Hardworking Engines

The Internet was originally invented for computers from different locations to be connected. This allows users even if they are far from each other to share information and send messages. The concept of the “Galactic Network” as it was first called was a favorite topic among physicists as early as the 1960s. We must remember than the IBM has not yet invented the personal computer (it will not come into the picture until 1982) and computers that time were the size of closets and input devices were in forms of cards with holes or spinning magnetic discs.

That seem to be centuries away now (even though some of those guys talking about the Galactic Network are still alive and “surfing” these days). The Internet seems to be a part of everybody’s life already. There are close to 2 billion people using the Internet either for work, school, communication and recreation. It even transcends boundaries, Facebook has recently announced that the fastest growing age group in their network is people 60 years old and above, thanks to photo sharing, the grandchildren are just a click away. Talk about generation gap.

Back to the Galactic Network, the aim at first was to share information from one computer to the next, allowing researchers to share data from one laboratory to the next. They were talking about research data, graphs and tables during those days. At present, however, there are billions and billions of pages of information on the Internet, from personal profiles, poems from the 16^th century, and even pornographic videos from hidden cameras. They are all there flying around Cyberspace, waiting for a click from someone who might be interested in that particular information.

Enter the search engines. Unlike a decade ago where there are just a few hundred websites there is just too many information these days in the Internet. Not one website contains everything. In a way, the Internet also gets the blame for the phenomenon. It fed the consumer’s appetite for more information with more information pushing more people to demand for more.

To put things in order bright boys invented the search engine. Now people do not have to open a website and sift information by themselves amid a mountain of pages and text. They just have to type a “keyword” for the particular information that they need and search engines will already comb the Internet and return with the search results.

Google broke new ground with its unique relevance-based searching capabilities. The engine will not simply just pick sites containing the keywords, but it also arranges everything from the most read and relevant site to the least. Its combination of powerful searching and no frills page (goodbye pop up ads) made the company a global hit and one of the biggest and richest today.

The search engine has brought the Galactic Network to a whole new level, but it somehow brought reality to the dream and the concept of scientists back then. Now we are all connected, and everything we need is up there in the network. All we need to do now is know what we want and let the engines do their job.