The Internet is presently experiencing a tremendous rate of growth. Once reserved
for the military, then scientists, the government, and universities, this
international computer network now also acts as a conduit of information for private
business and personal use. Every sort of business and subject area can be found
somewhere on the Internet, as the Yahoo index illustrates.
What is the Internet? There is debate over the precise compositional pieces. Some
say it is only the high-speed backbone of the network, some say
it is the backbone plus the major arteries, some say it is everything down to the
personal computers in homes and businesses. One reasonable source says access precludes more than
just electronic mail; file transfer to a local storage device makes you a node on the
Internet. A more in-depth
discussion has been documented by John S. Quarterman and
Smoot Carl-Mitchell of Texas Internet Consulting (TIC).
Approximations of size and
rate of growth can be found at the Internet Group's
Internet Business Center, a study performed by TIC,
a study carried out by
Network Wizards, and Georgia Tech's
Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center's
Internet Survey.
These figures are based on
user surveys and analyses of data passing through Internet Network Access Points (NAPs).
Assuming the Internet comprises everyone who has access, we can safely
say it is being accessed by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide.
Most of the use is electronic mail, while the World Wide Web is the second largest use.
Furthermore, the WWW is growing
faster than all other Internet services combined.
Because of this extensive and diverse usage, institutions are reorganizing
communications and work flow to take advantage of the coverage and return on investment
features of the Internet. This change of processes necessitates the conversion or
transformation of conventional media to a digital format that can be used in a
particular computer environment and transferred efficiently over a network.
This media adaptation can involve the use of audio.
The Role of Audio on the Internet