We begin with what is cyberspace. The wires and cables, the computers and modems, the space behind the screen is not truly cyberspace. Cyberspace is the feeling of being in the same room. Cyberspace is the place where people use new technology to fulfill the basic need of every human being - communication. It emerges from endless debates on newsgroups and message boards. It is that bond that knits together regulars in electronic chat rooms, It is like Plato's plane of ideal forms, a metaphorical space, a virtual reality. But it is no less real for being so.But what makes this space a delight to inhabit is: A combination of special software and a way of connecting documents allowing users to travel the network with pictures, sound and video, simply by pointing and clicking a mouse. The Internet is not just a way to send email and download the occasional file. It is a place to visit, full of people and ideas. It is a new medium, based on broadcasting and publishing with a new dimension added - interactivity (You can interact with others who are reading your broadcast). Thanks to the friendly multi-media side of the Net called World Wide Web, Cyberspace has millions of inhabitants.The Internet already offers, albeit in an embryonic form, most of the services and technologies that cable and telephone companies have been delivering since decade. You can make a telephone call, watch a video, listen to audio broadcast or broadcast yourself. Participate in an interactive play, shop, learn, download information and of course communicate. Every day the Net delivers more of the services of the fabled information superhighway. It may doing these things clumsily, unreliably and slowly but it is doing them now.It probably is one of the important revolution of this century. Time will only tell whether it will have as far reaching an impact as the invention of the wheel had on mankind. According to Metcalfe's Law, the value of a network is proportional to the number of users squared (And Internet has millions of users). The telephone network neatly illustrates this law. One telephone is useless. Two are better but not much. It is only when a larger population have telephones, that the power of the network is felt. Imagine life without the telephone.There we go straying from the topic of Cyberspace. See what we mean by this topic being so vast. We could take off from one point, meander through related topics and end up at a totally different site. Just like how it happens when we surf the World Wide Web.The phenomenal success of www, the part of Internet that has captured the public's fancy is usually put down to its colorful pictures, sound and video. In reality, the real explanation is different and considerably more interesting. It is `Hypertext', the ability to line documents to each other by way of a live footnote. By clicking (selecting with a mouse, which is a selecting device) on these hotlinks users can travel around the Net following a more or less thematic path from one source to another or simply dive into one link for a bit of more info, then back out to continue where they left off in the original text.
