Benjamin Reid

Where is the internet?

• friend: did you fix the internetz yet?
• me: a good portion of it, yeh
• friend: lovely jubbly
• me: didn't you notice?
• friend: Well my email is still slow. I guess you didn't get to that bit yet. I was thinking earlier. If someone really wanted to, could they delete twitterens?
• me: not really
• friend: could someone delete the whole internet?
• me: not really no - that's pretty scary isn't it?
• friend: yeh… I still don't understand where it is
• me: everywhere. every computer that connects to the internet potentially holds some of the internet. it's completely distributed
• friend: it must have a base though. is there not a central internet brain?
• me: nope
• friend: so when the person thought of the internet. Where did he put it?
• me: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Internet_map_1024.jpg - a network of computers, like a parallel circuit rather than series. you know how if one bulb goes out in series, they all go out, where as parallel currents if one bulb goes out, all the others stay on?
• friend: yes from GCSE physics!
• me: yeah, it's kinda like that
• friend: ok that makes some more sense
• me: if in your house you have 3 computers that are networked - none of them ARE the network but they are key parts of the network. the existence of more than one computer connected… is the network
• friend: ok
• me: like roads - there is no _one_ road, just many connected roads and cities
• friend: OMFG. I got it
• me: enlightenment
• friend: You're the internet aren't you?
• me: *headdesk*
• friend: It's you