Eight things you didn’t know about the internet

THE INTERNET

It was born 40 years ago, in a lab at the University of California, Los Angeles. Today it wraps the entire planet and features in the daily routine of more than 1.5 billion people.

Of course, it’s easy to take the internet for granted and forget that it’s very much a work in progress.

So what forces are shaping it, how big has it grown, and will it ever evolve a mind of its own? To find out, New Scientist posed eight simple questions

1.

Unknown internet 1: Who controls the internet?

The official answer is no one, but that’s a half-truth that few swallow…

2.

Unknown internet 2: Could the net become self-aware?

It is easy to draw parallels between the human brain and the internet’s complex network of nodes, so could conciousness be the next step?

3.

Unknown internet 3: How big is the net?

In 2008, Google announced that its systems had registered a trillion unique pages – but even this might represent only a fraction of what is out there

4.

Unknown internet 5: Is there only one internet?

The internet is a disparate mix of interconnected computers, many of them on large networks run by universities, businesses and so on – so what unites them, if anything?

5.

Unknown internet 4: Did the credit crunch hit the web?

Real-estate prices crashing, a big drop in growth, the threat of infrastructure collapse, and authorities printing more money to stave off disaster – and that’s just the online world