I explained the Web, not the Internet, to a relative with zero computer knowledge as follows:
* think about magazines and how they're made
* you have to put all the text and pictures together, then you have to print them in a huge printing plant, load them onto a thousand trucks and take them around the country
* it's slow, it's very expensive, and you might end up with millions of magazines that nobody wants, and have to throw them away
Now, imagine someone though of a better way.
Instead of you having to print the magazine on paper and take them to people, you let people's computers come to the magazine's offices and take a copy of the magazine. Then they read the magazine on the computer.
They seemed to take it well.
As far as explaining how the internet works, I've always said "you don't need to", any more than you need to explain how the phone systems works.
But how the phone system works is instructive. There are all the different countries around the world, using different languages, different equipment, different voltages for their power, but somehow, we got them all to agree on some things, so you can just pick up a phone, anywhere in the world, and dial another phone anywhere else in the world.
That's how the internet "works". Everyone has agreed on the right way for computers to talk to each other. The details are meaningless.
Comments
I explained the Web, not the Internet, to a relative with zero computer knowledge as follows:
* think about magazines and how they're made
* you have to put all the text and pictures together, then you have to print them in a huge printing plant, load them onto a thousand trucks and take them around the country
* it's slow, it's very expensive, and you might end up with millions of magazines that nobody wants, and have to throw them away
Now, imagine someone though of a better way.
Instead of you having to print the magazine on paper and take them to people, you let people's computers come to the magazine's offices and take a copy of the magazine. Then they read the magazine on the computer.
They seemed to take it well.
As far as explaining how the internet works, I've always said "you don't need to", any more than you need to explain how the phone systems works.
But how the phone system works is instructive. There are all the different countries around the world, using different languages, different equipment, different voltages for their power, but somehow, we got them all to agree on some things, so you can just pick up a phone, anywhere in the world, and dial another phone anywhere else in the world.
That's how the internet "works". Everyone has agreed on the right way for computers to talk to each other. The details are meaningless.