THE INTERNET REVOLUTION
Ladies and Gentlemen !
Before I begin this address, I would like to issue a warning. This address is neither a hi-fi survey puffed up with advanced mathematical research pieces, nor is it stratified and compacted with deep mathematical theories, dense with further references to intricate topics. Perhaps, as the title suggests, this address does have a technical theme, if somewhat general, addressing each and every person present here. I had reasons for my choice.
To begin with, I have always felt like revolting against the idea that a one hour address should be directed mainly towards people working in one restricted highly specialised area, and the others should be content with a very general story of the woes , the struggles, the victories and the problems that remain yet to be solved in an area in which they are not directly interested. May be, I fail to see the idea behind this practice. Others might have also done so earlier, but might have decided not to digress from the age-old practice. I have dared to digress as I have great faith in your magnanimity and good-heartedness to forgive me for bringing a somewhat different hue to an existing colour.
Secondly, it is my own perturbations regarding the grave concern that a large number of us feel about coping up with the pace of advancements in studies and research relating to mathematics. Some of the factors leading to this concern are as follows :
Lastly, my completely rational irrational fascination for the Internet. Irrational , because of its captivating character. Those of you who have had the luck to fool around with it, would know how difficult it is to disengage yourself from it, once you are connected. It is like a jungle where all the animals, birds and insects have been turned into coveted treasures. You cannot see very far into the jungle but no matter where you stand, there are a good many pathways each advertising its own exquisite jewels. You make a choice and start moving ahead for getting a ruby, let us say. Now how would you feel if before reaching the ruby, you found a diamond on the way ? Of course, you may kick away the diamond and keep on marching and get your ruby. But I am trying to convey the Internet culture. We cannot even be conscious of what all is there to have. It is almost thrust on us.
Coming to my rational basis for being fascinated by the Internet, I see it as the solution to many of our problems as I am going to demonstrate soon. I shall proceed according to the following plan:
WHAT IS INTERNET
Our literature is full of such wonderful stories. There is one about an elephant, and seven blind men who were trying to describe it by the faculty of touching. One who touched the leg described it like a pillar. The one who came to hold the tusk, maintained it to be a string. The one going around the body, thought it was a wall-like, though warm and vibrating thing. The one touching an ear believed it to be something like a soop ( a traditional Indian gadget used to separate husk from grain by repeatedly tossing the grain and catching it). The story has them arguing about the shape of the animal, each sticking to his own point of view.
Our attempt in describing the nebulous Internet or the Net as it is popularly called, may be similar to the blind men in as much as we might be familiar with one or more of its facets but not in entirety. It may be dissimilar in as much as we need not argue. We realise that all our Soordas’s were speaking the truth. The trouble was it was a partial truth but they did not realise it. As for us, we know there is more to it than meets the eye, in fact the brain.
To understand what Internet really is, I would like you to peep with me in the recent past when the foundations for the Internet were being laid.
The ancestry of the Internet is easy to trace. It does not go much beyond the late 60’s when the legendary network ARPAnet , the official network consisting of four computers, under the aegis of a military project of the United States Department of Defence, came into being. ARPA here stands for Advanced Research Project Agency. ARPAnet had four clearly defined goals :
à failed, or
à were dissimilar.
During the seventies, two developments took place. One, universities carrying out research related with defence were allowed to use the ARPAnet, and two, networks of other countries were allowed to be linked to ARPAnet. There were less than a hundred links / nodes or sites as they are called, at this juncture.
In 1983, a very important development took place. ARPAnet adopted the TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) Communication Standards . This had two great advantages. Firstly, it allowed nearly unlimited growth in the size of the Net. Secondly, it could be easily implemented on a variety of computers. Thus, it was no longer necessary that the communicating computers on the Net should possess similar hardware. This led to the NSFnet and non-defence applications.
That two computers dissimilar in hardware are able to communicate , may appear to be surprising, but really speaking it is rather simple. Let me explain with the help of an example. Suppose A, a Marathi-speaking person wishes to communicate with B, a Bengali-speaking person. Suppose A has a set of rules by which a Marathi sentence can be converted to Hindi and vice-versa. Suppose B has a set of rules by which he can transform Bangali sentences into Hindi and back. These rules are called application protocol. Now it is smooth sailing. A translates Marathi sentences into Hindi, and communicates these to B. B translates the Hindi sentences into Bangali and that is it. ‘Hindi’ here is the transmission protocol which lets them communicate with each other. Thus, when we say protocol in the context of Internet, we mean a language, a set of rules to be followed by computers to convert data from one form to another specified form.
What does TCP/IP mean then? Why the protocol twice? Actually, TCP and IP are two protocols which work together . TCP converts the message into a suitable form and also breaks it into smaller portions called packets which have less than 1500 characters. These packets are conveyed over the network following the IP. Different packets may follow different routes along the network. At the destination, they are assembled and reconstructed into the final message in a form suitable for the computer by TCP. One might ask, how does the IP know where to send a packet on the Net. It is rather simple. Like how does the post office know where to send a letter. Each packet contains the address of the sender as also that of the recipient. I shall explain the address culture on Internet when we come to e-mail.
Since ARPAnet was not available for commercial and personal use, some commercial networks came up during the eighties. National Science Foundation (in United States) also funded a network viz NSFnet, linking all the NSF researchers and the Supercomputer Centres. It also encouraged United States Universities and Colleges to join NSFnet. NSFnet used TCP/IP standard, or TCP/IP protocol in the Net-lingo. In other countries also, governments were subsidising networks. All these networks also adopted the TCP/IP standard. These networks also obeyed the acceptable use policy which established network etiquette (i.e. netiquette) and prohibited the use of the Net for totally commercial purposes. This collection of connected computer networks all the world over evolved into what we call the Internet today. In 1987, the number of sites exceeded a thousand (1,000). Towards 1988, commercial networks came to an understanding with the NSFnet which allowed their electronic mail (e-mail) to be carried over NSFnet. Such developments exploded the number of netizens (people using the Net) and the hundred thousand (100,000) mark was crossed by 1989.
By 1990, ARPAnet was absorbed by the NSFnet. The netizen explosion continued heavier and heavier. The public sector could not and would not support and manage the Net any longer. In the early nineties, commercial networks were allowed access on the Internet. In 1993, NSF created InterNIC which contracts some basic Internet services (like registration of domain name, data base and directory, information about Internet services etc.) to the private sector. Now you, i.e. your computer, with some hard-core hardware and software can join the Net through any computer connected to the Net. Thus, nobody knows how many users are there and nobody manages or owns the Net as such.
So then with this knowledge base, back to the question what exactly is the Internet.
*
From a physical point of view,Internet is a large network of networks of computers of no mean sizes themselves connected through cables.
*
Technically, it includes
*
From the point of view of the end-users, it is ahuge warehouse of text, information, audio, video and animation
on all kinds of topics ranging from the photographs of the damsels participating in a beauty contest of 1926 to the announcement of Conferences to be held in 1998. This information is being up-dated continually and people can explore, retrieve and add to it for commercial, educational, technical, recreational and any other purposes.
*
From a social point of view, it is different from anything seen or heard ever before. Perhaps we may sayit is millions of human beings exchanging information electronically.
These human beings are spread all over the world. The Internet defies all geographic boundaries. It provides a live demonstration of our age-old thesis Vasudhaiv Kutumbakum (the whole world is a single family). We call it the cyber-family. Thus, it has changed our outlook. In fact, it has changed our social, economic and political point of view. Take business for example. With cut-throat competition at home and abroad, quality is an essential ingredient of production. Since it is not desirable to reduce the profit margin, efficiency, effectiveness and productivity will have to be raised. The age-old practises have reached the peak of their optimality graph. New tools and techniques are required. With the advent of a single global economy, the Internet is a natural solution, which cuts on time delays, labour costs, errors and uncertainty. It helps in issuing and receiving orders faster, making sales easier, getting paid sooner, minimising capital tied up in inventories, increasing efficiency in office-work and in replying to enquiries. Most of these jobs become almost automatic, requiring little interplay of higher mental abilities, and very little personal intervention. In short, it leads to all kinds of different patterns --- behavioural, social, operational, logistic and strategic.
*
Hence, conceptuallyInternet is truly a revolution
Now what do we need to exchange information over the Net? Of course, we need some hardware and some software. The minimum that we need is the following :
NET ISP
NET
We at
the computer
Modem
The function of the modem is to digitise the telephone signal and back. Communication software lets us convert information into a form suitable to be transported to and fro over the network.
In addition to the minimum hardware and software requirement, we also need a connection to the Internet. Basically, there are two types of connections :
Access to Internet
Dedicated Dial Up IP Shell
SLIP PPP
Having obtained the basic configuration, how do we access and exchange information ? There are several basic services, programs, tools and sources of information which provide for this exchange :
The process of locating information on the Net is called surfing and the tools/programs used for this purpose are known as the search engines.
1. E-MAIL
E-mail is the most used service provided by the Internet and makes up for more than 80% of its use. We can transmit and receive messages to others connected to the Net through this service. The e-mail has many advantages over the ordinary mail which netizens jokingly label as snail mail.
----------------------------------------------------------------
From: SINGAL <arsims@del2.vsnl.net.in>
To: ams <meet@ams.org>
Subject:
Date: Wednesday, December 03, 1997 9:15 PM
I shall appreciate receiving information about
AMS Conferences to be organised during the
next six months.
asha
-------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Jennifer J. Reid <JJR@MATH.AMS.ORG>
To: SINGAL <arsims@del2.vsnl.net.in>
Cc: jjr@MATH.AMS.ORG
Subject: Re:
Date: Wednesday, December 03, 1997 9:41 PM
AMS conferences are posted on our website at
http://www.ams.org/committee/meetings
----------------------------------------------------------------
E-mail Addresses : Each computer connected to the Internet is assigned a unique address. Addresses on the Net are simple and expressive. Each address has four components. Each component is a number from 0 to 255. The four components are separated by a full-stop called dot. For example, ‘123.45.678.9’ . The components towards the right identify the host computer and those towards the left identify the network to which this computer belongs. These are called IP addresses.
IP addresses are not user-friendly. It is difficult to remember them. Worse, their meaning cannot be gleaned. To overcome these difficulties, host computers on the Net are assigned domain names. Domain names are converted to equivalent IP addresses by the terminal software on your machine when you access the Net. Domain names are sequences of letters, numbers allowed, separated by dots. For example, ‘del2.vsnl.net.in’. Domain names can be descriptive or locative. The example just cited is locative, in as much as the last two letters in denote India abbreviated. Whenever referenced geographically in this manner, the right-most two letters stand for the standard abbreviation assigned to a country. For example, jp for Japan, uk for United Kingdom/Ireland, us for United States, au for Australia, es for Spain etc. Contrary to IP addresses, reference to the host computer is towards the left and the network hierarchy is towards the right. Thus computer named del2 above, belongs to the network named vsnl. The net in the above address refers to the type of organisation to which the vsnl network belongs. Here, it is a Network Backbone System and Information Centre. Other categories are given in the table below.
|
Domain name |
Category |
|
com |
Commercial Organisation |
|
edu |
Educational Institution |
|
gov |
US Government Organisation |
|
int |
International Organisation |
|
mil |
US Military Organisation |
|
org |
Non profit Organisation |
Each host computer has many users who pay to it for accessing Internet through it. These users are identified by their identity (generally an 8 character string) followed by the at the rate symbol @, pronounced at, followed by the host computer name. For example, as@del2.vsnl.net.in signifies a user as (Anupama Singal) at the host computer del2, which is a part of the bigger network vsnl. When vsnl connected to the Internet and registered itself with International Network Information Centre, its request for the name vsnl was granted, there being no other Network by this name till then. The name del2 was assigned to its component network by the VSNL. In turn del2 granted the user Anupama Singal the name ‘as’ requested by her. If this name as were being used by someone else already, she would have been asked to choose another name. Thus e-mail address of Anupama Singal is as.del2.vsnl.net.in.
I would like to make a few things clear here. Firstly, a person may have more than one e-mail address. For example, saurabh@twics.com and saurabh.singal@deutsche.co.jp are the e-mail addresses of the same person. Just as in case of ordinary mail, you may have an official address, a residential address, a permanent address and so on.
Secondly, the e-mail addresses are machine-independent. You can get your mail from any machine anywhere in the world. Your mail is in the store of the host computer with which you have an Internet account. In order to get your mail from the host computer, you log in ( i.e. connect) to the host computer and give your identity (i.e. your e-mail address) and a password which has been agreed upon between you and the host earlier. As soon as you tell the host computer these two things, it delivers all your mail to the computer from where you have connected to your host . How nice ! You do not have to be home in order to get your mail.
Thirdly, you do not necessarily have to have an Internet account in order to send and receive e-mail. Several host sites on Internet provide you this service. It is like getting your mail c/o somebody and some of these hosts are commercial and you have to pay; others are free. Of course, you have to pay the telephone charges for the period you are connected to your host, through Internet or otherwise.
E-mail became available to the average Indian during late 1993 and early 1994, following the deregulation of Department of Technology. Prior to this, e-mail was available through Internet alone. The e-mail service provided by the private servers did not take-on as well as was expected. The major problem was the unavailable interconnectivity among the private servers. On the other hand, e-mail business carried out through the VSNL (established in 1986 to private International Telecom services) provided Internet access had no such hassles; and the business there flourished. With the vast amount of capital investment , engineering resource/expertise and support of INMARSAT, INTELSAT, FLAG, SEA-ME-WE-2 (and now the forthcoming IRIDIUM, ICO and AGRANI projects), coupled with its monopoly over internet service provision, it was not at all surprising.
A tussle was on between VSNL and the private e-mail providers over the issue of Internet service provision. The private e-mail providers had been demanding to have the license to provide Internet services, and that too not through the VSNL gateway but on their own. The general opinion has been against the VSNL monopoly which was granted to the Government in 1885 and it is believed that this monopoly has been playing a negative role in making Internet access affordable. Interestingly, e-mail is free for the universities, and if it could me made cheaper, more and more people in the corporate world would use it, increasing their productivity and reducing cost. As a matter of fact, universal availability of a facility like the Internet should be regarded as a social objective and not a financial proposition. Nobody dare suggest that a service which requires enormous capital cost for its infrastructure should be free. Revenue on such an investment can be obtained in one of the two ways :
Obviously, adopting a socialistic view, the second of the two options comes first in the list of preferences. But then for a service to be universal, its price must be affordable to the general public, even if it has to be subsidised for a certain section of society or a part of the day.
The Government has recently announced its guidelines for licensing Internet Services Providers (ISPs). One of the salient features is the waiver of the licensing fees for the first five years, instead of two. This decision is being looked upon as a healthy sign and may have happy repercussions both for the ISPs and their target customers, the public.
Let me now take up the second service mentioned above viz, FTP. FTP, the file transfer protocol is the service which lets you transfer files from the server of a remote repository to your own server making it available to you. There are many universities, companies and government agencies which maintain large archives, i.e. databases or file-libraries, and provide free access to any one who is interested. In the early days of the Internet, researchers in various universities formed the bulk of the Internet community. They used FTP extensively to store their research material on one host computer. Others could download it on their own computers as and when needed. This feature was one of the main factors which gave impetus to the early growth of Internet. FTP, being an old program is not all that user-friendly. NCFTP is an improved version of FTP. Some archives allow you to use Gopher (a very friendly program ) in place of FTP.
The popularity of the Internet is based on the fact that it lets you use the information residing on the other member computers. The tool to do so is telnet. Telnet lets you log onto a remote computer on the Net. Once this is done, you can use the database of this remote site and run your program on the same. This enables you to
Unfortunately, telnet is not so very user-friendly. To make things better, Hytelnet has been developed as a friendly front-end to telnet.
…GOPHER
Gopher is a very popular search engine to locate information on the Net. It is a menu-driven document retrieval system. It lets you focus your attention on the document you want without bothering about the service used to locate the document. There are numerous Gopher servers over the Net. Veronica is a database which helps you in locating which Gopher server is the best for the particular information you want.
...ARCHIE
Archie is a sort of directory of millions of filenames which can be accessed through FTP on thousands of public service databases over the Net. Archie only tells you where the file desired by you is located. It does not actually get you the file. The search is made by a keyword.
…WAIS
Wais (Wide Area Information System/Server) is an elementary search engine which uses an industry standard for requests/responses. It makes its searches by a keyword in several databases at different sites. It then prepares for you an index of all the sites related to your search. The index is weighted, letting you know which sites may be more closely linked to your search.
A large number of people use e-mail to send personal or official communications to those whom they know. This is a very restricted use of e-mail . You can use e-mail to send and receive communications to and from a whole group of people sharing a common interest. Such a group is known as a mailing-list. You can subscribe to (i.e. become a member of ) a mailing list generally for free. Several thousand lists exist. You can find out those which appeal to you from a LISTSERVE site or you may want to make use of BITNET. You can also exploit the file INTEREST-GROUPS in the NET-INFO directory at crvax.sri.com via the anonymous ftp. The beauty of a mailing list is that you may not have to know any member of the LIST and yet you are very intimately connected to them by a bond of common interest. Any communication/query/reply by any member is posted to every member of the group.
5. USENET / INTERNET NEWS
Usenet was started in 1979 by students of Duke University and University of North Carolina to move messages to and fro with no link to Internet. It enrolled more and more members. Many of the members were Internet hosts. It was but natural that Usenet would interact with Internet. In 1986, the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP) was introduced to the Internet community. The results were dramatic.
From the point of view of popularity, Net News or Usenet (User’s Network) comes second, e-mail being at the top. Like mailing lists, you have individual discussion groups over Usenet. There exist more than 10,000 such groups devoted to different themes. You can subscribe to the ones that appeal to you. From such a variety of groups, the choice is bound to be tricky. For the ease of users, these groups are divided into seven broad categories :
|
Category |
Brief Description |
|
comp |
computer-related topics |
|
news |
related to NetNews distribution and software |
|
rec |
recreational activity, arts |
|
science |
science-related topics |
|
soc |
related to social issues |
|
talk |
open-ended debates |
|
misc |
themes not falling in any of the above six categories or cutting across themes |
The name of these groups are sequences of letters separated by dots. The left-most group of letters denotes one of the above seven categories. The further groups denote sub-division under the general category. For example, comp.ai.edu would be a group that deals with the topic artificial intelligence (ai) in the field of computers. The edu after ai signifies that this group is devoted to education in the field of artificial intelligence. There can be as many levels of hierarchy as is required. This makes the choice of a group somewhat simpler. Some pointers to go ahead with your choice may be found in the groups
news.announce.newsgroup
news.announce.newusers
news.misc
news.newusers.questions
news.sw.readers
news.answers
From the point of view of a novice, the last mentioned newsgroup above may be of tremendous help. It comprises more than 800 FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) discussions from various newsgroups. A typical question and its answer is given below :
Q : Where can you get cricket scores?
Ans : Cricket has an avid following on the Internet. To get started, look at the rec.cricket.scores newsgroup. You will get reports of scores and pointers to other sources of information, such as the CricInfo Gopher. Notice that a Veronica search on the word cricket turns up five pages of menu items, many of which refer to a graphic program named Cricket. Looking for the newsgroup first is actually a more efficient way of finding the sources you want.
Communications of the members to a newsgroup are called articles. You can post (i.e. e-mail) articles to any newsgroup you have subscribed to. You can also browse through the articles posted by others. You can reply to any article on the newsgroup in which case every member can read your reply. You can also correspond individually with the author privately on e-mail.
On the surface, newsgroups may look similar to mailing lists. Broadly, both may be viewed as information dissemination tools; both allow for reading, replying, commenting and posting of messages. However, they greatly differ in their communication methodology and scope. Mailing lists use e-mail and hence reach the destination instantaneously. Where newsgroup are concerned, information is disseminated through newsfeeds, and is accessed through newsreaders. Newsfeeds are the collections of newsgroups to which a host site subscribes. For example, if the host site twics does not subscribe to, i.e. if it blocks the rec category, then the end-user saurabh@twics.com cannot access any of the newsgroups in this category. Newsreaders are software programs that let you read, reply and post messages within a newsgroup. Usenet is described as the fun tool of the Internet and millions of people pour over it daily just as they do over newspapers. However, reading a newspaper, you are a passive participant; reading newsnet, you could be the centre stage hero.
6. WORLD WIDE WEB
Like most commodities on the Net, WWW was started in an educational institution CERN (European Centre for Nuclear Research) in Geneva with a view to promote and collaborate research among physicists. If Internet is an era in the story of Information Technology and Communication, then World Wide Web or WWW or W
3 or W3 or simply the Web is an epoch in this era. Really speaking, much of the popularity of the Internet is due to the Web which makes information retrieval from the Net a not only a without-tears but with-a-smile task. If e-mail is the most universal application on the Net, then the WWW is the most popular. Half the information travelling over the Net is accessed through the Web. It is a tool without competition to navigate information on the Net. There are over 3,000 Web servers today. Web has long come out of its original role of communicating research information . It has now become an enormous teaching tool as well. It is growing at a phenomenal rate because it has now become an exciting medium for publications over the Net in a multi-media setting.
The Web is first of all, a collection of several servers / services / facilities / tools / protocols. Thus it encompasses a mind-boggling amount of information at one place. But Web is much more than this. It is a technique. It is a deviation from the menu-driven tree structure for search, to a truly web structure with as few cul-de-sacs ( dead-ends/leaves of tree search) as possible. The two diagrams below show the pattern for a tree search on the life of Galois.
In a menu-driven tree search, we have a menu at every level from which to choose. As we start from the root, each level goes on becoming more and more specific, narrowing down the search till we reach the leaf (desired object, the life of Galois here). Then there is no going further. The tree structure has one severe drawback. It always moves forwards. If you have to go back, you must first go to the root, and then re-start the process.
A Web structure is like a web, where each node or link leads to the other links, forwards, backwards, everywards. Thus, the story need never end. For example, from life of Galois, there may be links to work of Galois, to the contemporary political situation in France, to the duels like the one took Galois’ life, to things as far removed as some other mathematician in some other country at some other time having a similar life pattern. Thus a Web search leads you on to know and discover even those facts which you did not even know existed. It is like a treasure hunt in a jungle. You are looking for a ruby and have the map to the ruby. All of a sudden, this map explodes and you have so many links leading to other routes on the map leading to sapphires, turquoises, opals, amethysts, emeralds, diamonds and what not !
The technique which has made the Web so popular is this possible motion from link to link. Each link is really speaking a Web page. The most interesting thing is that these web pages are not generally a part of the document you have opened. It is like : reading this address something stimulates me, and right in the middle of the address, I start quoting from the opening remarks of the President of US at some assembly session in US without moving from here and without any loss of time. Mind you , these quotes are not included in my address. This technique which brings us information scattered all over far off places in a flash, is known as Hyper Text Transfer Protocol or the HTTP.
As the name suggests, Hypertext is a super duper form of ordinary text. You read Hypertext on your computer screen just as you read text. As you go, you notice that there is a word or phrase which is either highlighted or underscored or is in a different color. This is what they call a link. If you choose this link, then the flow of the text is disrupted and instantaneously, you have information about the word or the phrase in question. This piece of text, hypertext rather, is again full of links. The choice is yours; either to go on, ignoring these links, or to follow a link that fascinates you and so on and so forth. The Web is an enormous net of interconnected hypertext documents.
What makes the Web all the more interesting is hypermedia. Hypermedia is more than hypertext in that it includes sound, pictures and animations as well. Hence, if your computer is adequately fitted with a graphic screen, sound card and speakers etc., you can have multimedia applications on the Web. Surely, it is much more interesting to watch action in a coloured movie than to read about it in black and white.
The coding language for HTTP is the Hyper Text Mark-up Language or HTML. You write a piece of text on a web page in HTML. Of special interest to us should be the news that the WWW consortium (the W3C, based at MIT is an industry group set up with an objective to organise and further the Web by providing technical support) has released a draft mathML for delivering mathematical content in the web documents. The full text of this working draft is available at http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-math/.
You access the Web through a Web browser. Web browsers are programs which let you look at hypertext documents and follow links to other HTML documents on the Web. The exact location of an Internet resource is specified by a Web address or a Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A typical URL has the following format :
protocol ://host.domain/path/dataname
Here protocol is the type of data to which the URL points, e.g. HTTP, FTP, telnet etc. Host.domain details the server which has got the pointed data in its repertoire. Path/dataname describes the exact location in the server where the named data reside.
A good many powerful Web browsers are available today and better ones are coming up everyday. Some of the important Web browsers are described below.
MOSAIC : MOSAIC is the first Web browser and was developed at the National Centre for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It can be used in Macintosh and Windows environment.
NETSCAPE NAVIGATOR : Launched in 1994, Netscape Navigator is the fastest Web browser around. It can be used in Macintosh, Windows and Unix environment. It gets its speed from the technique that it brings the text on while it is assembling the picture. So the user can start with the text and look at the picture when complete. It has built-in facilities for e-mail and newsgroups. You can download it from ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu by anonymous ftp.
MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER : Internet Explorer by the Microsoft is a shareware (sample available free for testing to let you decide whether you wish to buy the lot) software you can download from the Net. It works in Windows’ environment.
LYNX : The browsers described so far were all graphic browsers in the sense that you could see pictures alongside text. A text-based browser is Lynx which works in the Unix environment. You cannot point-and-click to make your choice. You have to give your command from the keyboard.
There are two easy ways to surf the Net : directory method and the page or index method. As the name suggests, the Web sites are arranged in a directory by topics and sub-topics. In an index, you have the keywords listed. When you choose a keyword, you get a page giving you a list of suggestive sites which appear to match the selected keyword . Lycos is a prime example of this kind of a search engine. The most important directory around the web is Yahoo.
YAHOO : Yahoo started as a small list of best spots of the Web. It has now grown to thousands of items classified into general categories like Arts, Business and Economy, Computers and Internet, Education, Entertainment, Government, Health, News, Recreation, Reference, Regional, Science, Social Sciences, and Society and Culture. However, yahoo is much more than a directory of Web items. It gives you descriptions of several Web sites related to the item you are looking for. You can choose the one that suits you best. What is more, it also gives you references to several topics which are more or less related to your search items. Most Web surfers begin their search with Yahoo. Some other search engines of the Yahoo type which search the Net and also start a search on other search engines are Altavista, Infoseek and Excite.
OUR REQUIREMENTS / NEEDS
Some of us are researchers, some are teachers and some are both. Accordingly, our requirements fall into two general categories. What we require as a teacher and what we require as a researcher.
As a teacher, we need good text books, good lecture notes, some auxiliary teaching aids like computers, films, projection facilities (OHP, epidiascope, slide projectors, screens etc.), problem books, teachers’ guides, enrichment material etc. Most of these things are costly today. We have either to do without them or must do with second-best alternatives. Even where the facilities are available, teachers do not necessarily possess the know-how. Teacher training element is almost missing from our system. Refresher /Orientation Courses are not welcome mainly because neither the teachers are willing to leave station, nor do their Heads of Institutions like to give them leave due to the difficulty of making alternative arrangements. We also need examination reforms. The standard method of evaluation, a three-hour-examination encourages the students to cram things without understanding.
As a researcher, we need good library facilities. We need quick access to research publications of our interest. We need a lot of computing power in most branches of the subject. Word processing facilities and e-mail facilities are required by one and all alike. Many journals refuse to accept your research paper for possible publication if you do not have an e-mail address. We also need strong and healthy interaction with other researchers in our field around the globe.
* MEETING THE NEEDS
As I have emphasised in the earlier part of my talk, the Internet is an excellent place of any kind of source material. It has such a huge amount of information that what we need we can inevitably find on it. The problem in the beginning might be how to locate it. As we become more and more avid user of the Net, this problem is more or less solved.
Learning through the Internet is a great experience. It is interactive and self-paced. One need have no inhibitions, no one knows your limitation; so what if you are trying to clarify a doubt of an elementary nature ! So what if you do not get the thing straight in the first attempt or even fail in your final attempt ! Nobody, absolutely nobody is watching. Go ahead, practise a bit more ! Nobody is going to call you a duffer or a dumbo ! Yes, somebody ( a computer program ) is going to tell you what went wrong and what remedial steps to take. You can test yourself all you want, and determine where you stand. The most interesting thing is that there are no geographical and time constraints. A teacher does not have to leave station in order to refresh his knowledge or to get oriented in a new branch. The Internet is there to advise him all about the source material known to any expert in the field. It would not be out of place if I say something about electronic publishing here.
Ø
ELECTRONIC PUBLISHING
Most of us have known the frustration of
In research, early communication is of the utmost importance. The creation of mathematics is more a consequence of existing circumstances as regards the total store of knowledge, acceptance of and emphasis over certain portions of the same, and the newest developments in the subject being new, catch the attention of everybody. It is for this reason that quite often we find that two persons not known to each other, sitting in far off places, prove similar results; often with different techniques. As a result, feuds of priority are not uncommon. The Polemic over the invention of Calculus between the Germans and the English is too well known.
Internet has two solutions to this problem of ours.
As the name suggests, an electronic journal is a journal available on-line. You do not have a hard copy in print. You can access it through the Net of course, and once you download it on your computer, you can print the relevant portions on your printer. This enables you to have a hard copy if you so desire. The field of electronic journals is in the developing stages. Not every journal has gone electronic, but with the passage of time, more and more would follow suit, and more and more researchers would contribute to electronic journals rather than the traditional ones. As everywhere, we have a variety of electronic journals as well.
Electronic journals have many advantages such as :
Most of the important journals today have a print version, an on-line version and a CD-ROM version. Look at this advertisement of Zentralblatt below.
Zentralblatt für Mathematik/Mathematics Abstracts
Product family
Print Version
Math Database Online Version
CompactMATH CD-ROM Version
The one most used mathematics journal is perhaps the Mathematical Reviews. Mathematical Reviews database is also available electronically. Details could be had at the e-mail eps@ams.org .
The premier mathematical society of America, the American Mathematical Society also publishes and distributes several journals in electronic format which can be searched by subscription on the WWW. These include
An effective way to convey to you the advantages of the electronic journals would be to quote from the catalogue of subscription rates of the AMS :
"Subscribe now so you can access the latest high quality peer reviewed advances in mathematics. The timeliness and ease of the Internet will enable you to search across and within AMS journals, browse, and print articles specifically in your discipline.
With AMS Electronic Journals, your access to information is enhanced with ….
AMS has prepared an electronic database comprising mathematical reviews and current mathematics publications called MathSciNet which is available on the Internet by subscription. MathSciNet is a powerful resource which provides
The search in MathSciNet can be made by one or more of the following :
Reviews and abstracts are up-dated monthly. CMP papers are added daily. This makes Current Mathematical Publications really current . What adds more value to the already easy, fast and more-productive-than-ever-before search with the point-end-click ease of the WWW is the inclusion of the hypertext links to
This means while consulting a reference, if you come across a link to a specific author, all you have to do is click the link. You would immediately have on screen , other works by this author and so on. This makes the tedious job of cross-referencing so very simple. The home-page of MathSciNet is available at URL,
http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/
where one can view a demo, see subscription rates, and get answers to frequently asked questions.
In addition to the journals, there are a lot of electronic books including the Encyclopaedia Britannica , available on the Net. For example, the whole of William Shakespeare, Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, Aesop, Lewis Caroll, Nathaniel Hawthorne, etc. Project Guttenberg (the man behind the first printing press) has taken up to provide 10,000 important books on a free Web Site. In the first instance, they have selected those books which are free of a copyright license.
The URLs and the e-mail addresses are spread all over the notices / bulletins / newsletters / and-so-on for ease and speed. I quote from the London Mathematical Society newsletter about the second announcement of ICM’98 :
"To receive the Second Announcement, fill out the form on the ICM’98 server (http://elib.zib.de/ICM98). Alternatively, send an empty e-mail to icm98@zib.de with Second Announcement in the SUBJECT line to receive an e-mail form. If this is not possible for you, please write to the ICM’98 Secretary Prof. Winkler (see address above)."
This announcement shows that as the best option , people are expected to get the information on the Net. In the second place, they are expected to use their e-mail facility. The traditional snail-mail method comes last.
To sum up, electronic publications cut on costs / time / space, and provide for easy cross referencing. The e-mail and newsgroups let us interact with our co-workers across the globe. This prevents others from having an edge over us where precedence of work is concerned. Given below is a list of some AMS e-mail addresses which may come in handy to many researchers.
As is well-known, computers help us in word processing in a big way. Many user-friendly word packages like the Microsoft Word are available today. With Tex and Latex, mathematical expressions can be written with great ease. So far as to the computing power that is placed at our fingertips through the computers is concerned, I shall keep mum. All researchers know this fact only too well, and saying anything in this respect would be to show a candle to the Sun.
* EXAMPLES
Strictly speaking, there should be hardly any examples in a one-hour address. However, the temptation is too great to be ignored. Here are some of my experiences with the Net.
Example 1 . Enquiry was made about submission of papers to the journal Electronic Research Announcements on 3.12.97 at 9:11p.m. The answer was received 28 minutes later. The request and some portions of the reply are reproduced here.
QUERY---------------------------------------------------------
From: SINGAL <arsims@del2.vsnl.net.in>
To: era <era-info@ams.org>
Subject: help
Date: Wednesday, December 03, 1997 9:11 PM
I shall appreciate receiving information
regarding submission to ERA.
Asha
-------------------------------------------------------------------
REPLY----------------------------------------------------------
From: era-info@MATH.AMS.ORG
To: SINGAL <arsims@del2.vsnl.net.in>
Subject: Re: help
Date: Wednesday, December 03, 1997 9:39 PM
****This message has been generated automatically.
***To prevent mail loops, please do not reply to it.
ELECTRONIC RESEARCH ANNOUNCEMENTS
of the
American Mathematical Society
The premier issue of the American Mathematical Society's first electronic-only journal, Electronic Research Announcements of the AMS, is now available. The articles which comprise this first issue, as well as details on how to submit papers to ERA-AMS can be found on the ERA-AMS WWW page at the URL:
http://www.ams.org/era/
ERA-AMS publishes high quality research announcements (up to about 10 journal pages) of significant advances in all branches of mathematics. Authors may submit manuscripts to any editor. All papers are reviewed, and the entire
Editorial Board must approve the acceptance of any paper.
The Managing Editor is Svetlana Katok. The Editorial Board consists of………
ERA-AMS is published on e-MATH and disseminated via the World Wide Web, FTP, and electronic mail. ERA-AMS is now accepting submission of papers via electronic mail. To submit your paper for consideration to ERA-AMS, please fill out the template (attached below), include all your files with it, and send it to the address
era-submit@math.ams.org.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Example
2. A search on Mathematical Films provided several thousand references. A few of them are included here.
--http://math.univ-mlv.fr/users/romon/minimal/images.html
http://tempo.harvard.edu/~rfischer/hcssim/17_facts/lefevre/lefevre.html
--http://www.maa.org/pubs/books/poly.html
--http://www.maa.org/mathland/mathland_4_8.html
http://deslab.mit.edu/DesignLab/courses/13.016/visualization/first/visual.html
--http://www.w3.org/TR/WD-math-970515/
--http://www.duke.edu/~mmorris/encryption/future.html
Example
3 . A search on the keyword "calculator" provided a large number of references. Of these, Martindale’s ‘The Reference Desk’ was picked up. A tiny portion of the same is shown here. The URLs included in the order brackets (<…>) are links. By choosing a link, detailed information about the topic related with the link can be obtained.
Martindale's 'The Reference Desk'
CALCULATORS ON-LINE CENTER
PART II - MATHEMATICS
Currently the Calculators On-Line Center contains
over "5,310" Calculators
Calculators Home Page <http://www-sci.lib.uci.edu/HSG/RefCalculators.html>
HQC'S SCIENG ONLINE SOLUTION LIBRARY - HQC Computer & Computing Consultants (HQC), Iowa City, Iowa & Shanghai, China <http://soli.inav.net/~hqcom/hqcscieng/math/> VERY VERY EXTENSIVE. OVER '40' CALCULATORS ONLINE
"People can use these solution tools for computing their scientific and engineering problems including geometry calculation, basic math function and operations, series, linear algrebraic equations, nonlinear equations (finding roots), interpolating, curve fitting or regression, integration, differentiation, ordinary differentiate equations, partial differential equations, statistics, graphic plotting,_ data visualization, ..." For more information see HQC's SciEng Online Solution Library <http://soli.inav.net/~hqcom/hqcscieng/math/> or HQC Computer & Computing Consultants (HQC) <http://soli.inav.net/~hqcom/>
INTERATIVE MATHEMATICS EDUCATION, PUZZLES & CALCULATORS - Alexander Bogomolny <http://www.cut-the-knot.com/> Multimedia. VERY EXTENSIVE. Contains over 25 Mathematical Games; Puzzles etc., in Algebra, Geometry, Probabilistic Math, Paradox's etc.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Example
4. An advertisement received in my mail-box.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: shishir sharan <shishir@giasdla.vsnl.net.in>
To:
Subject:
Date: Thursday, December 18, 1997 12:12 AM
Dear Sir/Madam,
We are ADVANTAGE, an organisation providing consultancy on "BUSINESS VIA INTERNET".
Among our other services, we also offer you assistance in
ADVERTISING,
SELLING your products/services,
BUILDING BRANDS,
DOING BUSINESS - WEB MAGAZINES, WEB TRAVEL AGENCIES...- etc.,
using the WORLD WIDE WEB. This entails conceptualising, designing, developing, hosting and maintaining POPULAR WEB SITES / POPULAR EB BUSINESS COUNTERS.>
POPULAR WEB SITES ? ...
Yes, like popular TV programmes, popular restuarants, popular movies etc., popular web sites mean MORE BUSINESS, too. We can also be of assistance to you in POPULARISING your WEB SITE so as to ensure maximum returns on your advertising investment.
If this interests you or you would like to know more about the concept, please feel free to get in touch with us. You may call us, page us, mail us back or choose to fill in the appended ADVANTAGE-WEB FORM, too.
Regards,
Rudhir Sharan
ADVANTAGE Infotech Private Limited
985, Sector 21, Gurgaon
Tel: +91-124-367238
Pager: 9602-413536
============================================= DID YOU KNOW THAT THERE ARE 7 CRORE INTERNET USERS WORLDWIDE !
AND THAT THERE ARE 45000 INDIAN INTERNET USERS(CONNECTIONS), TODAY...THIS IS EXPECTED TO GROW TO 15 LAKH BY THE YEAR 2000 !
=============================================
THE WORLD WIDE WEB DOUBLES IN SIZE EVERY 2 MONTHS !!!
=============================================The largest Book-shop in the world does not exist in the real world ! IT IS ON THE WEB !!!
=============================================
Some of the major influences in the history of mankind...wheel, industrial revolution, telephone, newspaper, television and now...INTERNET ?
=============================================
Example
5. Another advertisement from my mail-box, regarding finance management, this time.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Amit Dutta <business@indiabusy.com>
To: 'arsims @del2.vsnl.net.in' <arsims@del2.vsnl.net.in>
Subject:
Date: Friday, December 19, 1997 9:39 AM
To Finance and Banking Department
414 - arsims @del2.vsnl.net.in
Cost Reduction Consultants
Banking
I. If you are -
i) Manufacturing concern having banking facilities -
- Bill Discounting
- Letter of Credit
in excess of Rs. 1 crore.
ii) Selling goods on credit for a period of 30 or 60 days.
iii) Buying goods against acceptance of documents or Letter of credit of 30 or 60 days.
We can help you reduce the banking charges to less than 50% from the existing level. Besides providing overall planning to reduce the interest and finance costs.
II. First Email -
The banking charges cost reduction program will be sent to you after receiving the information mentioned at S.No. 1. You need not be concerned about our charges at this stage.
III. Charges -
Annual fee of Rs. 1000/- only. For this we will keep you updated on the latest trends in Indian Banking industry and lot of other analysis.
For any specific issue in any commercial field, you can avail of our services by remitting an amount of Rs. 250/- only.
IV. Returning this Email
Even if the above is not of interest to you immediately, you may return the above mail after mentioning subscribe in the subject. We will come back to you with lot of other information on various other issues. You need not pay anything at this stage for returning this Email. Only when you get anything relevant to your business, you may pay up the annual fee. Till such time the service is absolutely free.
Rajan
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* FEASIBILITY
The most important aspect associated with the preparation of a project, devising a strategy, or taking up a plan of action, is its feasibility. Without a feasibility study, we are likely to be labelled the mad emperor Mohammed-bin Tughlaq, should our project/strategy/plan fail. No doubt, the Internet revolution is coming and the developed countries have well taken it in their stride. The question is shall we join the é lite team of information-rich countries, as they are labelled of late?
A very fundamental objection against the adoption of Internet is the remark that in a poor country like ours, where students do not have benches to sit, it is criminal to even think about the Net. Much can be said both for and against this objection. The poor country like ours, has become a nuclear power, it has made its place in the ranks of supercomputing powers, it has succeeded in establishing satellites in space, why cannot it become information-rich as well ?
The only uniformity about India is that it is not uniform in anything, be it religion, language, dress, food, habits and what not. Mr.A may be driving a Maruti Zen and Mr.B may not even be able to afford a bicycle. This fact does not stop us from letting people travel in aeroplanes. Metro A may have over a 1,000 colleges and village B may not even have a middle school. This does not stop us from opening new universities. Life goes on like this. This is not to say that we should stop pursuing our socialistic goals. This is to say that instead of trying to pull down somebody from the upper rungs, we should try to support and guide those down below to move up.
Before we proceed any further with the feasibility issue of the Internet, we must examine the Indian scene with respect to the same.
Ø
THE INDIAN SCENE
India’s monopoly International Carrier is the Videsh Sanchar Nigam Limited (VSNL). VSNL is a Government of India enterprise. It maintains India’s Internet backbone - Gateway Internet Access Services (GIAS) network. This means, GIAS is a network which operates at vey high speed and carries the bulk of traffic. Other smaller networks like RABMN, GPSS, I-net, GEDIS, GEM.400 and HVNET connect to it, and thus get access to the global information superhighway leading into the Cyber-Space.
GIAS provides the full range of services such as e-mail, usenet, ftp, telnet, etc. to Indian users by connecting its main Internet Access Node at Mumbai to Internet Node at USA via satellite media, and to Internet Node in Europe by submarine cable media. VSNL also has Internet Access Nodes at Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, New Delhi and Pune. These six international telecom Gateways are interconnected through national telecom digital links of the DoT.
Each Gateway provides direct digital links to several countries and can be accessed by several cities in its geographic vicinity through digital leased lines (DLLs). For example, the New Delhi Gateway has direct links with over 20 countries and can be accessed by over 25 cities around it. In addition to providing DLLs, VSNL also provides International DLLs through the six Gateways at Bangalore, Calcutta, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi and Pune. Speed options available are : 64, 128, 192, 256, 384, 512, 768, 1024 or 2048 kbps. Bookings are handled by VSNL alone. Countries which are not directly linked to these Gateways are accessed via the transit facility of some other country. Transmission media is either a satellite or a submarine cable or both. Half the circuit out of the country is established by the VSNL and the other half by the foreign telecom Authority.
VSNL’s dedicated data network GPSS (Gateway Packet Switched Service) is connected to the node at Mumbai. Several other networks such as RABMN (Remote Area Business Message Network), domestic packet switched network viz. I-net (under DoT, having eight nodes), high speed V-SAT network HVNET, India’s largest network connecting its research centres, educational institutions and media viz. ERNET, Govt. of India’s official database network under National Informatics Centre viz. NICNET, gateway electronic data interchange service GEDIS ( allowing you paperless import/export) and e-mail service GEM.400 are connected to GPSS. Hence the subscribers of these networks also have the advantage of Internet Services in addition to the usual benefits of GPSS such as interactive transactions, database search, network integration, electronic order exchange services etc.
GIAS provides three types of access to its users :
One of the basic requirements of the Internet is a telephone connection. Only about 273400 of India’s 603906 odd villages have a telephone. VSNL is collaborating with ICO to cater to the rest. The idea is to operate the ICO’s basic terminal in semi-fixed mode. Such a terminal would act either as a single village square pay-phone powered by solar panels or as the hub of a local wireless network serving large number of people possessing handsets. A U.K. Company has patented a method of sending international signals to home-lines through the ordinary power cables instead of the telephone lines. When available commercially, it may prove to be a better device than ICO’s terminal. In fact, technology is bursting with advances. The problem is, putting them to the proper use.
The second requirement is a PC. Several Government Agencies are eager to help and several schemes are available under which schools, colleges and universities are being given grants for acquiring computers. For example, the CLASS project, the UGC sponsored O and A level projects, and the INFLIBNET projects under which free Internet services are provided to the Universities so long as they would pay for the telephone usage time.
I have been faced with a more basic requirement than the above two, and more difficult to fulfil too ! I have been castigated with phrases like "ghar mein na dane, amma chalee bhunanein" or "soot na kapaas, julaheh se lathamlath" - (i.e., without grains, the granny is going to get them roasted, or there is no thread, nor even cotton, but heated arguments over negotiations with the weaver are on). The idea is you can operate the computer only if you are literate. Literacy is a more basic problem than education or research through the Internet. Unfortunately, the problem is addressed in wrong quarters. Literacy, basically, is the problem of the State. We are not addressing issues related with fundamental rights. Our premises force us to discuss whether it is feasible for those who are engaged in research or education to acquire Internet access, and if yes, would it be any better or good.
I have already spent a lot of time on telling you the uses of the Internet and the benefits that can be derived. I tell you no mathematician worth the name needs any special skills to exploit the user-friendly, help-dense environment of the Net. Typing skill may be helpful, but it is not essential. Most applications today are graphic where you point to a suitable spot at the screen and click the button on the mouse (point-and-click). The keyboard is needed for feeding the data and there are tutorials on typing available on your computer. You do not have to go to a typing school necessarily. I did not. Nor did my daughter, who fed in my talk and got me a hard copy from which this address has been printed as it rests in your worthy hands. Anyone who has the time and the desire or curiosity can spend hours on the Net without getting bored, and becoming wiser by the second too. What a bonus ! Or don’t you think so ?
Lest you might go away with the idea that everything is just rosy, let me warn you about the thorns as well. After that it would be you and the absent or present youth in you who would decide whether you settle for the rose or for the thorns. I had once heard a very nice couplet which meant that when I was young, I saw the rose alone; the thorns were invisible. When I grew old, the rose faded and the thorns became prominent.
Ø
THE BEARS[AND THE BULLS]
[ By the way, Electronic Communication Privacy Act was passed in 1986 to ensure e-mail security. Data of private nature should be sent in encrypted form. One pretty good public key encryption software is Pretty Good Privacy which can be downloaded from ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pup/mp/mpj/getpgp.asc.]
[By the way, is your password at least 8 characters long, interspersed with letters and digits, not a name or date, and do you keep on changing it often ?]
[Put the advantages of CAI in the other pan of the scale please !]
[Many a time, you do get useful information, in fact just the information you were looking for.]
[ Pooh ! Have we destroyed our aeroplanes, closed our universities, effaced our metros and so on ?]
[On the other hand, Internet has been described as a liberating force in that you are free to choose information. Secondly, discovery is supposed to be nothing but interconnections found amongst pieces of knowledge which already exist. One may say information leads to knowledge and knowledge leads to discovery, and discovery leads to further information, and further information leads to further knowledge, and……]
[Proves there are Khatra-e-jaan neem hakeems (quacks) over the Net as everywhere else ! Knowledge formation is a process which never stops. The Net is growing by the second. New data is flowing in every second. New discoveries are being made every second.]
[Have we heard the phrases - the Net family, a global village, the information superhighway, the cyber space ?]
O.K. So you have now heard both, the bears and the bulls. There is something from the ruling quarters too. The Government is gearing up. The plan is to put the Net on the fast track. DoT alone is going to invest a fabulous sum, Rs.7000/- million to set up a backbone network. VSNL is working overtime to expand its International Gateways, from 2mbp to an impressive 40mbp. The immediate target is two million subscribers in the next two years. Proposals are being studied to bring down the prices of the PCs to the level of the low-priced network computers. DoT licences are going to be allowed to serve as Internet Service Providers. So what ? So, the cellular phone subscribers would get direct access to the Net. Cable TV operators are going to be encouraged and trained to become ISPs. So what? So, this would provide ready-made infrastructure. Infotech advances are being devised which would provide infrastructure in the rural setting. Oh, we are going to meet the 21st century with a welcome smile on our face !
We do not want to miss the bus this time.
- I.K.Gujral, on Internet.
How about you ? Are you going towards the ticket window, or are you marching away from the station ?
* NEXT STEPS
We have laid down our goals and objectives with care. We have discussed our problems, strengths, and weaknesses at length. We have recorded the uses and the benefits of the Internet. It is time to plan the future strategies and the steps to be taken.
As I see, these are exciting times. We have a unique opportunity for learning and instructing never before heard of or imagined. There extends an endless sea of information in front of us. (Of course, information is not knowledge. Nevertheless, it is the basis of knowledge.) We can set sail and explore new territories. We can dive deep or following our classical example of Samudra Manthan, come up with better treasures than the traditional Kamadhenu, aeravat, kaustubh mani, laxmi, etc. In fact, we can be the pioneers. We can be the torch-bearers. We have a life-time chance, if only we shall avail it.
The "if only" part should not be taken as a note of despondency. In fact, it is so very potent with future promise. So much is being done at so many fronts to bring the power, the resource, the Midas touch which is Internet, that we need not lose heart. We should rather get ready for it . Let us do our bit : be not scared of using computers; read computer magazines; become computer-literate; learn typing; give mathematics the nuance that would help us understand and work with computers; encourage our elders to join the mainstream (younger would anyway do it; they have no option) by showing what an enormous teaching resource and a productive research medium it is; pester our respective Heads of Departments and Institutions to get some resources in this direction from somewhere somehow; and finally liberate ourselves from the fears, the worries, the inhibitions, the diffidence, we might be having about the revolution, which is Internet all the way.
Today, as we stand on the threshold, to be admitted to the 21st century, Internet is not merely a plan of action for people with vision, it is going to become a necessity which would bear refusal only at the cost of backwardness ( if not actually ignorance), inefficiency, disorganisation, poor quality, low productivity, no creativity and general chaos.
* SUMMARY
I have tried to explain the concept of the Internet. It is a network of networks of computers spread all over the globe when viewed physically but technically, it also includes the users, the information stored over it, and all the software needed to make communication over it possible. Conceptually, it is a revolution.
To be able to use the Internet, your minimum requirement is a PC, a modem , a telephone connection, an account with VSNL and some software.
It must be clear to you by now that the Internet can be of use in every walk of life. It can be used for education and research, for work and recreation, for information exchange of any type, for acquiring information of all kinds, for every commercial application from planning a product to its marketing, for getting the latest news from around the whole world, for satiating your curiosity about anything any time anywhere.
We have gone over the basic resources/services/tools over the Internet (e-mail, ftp, telnet, mailing lists, usenet, www, Gopher, Mosaic, Netscape Navigator, Internet Explorer, Lynx, Yahoo etc.). We have covered electronic publications with a reference to MathSciNet.
I have discussed our requirements and needs (good text-books/lecture notes/auxiliary material, teacher training and updating, non-formal evaluation methods, self-assessment by pupils, timely access to research publications, word processing facilities, e-mail facilities, computing power, interaction with other researchers). We have seen how Internet can be of help in meeting the same.
We have discussed the feasibility of the Internet in the Indian Context, and pondered over the related problems ( security and privacy, account piracy, futile and long searches, cluttering of the mail-box with lots of irrelevant information, information versus inspiration, paucity of electronic literature, time spent by students in chat rooms and at recreational sites, costly PCs, rural interface, supplanting of creativity and self-discovery by information invasion and ready-made solutions etc.). We have discussed some remedial steps. We have prepared an agenda of actions for ourselves as well as for our superiors.
* CONCLUDING REMARKS
We counted on our fingers and measured with our hands and feet. Then we had the abacus and the ruler. Then we had the slide rule and the calculator. Then we had many better devices. To cut a long story short, then we had the computer and the Net.
There was a donkey. There was its master. The master bade; the donkey obeyed. One day, the donkey decided to do otherwise. It planted itself right in the middle of the road. The master tried to drive it on. But the donkey would not buzz. The master thought of a plan. He took a pole. He tied a big fat carrot at one end of the pole. He held the pole so that the carrot was just one step ahead of the donkey. Then he tied the pole to the back of the donkey. The donkey spotted the carrot and considered. The temptation was great. He took a small step forward. The carrot was still one step ahead. He took another step. The carrot was still a step ahead. He took another step, another and yet another. It would not give up. It would move on. The carrot is still a step ahead.
Disclaimer : All characters in this story are fictitious. Any resemblance, whatsoever, to any person in real life , living or dead, is purely accidental.
I say it is not an evidence of flames.
Let us go ahead, let us blow hard.
Let the flames, pierce the night.
Let for every one, there be light.
Good luck !
