"Porn and free music."
They may not understand it, but they'll want to check it out.
Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
21–30 of 31 posts
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#22Please elaborate on "zero computer knowledge." Is this someone from the past who doesn't even know about electricity, or just a typical person today who knows computers, but has no knowledge of the "magic" under the hood? I'll assume the second. Explain that the internet is just a collection of computers that are connected to each other. Some computers are always on and hold websites (servers) so that other computers…
The definition shouldn't assume the reader has any technical knowledge (think tribal medicine man, or most people's grandmother)
Thanks, but the difference between tribal medicine man and typical grandmother still leaves room for confusion. A typical grandmother knows that computers exist, but a tribal medicine man might spear me for stealing his soul with this mysterious "light box."
The reason I ask is because I wanted to know if I was supposed to explain the computer to this person or just how it interacts with the internet.
Maybe the question could be "explain the internet to someone from 30 years ago. (Computers present, but no complete internet to speak of)"
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#23I'd call it "a mechanism of world intercommunication embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity." This was written by Shoghi Effendi in 1936 predicting the technology of a future world commonwealth.
Frighteningly close, but we're not quite there yet. The "freed from national hindrances and restrictions, and functioning with marvelous swiftness and perfect regularity" part is still lacking (consider recent stories about governments monitoring and censoring the internet, and massive outages from damaged cables).
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#24Show, don't tell.
Or, as Louis Armstrong once said, "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#25Telepathic magic mirrors.
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
The definition shouldn't assume the reader has any technical knowledge (think tribal medicine man, or most people's grandmother)
Thanks, but the difference between tribal medicine man and typical grandmother still leaves room for confusion. A typical grandmother knows that computers exist, but a tribal medicine man might spear me for stealing his soul with this mysterious "light box." The reason I ask is because I wanted to know if I was supposed to explain the computer to this person or just how it interacts with the internet. Maybe the quest…
You're right, I guess more grandmother than medicine man.
Another quick question, is knowing what a computer is necessary for someone to understand the internet?
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks, but the difference between tribal medicine man and typical grandmother still leaves room for confusion. A typical grandmother knows that computers exist, but a tribal medicine man might spear me for stealing his soul with this mysterious "light box." The reason I ask is because I wanted to know if I was supposed to explain the computer to this person or just how it interacts with the internet. Maybe the quest…
You're right, I guess more grandmother than medicine man. Another quick question, is knowing what a computer is necessary for someone to understand the internet?
I suppose you could explain it in abstract terms without knowledge of a computer (ex. the internet is a wonderful place where people can connect from all around the world in the blink of an eye), but that wouldn't really convey the nature of it.
The question is also open to further interpretation: Is it, what the internet is, what it can do, how it works, what it means to society, or something else? There are many ways to "explain the internet" to someone with no knowledge of computers, but to explain how it is, or how it works, they must understand what a computer is.
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#28I'd start with a dictionary. A good dictionary has pictures and historical figures, almost encyclopedic. Then, add video. It's easy to imagine moving pictures in a book. Maybe add sound as well.
Next comes news. The book, somehow, can provide the daily news. It's pretty easy to imaigne daily updates to the book.
Once they see that the book can get the news, it's not to hard to extend the communication to other books. so, you could write in one book, and read the words in another.
I'd say that's about it.
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#29Suppose there is no electricity. Suppose you're a tyrant ruling over a massive empire that spans a continent or two. For military and economic reasons, you need an official communication system, but the obvious method of having someone physically carry the messages sucks. It's slow. It's terrain-dependent. And your messengers can be captured or eaten by wolves.
Suppose you have really good telescopes, and can construct watchtowers that are tall and easy to defend. With two watchtowers 10 miles apart, a sergeant in one tower can wave a red flag or a blue flag, which the other tower can see with its telescope. With some convention like Morse code, you can relay information between the two watchtowers.
Suppose now that you build a massive network of these towers. You want to enable communication from any tower to any other tower. Clearly this is possible, but there are issues. How do the towers agree to relay messages? How do they deal with congestion? How do they recover from small errors?
So you assemble your finest engineers, give them a large military grant, and they develop some common conventions (protocols) for the tower operators to adopt. They develop Imperial Protocol (IP), a system that gives each tower a unique address and lets any tower try to send a small message packet (a few sentences) to any other tower. But IP does not ensure that the message will get through.
With IP in place, they then develop Tower Channel Protocol (TCP), which operates on top of IP and ensures reliability. Basically, the source tower and the destination tower strike up a metaconversation, notifying each other about how many words they've received so far, and resending IP packets that got lost in transmision. TCP offers a reliable point to point communication line.
With TCP in place, they develop Hannibalesque Tome Transfer Protocol (HTTP). When a general wants to send a large report, the tower operators first send some headers (like the headers on a fax) describing the document that is about to be sent and mentioning how many words long it is, then the words themselves. This is all done over a TCP connection.
When a general in province 7 wants to get the report http://province13.empire.mil/report/OPERATIONAJAX.pdf, the tower operators find the tower named "province13.empire.mil" and send it an HTTP request asking for the document named "report/OPERATIONAJAX.pdf". That tower gets this request, and sends back the report as its response.
So HTTP is built on top of TCP which is built on top of IP which is built on top of red and blue flags.
Replace Tower Channel Protocol by Transmission Control Protocol and Imperial Protocol by Internet Protocol, flags by cables, and towers by computers, and you have the internet. Replace Hannibalesque Tome Transfer Protocol by Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and you have the web.
Note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semaphore_line Note: Are we actually seeing a practical application of the Slashdotesque "TCP/IP over *!!" meme?
Re: Ask YC: How would you describe the Internet to someone who has ZERO computer knowledge?
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
You're right, I guess more grandmother than medicine man. Another quick question, is knowing what a computer is necessary for someone to understand the internet?
I suppose you could explain it in abstract terms without knowledge of a computer (ex. the internet is a wonderful place where people can connect from all around the world in the blink of an eye), but that wouldn't really convey the nature of it. The question is also open to further interpretation: Is it, what the internet is, what it can do, how it works, what it means to society, or something else? There are many wa…
As you stated above, the Shoghi Effendi quote is close and he doesn't mention computers. I think the definition doesn't explain how, just what and would get bonus points for why.