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BY
DEBASHISH CHAKRABARTY
Internet is destined to replicate our real world. This virtual world will thus have all the ingredients, with some aspects utterly clean in intention and execution and some others inciting fear. As in real-life, many of the fearful aspects of the Internet can be addressed and dismissed, by using our ability to discern.
Unlike the analogue - real world that we live in, the Internet is digital. Here everything is in a binary state and there is hardly any room for ambiguity or adjustments. May be this is the reason why, dissimilar to any other new medium, the acceptance of Internet has been spectacularly faster; what took 20 years for TV to achieve, the Internet managed in 5-6 years. And it keeps on the rise day by day.
Some experts think that Internet will cease growing only when the real world is utterly reflected in it. Ultimately, they opine, it would stand tall as a vast network where almost all of the human knowledge will exist, albeit in a digital form. It would be akin to a parallel co-existent world, in the form of electric memory on chips unlike the chemical one in our brain cells. We are prompted to infer here that this cannot surely happen without some degree of double counting since most of the Internet information would already have been accounted for under the magnetic or tape categories. All in all we are talking about enormous amount of information.
It goes without saying that as Internet gradually steps towards its viraat-roop[1], the difficulties in exploring it would increase many folds. There are no maps for Internet; site-maps only come handy for that particular website only. Web directories depend on submissions and, very justifiably, cannot be expected to complete compendium of the information available on the Internet. In our regular cyber-journeys we mostly tread on known territories, the familiar websites where we check our emails, read news and listen to music. Even if we search for something on Google we almost do not care to go beyond the second page of search results. Seldom do we appreciate the amount of data left unexplored. As you read earlier those uncharted expanses are more cavernous than we know.
Easy though it may seem, measuring the true bulk of web is a daunting task, probably because not everything on the Internet is stock of information. Several other components of Internet, such as Chat and telnet, exist only as flow of information. This is what makes Internet very unique, akin to Radio or TV where a single unit of information may generate gigabytes of flow, and contrary to media such as book or newspaper where the flow of information is relatively low.
Do you feel it is possible to accurately gauge the magnitude of Internet? Try not to be so sure. What we normally roam on is what people usually term as the
surface Web; the Web that comprises of approximately 2.5 billion (that's around 25 to 50 terabytes) static, publicly available web pages. As the term suggests, that's only a tiny block in the whole picture. The
deep Web consists of specialized Web-accessible databases and dynamic web sites, unfathomed by average surfers. These pages actually don’t exist at all, their contents reside in searchable databases and the pages are generated on the fly as you request them on your browser. Estimates say that the deep web contains nearly 550 billion individual documents compared to the 2.5 billion individual documents of the
surface Web that grows at a rate of 7.3 million pages per day.
Suffice to say that the information available on the deep Web is 400 to 550 times larger than the information on the surface. If you go through the research documents on the subject that have even considered the Email & Mailing Lists, Usenet, FTP, IRC, Messaging Services, Telnet and what not, you would encounter figures beyond comprehension.
Internet is indeed enormous, possibly because it is destined to replicate our real world. If this were to be true, imagine the day it will really emulate our world in entirety, that day you might as well be scared of setting foot in it, as you would dread entering the deep unexplored rain forests of Amazon. Like our life, this virtual world will have all the ingredients - benefits and dangers, valuable experiences and pleasant diversions. Some part of this world will be utterly clean in intention and execution; others may incite fear in educators and parents.
So what do we do? Close the doors, stay away from Internet and tell others to follow suit. Surely not! When we anticipate Internet to reflect our real world we also mean that it would depict its goodness too. In our real-life we are bound by our combined consciousness, this is what will bind us on the Internet also. Over this virtual world of Internet hence, as in real-life, we can always use our ability to discern, discerning good from bad, decent from vulgar, useful from useless, enjoyable diversion from frivolous idleness. With this skill, many of the fearful aspects of the Internet can be addressed and dismissed. As a matter of fact the real fear from Internet is, as we everyday confront in our real-life too, the ignorance and fear of the unknown and unexplored.
***
[1] Hindi for giant form; As the epic Mahabharata goes, Lord Krishna had displayed his viraat-roop at the battlefield of Kurukshetra to Arjuna.
Author's Note: This piece originally appeared in my column 'Reality Bytes' in issue dated 23 September 2002 of the Free Press Journal, an English daily published from Indore, India.
©2002 Debashish Chakrabarty. The article can not be copied, distributed, excerpted, reviewed without the written permission of the author.
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