My name is Phil Goldman. I'm the Vice President of Engineering at WebTV Networks, and one of the founders of the company. As an engineer, I'm more comfortable with numbers and bits and bytes that are used to communicate with computers and networks than I am with the elegant words used to communicate well with real people. However, I'm so excited about the prospect of the WebTV Internet terminal and Network and their importance in the ongoing Internet revolution that I would like to share my thoughts with you here in this column. I'll try to communicate using English, rather than C++ or Java. If you catch me slipping up please send me mail at philgoldman@webtv.net. I'm looking forward to your feedback.

In the coming months I'll explore issues of interest to you folks as WebTV Network subscribers and as newfound Netizens (Internet Citizens). I'll share stories about how the network operates and how to reach some of the neat features of the WebTV Network and the Internet that you can use to show your friends how net-savvy you are. And I'll try to sneak in a few hints about what's coming down the pike from the WebTV Networks development laboratories... as long as it doesn't drive our Public Relations people too crazy to have me preannounce features to you!

This month I'd like to tell you about the twenty-eight year history of the Internet and the five year history of the World-Wide Web. Next month I'll give the inside scoop on the amazing two year history of WebTV Networks.

The Internet
The Internet is a collection of computers around the world that are able to connect to each other with some form of communication link such as fiber optics or copper cables (like your phone system probably uses), microwave links, or any other means... just so long as they can talk to each other. The Internet is a complex example of a network, but networks themselves can be as simple as two computers hooked up to each other with a wire.

The Internet began life as a network called ARPANET. It was developed by ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Department of Defense. ARPA, sometimes known as DARPA, was responsible for sponsoring a number of research projects during the 1960's and 1970's. The original goal of the ARPANET was to allow researchers at one site to log into the computers at a different site and make use of the resources there, such as more powerful computers or libraries of information. However, these researchers quickly found that the greatest use of the Internet was to share ideas and information with each other via electronic mail.

In the early 1980's the ARPANET architects designed a protocol called TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol). You've probably heard the term used before, because these days it is the method by which almost all computers speak to each other. The WebTV Network uses a version of TCP/IP that works well over phone lines. TCP/IP provided a common language for computers to speak to one another, regardless of manufacturer, so that computers in different networks (or nations) could communicate, thus creating one large internetwork. This is where the Internet gets its name.

TCP/IP and internetworking became crucial around this time because many other networks were being built for use in research and for commercial purposes. When they agreed to speak using TCP/IP, these networks were able to connect to each other. And the ARPANET itself splintered several times, first spinning off a special network for the military known as MILNET, and splitting into a number of networks run by different groups. At last, it had truly become the Internet.

Over the years the Internet has developed not only a widespread use, but also a culture. As new netizens you are now part of that culture. From time to time you'll see a part of that culture popping up. It might be in the emoticons like :-) that you see used in mail messages, or you might see it reflected in the opinions of some of the old-time Internet users. You'll know who they are if they ask you to follow the rules of netiquette!

The World Wide Web
The Internet has existed now for decades, but it was only used by a very small number of people around the world until the last few years. E-mail was the first "killer app" for the Internet, something that nearly everyone found a use for. About five years ago the Internet became the universal way for people to trade e-mail. Even if they were using a different mail system, like AOL, the mail system would still have a way to send and receive from the Internet.

But the revolution that has made the Internet accessible to the common man has been the World-Wide Web (aka "the Web" or WWW). The Web is based on a very simple idea, which is probably why it has become so popular. The idea of links, so central to the Web, come from a concept known as Hypertext, a term coined by Ted Nelson in 1965. He created a system called Xanadu, which allowed the reader of a document to use links to move to other parts of the document or to completely new documents. The concept came out of the labs and into popular culture in 1987 with the introduction of Bill Atkinson's HyperCard program for the Macintosh. And today the term Hypertext shows up in the Web vernacular, mostly in abbreviated forms like HTML (Hypertext Markup Language). Another example is HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), the way that a computer on the Web delivers the information about a document to your WebTV Internet terminal.

In 1989 a researcher at the CERN Physics Laboratory, Tim Berners-Lee, created a project called the WWW Project. His goal was to empower scientists to put their information online and allow the information to be hyperlinked together over the Internet so that multiple pieces of information could comprise the presentation. This was the birth of the Web.

The Web began to become very popular starting in 1992, with the creation of the first widely accessible browser, Mosaic. The browser is the program on a personal computer that allows you to see documents on the Web -- it's built in on the WebTV Internet terminal. Mosaic was created by Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) in Illinois.

WebTV Networks
Next issue I'm going to tell you all about WebTV Networks, and how it got started. I'll even explain why the company was known as Artemis Research when it was first started, and why we told outsiders that our business was "research about the effects of sleep deprivation on dwarf rabbits." In the meantime I challenge you to use the Web to investigate any leads you can find about Artemis Research. If you send me any good info I'll try to include it in the column.

Odds and Ends
As long as you've read this far, I thought I might share with you a few tips that make my WebTV Internet terminal easier for me to use.

o Fast Dialing: Go to the Dialing Options setup page by going to the setup page from the home page, and then to the Dialing Options. If you then go to the Advanced Dialing Options page from there you will have the opportunity to change your dialing speed, and to enable audible dialing. The former has a Fast setting that will allow you to save about a second each time you start up your WebTV Internet terminal. If you then have trouble connecting, though, you should be sure to set it back; there's a reason that it's set to Medium by default.

Checking the Audible Dialing box will allow you to hear the modem in your terminal as it makes the phone call. If there's ever a problem dialing this might help to diagnose it. Also, you'll never feel left out if your neighbor has an overpriced PC and modem -- you'll have your very own modem noise for a fraction of what they paid!

o Advanced Options: The options bar at the bottom of the screen, the one that has the Save and Send buttons on it, has a few extra hidden buttons. Normally there are six buttons that appear when you push the options key on your remote control. But if you hold down the "cmd" key on your wireless keyboard while pushing the options key you will get two extra option buttons: Reload and Hang Up. The former will grab the current page that you're looking at and get it from the Internet all over again. The latter will hang up the phone, but does not force you to power off your WebTV Internet terminal to end the call.

I'll send some more info towards your TV room next issue. In the meantime I encourage you to do some sleuthing on Artemis Research and to send me feedback on this column at philgoldman@webtv.net. Thanks for taking the time to read this.