Email 101

If you like those little machines that give you 24 hour access to your bank account, you'll love the Internet. I suppose there are still people who, given a choice, will go to a drive-through teller just so they can deal with a "live person" instead of a machine. But even those people will admit that it is nice to have the option of doing things for yourself, on your own schedule, anywhere. Do you remember what it was like before automatic tellers? Banks closed at 3 p.m. on weekdays. Each Saturday you had to guess how much money you would need for the following week. If you were wrong you had to cash a check at a food store (and maybe buy something you didn't want). And if you were out of town? Well, there were always credit cards.

  We don't do that anymore. I think many people go to the automatic teller because they like the privacy of handling their own business without having to explain it all to someone else. And we like the illusion of having access to our "own" account anytime we want. There are disadvantages to using an automatic teller card too—you may have to pay a fee each month or even for each transaction—and you have to remember to deduct those fees from your account balance or you will bounce checks. But I'll bet you feel pretty competent using an automatic teller and don't lose much sleep worrying over the fees.

  This course is designed to give you that same sense of freedom and competence with the Internet that you have with an automatic teller machine or the telephone. With a home computer, a modem, and communications software, you can connect to other computers over the phone line to exchange electronic mail (E-mail), trade files, or search for information. Many of those computers are connected to the worldwide network called the Internet. Some few of them will—for a fee—let *you* connect to the Internet. From there you can dial any of 900,000 or more computers, send E-mail to any of 25 million people, and access hundreds of free, informative services.

  In short, you are on the verge of a new method of communicating with people and machines called "internetworking." Internetworking lets you:

  o Avoid playing phone tag;

  o Sign up to receive special interest electronic newsletters and journals;

  o Access hundreds of information services and document collections in exactly the same way—no need to have hundreds of sets of different instructions or hundreds of (expensive) special purpose software packages;

  o Find and communicate with other people who share your interests.

  Internetworking is an essential skill for the '90s. Your children will find it as common as viewing television or using the telephone. It still has a few rough edges—but we'll explain those.

  There is actually no single network owned by one company called the Internet. Instead, many medium-sized networks have grown together to create a "phone system" that connects together nearly a million computers. Many hundreds of these computers allow some form of public access. You can get the latest news or weather, download information about Government programs or high-tech products, search on-line library catalogues and databases, download free software, and do many other things, with little or no monetary investment beyond the cost of your home computer.