It was established in 1969 as a militarycommunications system. It allows individuals to access information from manysources using a computer. The use of the Internet more than doubled in sizein 1995 and has done so every year since 1988, becoming the fastest-growingcommunications medium ever. Measuring the real Internet population, its use disaggregated by sex,the size of the potential demand and the trends for growth is difficult, andresults are often contradictory. The special nature of the medium and itsrapid development throw up new figures every day.
Some sources have estimatedthat a new web site is launched on the Internet every four seconds.
Some consider that this will increase to around300 million in the next five years. Users in Europe are 5 to 8 million ormore. In Japan, there are approximately 4 million users. In countriessuch as Kenya, Namibia and Senegal, the number of domains is rising rapidly. Kenya has around 133, compared with South Africa's more than 83,000.