitat (Stefik 1996).

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