NETWORKS AND THE WORLD-WIDE WEB NETWORKS AND THE WORLD-WIDE WEB[Ed: Links to web pages and/or e-mail addresses which have become inactive since the publication of this article have been enclosed in curly brackets { }. Replacement links have been provided where possible.]
"The Internet: Transforming Our Society Now" is the theme of INET '96, the sixth annual conference on international networking, hosted by the Internet Society in Montreal from June 25 to 28.The World-Wide Web has reaped more headlines than the Internet lately, but the two remain intimately intertwined: the Internet undergirds the Web (see "Where Are We Now?" in the Fall 1995 issue of Connect for more about how the two are related). Both depend on voluntary adherence to various standards and protocols that are essential if one computer is to communicate with another. The Internet Society (ISOC) is the diverse collection of individuals, corporations, nonprofit organizations, and government agencies that seeks to promote and improve the Internet. It performs a variety of functions including assisting technologically developing countries, disseminating information, and maintaining and evolving effective Internet administration practices.
One of the most important activities of ISOC is to educate new users and administrators. It will sponsor a weeklong workshop before the conference (June 16 to 22), geared to the needs of people from developing countries who are setting up networks. Dr. George Sadowsky, Director of ACF at NYU, is the Internet Society's vice-president for education. "In the past three years," he reports, "ISOC has trained almost 500 participants from 100 countries. From 1993 to 1995, all of the new-country connections to the global Internet were accomplished through the efforts of participants in these workshops."
The main conference offers several dozen sessions on everything from security and payment on the Internet to questions of education, politics, and languages on the net.
For more information, contact Lynn O'Keefe-Grabe at {okeefe_1@mediasoft.net} or go to the Internet Society Web pages at {http://www.isoc.org/conferences/inet96} Replacement URL: http://www.isoc.org/inet96/.
Posted 20 May 1996. Revised 24 May 2004.
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