This is called packet switching and is what makes it uncontrollable, which is an important issue. If one link goes down, it has to be able to find a new way to get where it needs to go- like catching connecting flights. This new social fabric relates to the history of the net. All of which is quite different from today s rat race, but nonetheless it is the root of the concept that the net must be free, open, and not controlled. Besides construction, another major concept involving the internet worth comparison and analysis is that of text.
Words are what books are essentially composed of.
Images, more than written words, are what TV is composed of. It s not a book, not TV, but something in between. Much of the internet is text based. However, although our society seemed to have tried its hardest to kill our reading and writing abilities with TV, the excitement of this new medium wasn t diluted by its being mostly textual. Hypertext is one idea that came about with the evolution of computers and the net.