The Internet and the World Wide Web

This tutorial shows you how to unlock the hidden resources of the Internet and the World Wide Web. After a description of its history, we demystify the Internet's terminology and procedures by exploring electronic mail, addressing, mail lists, news groups, and the World Wide Web. We illustrate Web use in two domains, personal and professional. In the personal domain we show a number of useful, time-saving resources for: travel and leisure, investments and finance; personal shopping; medicine; real estate; museums; weather; games; and finding, retrieving, and managing information on any topic whatsoever. In the professional domain we show how to access Web resources in such areas as elementary, secondary, and university-level education; computers; legal advice; libraries; news and current events; science and engineering; telecommunications, teleconferencing, telemedicine, and telecommuting. We close with a review of the "hot topics" of 1997: privacy and security, electronic payment systems, and low-cost and high speed Internet access.