What is the Internet? And what exactly are the roles of all this hardware and software that help us use it?

You could call it a category of utilities, perhaps alongside kitchen utilities or automobiles. But there's a difference. Even a driver who relies on her mechanic knows more about her car than "I press the pedals and it goes forward."  She has some idea about combustible fuel or a battery converting the energy to a force, applied to the wheels across axles. Similarly, a parent who couldn't assemble an oven understands that electricity powers a heating element within a closed space, that food cooks when it's heated, and so on.

Perhaps this seems obvious because those basic levels of understanding come with the responsibility of owning and maintaining those things. But nowadays, once connected and powered on, hardware and software largely take care of their own operation. And perhaps that's why the average person doesn't seem to grasp Internet basics in the same way. It's been a couple of decades since the average household contained a modem and a router, but I'd guess the average user would struggle to explain either device much beyond "it connects us to the Internet."

The Internet, hardware and software are relatively new things, and competing technology companies have developed them into the burgeoning science fiction "future" we have today. Their innovative talent have been positioned to decide (the appropriate word might even be "design") how the average user winds up thinking about them. The idea of running a program is over a half-century old, but the word "app" was only popularized after the smartphone. Steve Jobs within Apple, which has always handled its invented technological terminology with extreme care and deliberateness, even described the iPhone's first few as "widgets" in 2007 while the senior team debated whether even to allow others' programs to run on it. The debate resulted in the "App Store," and before long the term "app" was as familiar as "toothbrush."

Let's sidestep what others might "design" for us to think about, and get a basic understanding of the Internet like we might about any utility.

A network is two or more computers connected together, so they can communicate, which allows for sending data between them.

Data – including every text file, photo, movie, and so on – amounts to a string of ones and zeroes, and it's ultimately up to software to convert to and from that form. You could literally send an entire file to your friend by reciting the correct string of ones and zeros while they wrote them down. Or, your friend could save himself a hand cramp by inventing some other way to "receive" them – perhaps he readies a sufficient supply of playing cards and places them in a row as you recite each bit: face-down for a zero, face-up for a one. As long as the order of bits is preserved, it doesn't matter how it's preserved.

It turns out data can also be sent by machines across cables traditionally used for cable TV. A different method uses telephone wires. The job of a modem is to listen for such singals and note them, like your friend at the ready – as well as to send data back in the other direction.

The job of a router is to mediate between the modem and any number of nearby devices. It acts as the person behind the counter at the neighbourhood post office, whose local customers are the devices to which incoming data is meant to be delivered, and from which data can be sent.

The Internet is essentially a worldwide network, theoretically enabling any computer to send data to any other. Out in the world, it's the job of other routers and servers to help convery data to its destination, for example, from London to Tokyo across Europe and Asia.

That was certainly a basic explanation. But what I find enlightening about it, is that that's essentially it. All of e-mail, all web sites, all social media, all video chatting and streaming TV services, simply use that.

Which brings us back to tech companies and popularization. I mentioned Apple earlier, and their careful construction of terms meant for everyday use. Beyond product names, their aim is for "Mac," "iPhone" and "iPad" to be used as words by their customers and potential customers. Rather than "video chat," I imagine they wouldn't mind if "FaceTime" were the term that popped into people's minds. ("Zoom" gained some of that ground during the pandemic.)

Facebook is another company which has applied its own philosophy in "designing" what people think the Internet is. Part of Facebook's efforts, I hear, have been to bring the Internet to developing areas which still don't have it. That is wonderful, but I gathered they meant to use their advantageous position to orchestrate the notion that Facebook "is" the Internet.

Twitter is a household name for people who aim to write short thoughts, exchange "likes," "follow" others, catch a glimpse of the occasional celebrity, or take society's pulse after a newsworthy event. There are indeed alternatives to Twitter, but I don't guess I've ever heard about them from Twitter – or ever will.

If you want to look something up online? Despite many options, I'd guess the average person today would only think to "Google it." Google is one of the world's most valuable companies, but with that basic understanding of the Internet, the concept is almost as simple as can be: Google maintains its knowledge of the web by systematically requesting a site from every Internet address, and cataloguing whatever it finds.

A creeping feeling of similarity between tech companies is understandable when considering that a primary goal of a corporation – even one whose leadership has good intentions and a conscience – is its own survival. Each example is impressive in its way, but as they say about jazz musicians, you can listen to the notes they don't play. There are examples of harmony to be found between their designed "ways of thinking" and other ways, but none venture too far to impart knowledge akin to the slightly more basic understanding of the Internet from earlier.

That's not to say any company is conspiratorially obscuring such knowledge either.  The more developers know, the better for the companies for whose platforms they may develop. But for the average user like you and me? While the slightly altered mindset that comes with a little knowledge is available to acquire, it's something we have to seek ourselves, actively.

In a sentence: there is more to the Internet, to computers, and to software, than it seems to the average user.

The Internet can be used for just about anything that involves sending data back and forth – not just the few things the leading tech companies happen to provide. And software can be used for just about anything attainable by computation. So, what else is there, and how do we find it?

This post is just an introduction to the idea of that search. (I had to start someplace, and this is what I ended up typing.) It's a typical Internet search, but a slightly different kind of search; one that feels more like a journey. I'll highlight some of my findings in time, but for now, I'll leave off with a few orienting terms.

"Open source." This refers to software whose programming is published and can be inspected by anybody. Open source software is often free, and often the product of enthusiasts who want to help make the software more than they want secrecy or employment.

"Alternative." This term denotes software that serves the function of popular or mainstream products.

"Decentralized" and "federated." This term is the practical opposite of "centralized," which denotes a single instance of an Internet platform controlled by one company or entity. (One common example of decentralized Internet software is e-mail: different services and providers using a shared protocol to compatibly exchange letters, with no one entity controlling the entire thing.)

Modern terms for the earlier World Wide Web, such as "early web," "small web," "web1," and "personal web." These refer to the pre-social media era when the Web mainly took the form of many individual sites. Much of this still exists, but as mentioned, must be sought to be found. More than once, I've only found some wonderful or useful software project because it was mentioned offhandedly in some individual's web home or blog.