The Internet

The development of the Internet has generated pervasive attention. It has gone from being a communication tool, used by a small sector of the society to a gigantic tool that has permeated much of the corporate and the consumer world. The Internet is the largest computer network on the planet, linking numerous countries across the globe. The e-mail and World Wide Web - the multimedia part of the Internet are the two most used features of the Internet. The Internet offers access to seemingly limitless information and this consequently, has resulted in "a boom in the Internet usage around the world. It has become a source of information for professionals: journalists, executives, academics and other opinion-making classes" (Herman and McChesney 1997: 118).

The Internet has evolved from being a robust and effective way of exchanging information to providing a delivery mechanism for massive amounts of multimedia information to a global audience. The many uses of the Internet include:

• Electronic Mail (e-mail)
• World Wide Web (WWW)
• The connection of remote computers      
• Remote control of remote equipment
• Remote data acquisition

The WWW enables individuals and organisation to provide a full gamut of multimedia information that can be accessed by a global audience (Stroud 1998:1).