• 2
• Who Uses the Internet, and for What?
• Scientists Use It to Solve
• Educators Use It to Educate
• Professionals Use It to Consult
• Businesspeople Use It to Compete
• Governments Use It to Disseminate
• Activists Use It to Activate
• Miscellaneous People Use It to Do Miscellaneous Stuff
• So Now You Know. . .

2

Who Uses the Internet, and for What?

Read this chapter to satisfy your curiosity about who's out there on the Internet and what those folks accomplish on it. The answers include:

• Scientists use it to solve.
  
  
• Educators use it to educate.
  
  
• Professionals use it to consult.
  
  
• Businesses use it to compete.
  
  
• Governments use it to disseminate.
  
  
• Activists use it to activate.
  
  

For each of these groups, this chapter offers a description of how the Internet serves them and which Internet resources each typically uses.

First, though, take note: these groups overlap. There are scientists and professionals in business, activists who are scientists, government workers who study business, and so on. That's OK because few resources on the Internet are restricted to one type of user (though indeed, some are). Just because a resource is especially useful to ornithologists doesn't necessarily mean it can't be used by birdwatchers, bird-seed companies or, for that matter, birds—as long as they can get an Internet account. Just keep in mind who the primary users of certain resources are while also remembering that most resources can be applied in many different ways.

That brings up the other, fluffier answer to the question this chapter asks: Everybody uses the Internet for everything. Unfortunately, that provides little structure to hang a book chapter on. But it's really the way people need to begin thinking about the Internet.

So one final group needs to be added to the list of who uses the Internet and what for. Near the end of the chapter, you'll discover that:

• Miscellaneous folks use the Internet for miscellaneous reasons.
  
  

It's a squishy category, but as you'll see, there's much about the Internet that defies pigeonholes.

Really Curious?

Throughout this chapter, you'll see general references to the Internet resources used by various groups of people. When these people use a resource, they need to know more than just the name of the resource. They need to know how to access it. Unfortunately for beginning Internet users, different kinds of resources are accessed in different ways.

You'll learn more about the different types of resources and how they're accessed in Chapters 6 and 7.

For listings of popular Internet resources and specific instructions for accessing them, check out Teach Yourself the Internet or Navigating the Internet, which are described in Chapter 10, "Still Curious?".

Scientists Use It to Solve

As the original Internet surfers, scientists may benefit more from the Internet than anyone else. The great (as well as the mediocre) scientists of this world usually hole up in universities and other institutional think-tanks, nearly all of which have Internet connections.

If there's one thing scientists hate, it's duplication of effort. In embarking upon a scientific investigation, they try to start out with what others have already learned from previous studies and experiments. Then they move forward from that work, building on it and adding to the body of scientific knowledge about a subject.

Historically, scientists have published findings in journals for exactly that reason—so other scientists could build on that work instead of reinventing the wheel. But information in journals can be hard to locate and incomplete (it's often summarized to fit), and it falls out of date quickly. The Internet provides an intermediate solution to that problem by giving scientists a way to publish journals right on the Internet. Because they don't have to be printed and mailed, the journals can be kept more current than printed journals. Beyond the electronic journals, scientists can get even more complete and up-to-date information by simply accessing one another's work directly. What, the querying scientist may ask, have the folks at MIT learned about nuclear fusion in the time since they last published their findings?

The Internet offers scientists a way to gain access to each other's work, including the latest research results and papers about them. (Obviously, scientists keep some stuff secret, in which case it's stored in the computer in a way that keeps it off-limits to the general Internet public.) And they can also exchange e-mail messages to ask and answer questions and get up-to-the-minute information.

Really Curious?

Internet users most often exchange information though e-mail messages or public postings. But when necessary, users can have an actual "live" interactive discussion through the Internet. Through a facility called Talk, two users can establish a connection with one another so each can see everything the other types, as it's being typed. Talk splits the screen in half so that each user's typing appears on only one side. Both can type merrily away—discussing, arguing, even interrupting each other. Scientists no doubt use the Talk facility for heated discussions on weighty issues, as do many others.

For more on Talk, see Chapter 6.

Using the Internet, scientists can do their work better and more efficiently by picking the brains of the best minds in their fields and by avoiding duplication of work somebody else already did (unless, of course, they want to duplicate the work to prove their colleagues wrong!).

Specifically, scientists use the Internet to

• Query and collaborate with their colleagues all over the world (through e-mail or posted messages) on matters of scientific importance. For example, geneticists from various institutions are collaborating on a project to map all of the 100,000 or more human genes. Each institution is taking a part of the job, but they're all sharing information and consolidating their findings through the Internet. (For more, see Chapter 3.)
  
  
• Run special scientific programs that are not available on their own computers. For example, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) offers a service that allows Internet users (sometimes for a fee) to use the sophisticated atmospheric modeling programs on NCAR's computers for their own research.
  
  
• Tap libraries and databases at other universities, research institutions, or government agencies to consult stored files of scientific papers, studies, reports, and abstract data from experiments and studies.
  
  

Curious About the Word?

Data is simply another word for information.

A database is a store of information from which one can extract specific pieces of information. A phone book is a database; it's a big pile of information that's set up so that your brain (a pretty good computer) can locate and extract specific pieces of information: telephone numbers.

Computerized databases such as those on the Internet enable researchers to use their computers to locate and extract specific pieces of information quickly, or to locate entire computer files of information that can be copied across the Internet into the researcher's computer for local use.

There are Internet resources available for every conceivable scientific discipline. Among many more, there are those listed in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1. A sampling of Internet resources for scientists (and the scientifically curious).

Field

A Few Resources

Field

A Few Resources

Did You Know. . .

What do scientists see when they use these resources? Well, that depends on the resource at hand. Many, many resources on the Internet offer just text—words and numbers. Scientists can read what's there or copy it to their computers and read it later.

But science does not live by words alone. A growing number of resources show scientists pictures or video, and even play sound. A resource from NASA's Lunar and Planetary Institute shows detailed images of the planets. A medical service from the University of Minnesota shows full-color pictures of patients with specific illnesses to help physicians learn how to diagnose them.

Figure 2.1. A screen showing an index of resources about Physics.

Figure 2.1 offers a glimpse of what scientists see when consulting a physics resource through a special slice of the Internet called the World Wide Web, being viewed here with a program called Mosaic (both of which you'll learn more about in Chapter 7).

Scientists are not limited to scientific communication. All kinds of information comes into play in science, and the Internet gives scientists access to it through the many resources that aren't designed for scientists, but are certainly available to them. Any of the resources described in this chapter for educators, businesspeople, professionals, and others could be valuable in one or more lines of scientific inquiry.

Educators Use It to Educate

Teachers have a huge variety of potential information sources on the Internet.

Among those specific to education is the Federal Information Exchange, which details federal programs for education, scholarships, fellowships, and more. Teachers also use a service run by the U.S. Department of Education to keep them informed about department projects. Another Internet resource called Learning Link, run in part by the Public Broadcasting System, supplies information and activities to support grade K-12 teachers, such as conferences with other teachers around the country. A resource called AskERIC supplies information about teaching methods and technologies. Teachers tap AskERIC to consult the vast body of educational literature compiled by the Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC).

Teachers also benefit from Internet resources designed to actually teach their students. Provided their schools are equipped with computers and Internet connections, teachers can get their students involved in fun, educational projects such as

• Academy One, which involves students in interactive science projects, such as space shuttle simulations.
  
  
• KidLink, which supplies interaction and projects between U.S. students ages 10-15 and other students from around the world, to nurture the students' global awareness.
  
  
• The JASON Project (see Figure 2.2), an Internet version of an ongoing initiative to get kids more involved in science.
  
  

Figure 2.2. The JASON project, an Internet field trip for students.

University professors, of course, also make use of the vast array of Internet services covering subjects of academic and cultural interest: social issues, linguistics, politics and culture in other countries, music, art—the works. They also use it to communicate with colleagues and to publish (and co-publish) scholarly articles. When all else fails, there are even Internet resources that help professors locate new jobs.

Professionals Use It to Consult

It's impossible to list here the Internet services available to help various professionals do their jobs better. Perhaps it's enough to say I can't think of a profession for which there are no services on the Internet. And I can think of many for which there are rich service choices.

Professionals who use the Internet have the ability to stay up to date about developments in their fields, and to network with their colleagues the world over via e-mail and posted messages.

For a taste of what's possible, consider the following.

• Lawyers consult the catalog of Columbia University's Law Library, or the library of Washington and Lee University, which includes the text of federal and state laws. Other services list major employers of lawyers and the details of recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions. There are also several legal journals published on the Internet (see Figure 2.3).
  
  

Figure 2.3. A law journal published on the Internet.

• Doctors access the National Institute of Health's National Library of Medicine for clinical practice guidelines and treatment recommendations. They tap the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's bulletin board service, which covers FDA actions, including announcements of recent drug approvals. The Alcoholism Research Database offers doctors the latest and most complete medical literature about substance abuse, while a database called MEDLINE supplies indexed article citations from thousands of medical journals. Doctors can also tap into a database that covers whatever's up at the World Health Organization. There are even medical textbooks on the Internet (see Chapter 7).
  
  
• Journalists tap into the University of Ontario Graduate School of Journalism's Journalism Periodicals Index, a database of citations from the Index to Journalism Periodicals. They can also consult The CIA World Fact Book and The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, and keep up on the government through the information services it provides (see "Governments Use It to Disseminate," later in this chapter). Journalists also get news about events in other countries from Internet resources that publish news and through e-mail from their international colleagues. Many journalists can even send their stories from the field to their editors through the Internet.
  
  
• Writers use the Internet to do research and to submit their work and communicate with editors. They can send stories to electronic publications on the Internet, but increasingly, they can use the Internet to submit stories to regular print publications, as well. Among the print publishers and publications accepting submissions through the Internet are Macmillan Computer Publishing, Interior Design, Fortune, and the Wichita Eagle & Beacon.
  
  
• Researchers, by definition, may have use for anything and everything on the Internet. But of specific interest are the libraries and bibliography services. The University of Minnesota offers a comprehensive list of libraries accessible through a special Internet service it created, Gopher (see Chapter 8). Another resource is the Research Libraries Information Network, a guide to accessing most major U.S. research libraries. A researcher favorite is a service run by the Colorado Association of Research Libraries (CARL). The CARL service (see Figure 2.4) catalogs nearly every academic and public library in Colorado and tosses in a variety of other research tools.
  
  

Figure 2.4. CARL, a service offering access to Colorado academic libraries.

• Pilots use a service called DUAT to develop flight plans and get weather forecasts.
  
  
• Farmers—yes, farmers—harvest a bushel of agricultural information services. For example, the Advanced Technology Information Network supplies news about weather, market conditions, jobs, and other agri-info. The U.S. Department of Agriculture puts some of its information on the Internet, such as results of USDA research and daily reports on farm commodities activity.
  
  

The Internet offers resources for many more professionals—musicians, writers, genealogists, and more. For each of these, and for each of the above professionals, there are resources that cover information and issues related to the field and offer professionals an open exchange of ideas with their colleagues.

Businesspeople Use It to Compete

The use of the Internet for business is a subject of some controversy (see Chapter 4), but no one can deny that the Internet is a useful business tool today, and will only grow in importance over the next several years. In a time when businesses increasingly

• Do business internationally and globally.
  
  
• Require rapid communication.
  
  
• Require up-to-the-minute information.
  
  
• Form inter-company collaborations for certain projects.
  
  
• Seek new markets, new groups of potential customers, wherever they may be.
  
  

The traditional rules about what business can and can't do on the Internet are still evolving at this writing. Businesses can do four things on the Internet without getting into any trouble:

1. Look stuff up. They're as welcome as anybody else to look at the public information on the Internet.
   


2. Make their own information available to others. If a company wants to set up its own service that Internet users can access to get information about the company's products, that's fine. (What's important is that the Internet users must deliberately go to the company's service; the company may not reach out and fish for customers.)
   


3. Use e-mail for inter-company and intra-company communications. This capability is becoming especially popular among telecommuters, workers who do their jobs on computer at home and communicate with the office by computer, phone, and fax.
   


4. Post brief, non-intrusive public announcements in subject-specific Internet resources whose users may have a specific interest in the company or its products.
   

Companies are not supposed to send out unsolicited advertisements via e-mail. Actually, because the Internet isn't controlled by any organization, there's nothing to stop companies from breaching etiquette and advertising through e-mail, other than the wrath of Internet users who have been known to punish advertisers by burying them in e-mail or overloading their fax machines.

Nevertheless, the use of the Internet for advertising is growing dramatically (see Chapter 1). The Internet is also becoming a popular place to sell products and services. Companies set up "electronic malls" or "storefronts," Internet resources in which users can read product descriptions and place orders. Because these uses of the Internet are evolving quickly and are still somewhat experimental, many businesses will wait for the technology and other aspects of Internet business to mature before taking the plunge.

In the meantime, there's plenty of business to be done right now.

Business Research: Business thrives on all kinds of general information. Demographic and statistical information is essential for planning sales and marketing strategies. There are resources that supply listings of (and access to) major business libraries and to pending business-related legislation. And of course, any of the general-purpose information on the Internet may be of use to some businesses. In particular, marketers may gain insight into potential customer bases by scouting out the message activity in Internet resources covering certain topics.

Financial research: The type of information big business likes best is information about big business, and there's plenty. The Internet offers several ways to get current stock quotes and stock histories, Securities & Exchange Commission filings, mutual fund performance data, U.S. Department of Commerce reports, and financial/business newsletters (see Figure 2.5).

Figure 2.5. The Financial Journal, a joint publication of Cornell University and NASDAQ.

Legal Research: As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the Internet offers a range of resources of special interest to lawyers, including several law libraries and databases of laws and court decisions. These are as available to corporate lawyers as to any other type.

E-mail: Most large companies have their own, private e-mail networks for intercompany communication. But businesses today form lots of partnerships—big and small, temporary and permanent. Cooperative development deals, subcontracting and outsourcing—when a company contracts another company to provide some basic operational service, such as secretarial work or data processing—are on the rise, and they demand rapid, efficient intra-company communications, which the Internet provides.

Really Curious?

Some describe the trend toward cooperative business ventures as the beginnings of the Virtual Corporation, a new business model in which temporary companies are formed from alliances among two or more companies for a specific project, then disbanded when the project is complete. Business gurus say the Virtual Corporation may represent the model for doing business for the rest of the decade.

The Internet's capability to link up different companies, no matter where they are, makes it an important vehicle for the Virtual Corporation. For more, see Chapter 10.

Governments Use It to Disseminate

As you may already have noticed, there's a ton of government information on the Internet. The government is in the business of creating unspeakable mounds of information, most of which it is required to make available to citizens. Every time an Internet user gets a dose of government data from the Internet, it represents a book Uncle Sam doesn't have to print. The goverment will continue to print material for those who want it, but it hopes to reduce the amount of printing by encouraging people to acquire government information through the Internet.

Internet users have access to the complete text of the federal budget, to thousands (yes, thousands) of reports and updates about goings-on at NASA, to complete reports from the National Science Foundation, to publications from the Social Security Administration and the Federal Communications Commission, to the rules enforced by the Occupational Safety & Health Administration_you get the idea.

Really Curious?

Congressional studies have determined that the government could save plenty—in printing costs, mailing, handling and storage, etc.—by offering more via computer and less on paper. So you can bet that, over the next several years, you'll hear about a steady increase in the Internet availability of government data.

That's great for Internet users, but maybe not so great for non-computer-using citizens (or computer users without Internet access), who have just as much right to that information as their networked neighbors. Some worry that the government's emphasis on computerizing its communications will create a new technological elite, and leave others ignorant of government goings-on. For more about the controversy, see Chapter 4.

There are over 100 separate Internet resources that supply government information. Fortunately, there's also a resource called FedWorld—run by the National Technical Information Service—that helps users find and access many of them. Another popular starting point is the White House, whose service sends Internet users, upon request, the complete text of White House publications via e-mail. Curious citizens can analyze presidential speeches, studies, reports, plans, and proposed legislation. They can also send e-mail to the president and vice president, who I'm sure read it all.

Did You Know. . .

The U.S. government isn't alone on the Internet. The Canadian government is developing a single resource from which Internet users can get government documents and exchange e-mail with officials. Other resources supply information from governments the world over—sometimes supplied by the government itself, sometimes by third parties who, in effect, smuggle news and information out of isolated countries.

A number of U.S. Representatives—though certainly not all—participate in the Constituent Electronic Mail System, a pilot project that enables Internet users to exchange e-mail with their representatives and some House committees. The project plans to get the whole House signed up, but that may take a while. In the meantime, at least two other Internet services offer names, addresses, phone and fax numbers for Senators and House members, so Internet users can find out how to complain to Congress the old-fashioned way.

Activists Use It to Activate

Tons of detailed information about the government_open, unfettered information exchange worldwide_e-mail access to government officials, committees, and corporations_ posted messages that can be read by thousands of interested people_

Yup. The Internet is political/social/environmental activist's dream.

That's not news to the activists, who have used the Internet for many years to distribute information and ideas, and to accumulate information to be used in the fight. Hundreds of resources center around various causes—gay rights, the environment, gun control, the death penalty, world hunger, and more. Activists exchange information through these ready-made, grass-roots services; use e-mail to lobby government officials (see "Governments Use It to Disseminate," earlier in this chapter); and use the whole range of Internet resources to locate information in support of their causes.

Environmentalists make use of the Environmental Protection Agency's library catalog, or the Environmental Activism Server, which serves up detailed information on environmental initiatives. Those concerned about overpopulation can tap into a resource detailing the proceedings of the 1994 Cairo population conference (see Figure 2.6). And human rights workers can examine the thousands of documents in Diana, a human rights database jointly run by the University of Cincinnati and Yale Law School.

Figure 2.6. A service showing population information discussed at the 1994 population summit in Cairo.

Miscellaneous People Use It to Do Miscellaneous Stuff

Well, let's face it. Around 25 million people use the Internet, and they can't all be scientists, teachers, professionals, businesspeople, governments, or activists. And for that matter, even if a user does fit one of these categories, he or she may well use the Internet for purposes that don't relate directly to their job.

Awareness of the Internet has expanded dramatically over the last couple of years. During that time, the Internet has adopted a huge constituency outside its formative brethren of scientists and researchers. Consider the reasons for this expansion.

• Special software tools have evolved to make using the Internet much easier for network-neophytes—and even computer neophytes. (See Chapter 5.)
  
  
• Commercial online services such as Prodigy and CompuServe—which are not nearly as rich as the Internet but are more consumer-oriented and easier to use—have helped everyday folk catch on to the joys of computer-based communication and information retrieval. Having gotten their feet wet through such services, some get greedy for more—and they find it on the Internet.
  
  
• The Internet's gotten a lot of mainstream press coverage. Every rag from Time to Entertainment Weekly—plus local newspapers everywhere—has told readers about the wonders of the Internet and how to climb onboard.
  
  
• Local access providers have begun courting everyday consumers with affordable Internet connection plans (see Chapter 5).
  
  

As the number and variety of users on the Internet has expanded, so has the range of services catering to every job, hobby, whim, and_curiosity.

A sample? Don't mind if I do! Here's a quick slice of general-interest Internet resources, just to give you a feeling for how eclectic (and, in some cases, weird) it's getting out there. But I can't really tell you who the users of each of these services are because they don't fall into neat little categories. Just call them curious.

Table 2.2. The wonderful world of everybody's Internet.

Service

Description

So Now You Know. . .

People in science, various other professions, commercial enterprise, and activism exploit the resources on the Internet to stay informed, do research, make announcements, and exchange messages with colleagues, partners, and opponents. You also know that the U.S. government uses the Internet as an electronic publishing house, making staggering amounts of detailed government data available to the politically curious.

Perhaps most importantly, you know that the Internet is too big, open, and varied to be boiled down into any reasonable set of categories. Professional interests overlap, and a growing number of Internet services have no clear professional purpose—other than to satisfy the curiosity of Internet users who, while thus engaged, also seem to have no professional purpose. Even those who have Internet access for professional reasons have been known to fool around on it when nobody's looking.

Like a town square, the Internet has evolved into a public meeting place. Business and politics happen there, and they reign the square in. But in the square itself, people interact as they please, and enjoy discussing subjects of infinite number and variety.