In this Information Age, things like shopping for new clothes, researching a history paper and watching the latest Miley Cyrus video can all be done simultaneously at the click of a mouse.
The Internet, it seems, has taken over the world.
But many users never stop to think about the complex network of technology that makes doing a Google search or updating a Facebook status easy and convenient.
Weikuan Yu, Auburn University assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science & Software Engineering, said the word Internet stands for interconnection network.
"The Internet represents computer networks that are interconnected around the globe," Yu said. "The Internet holds information through computers that are connected to it, and as they are able to serve such info via the Internet, computers are often called Internet servers."
This means that all the information that can be found on the Internet is supported and stored by individual computers.
In order for a computer to access the Internet, Mike Milan of Effective Technology in Auburn explains that a computer must first connect with both large and small servers.
"You basically have your big carriers who provide the huge servers to manage the network and the data lines," Milan said. "Then you have you smaller end sales people that provide local access to these facilities and manage domain name services, which are how we connect from one place to another."
Once a picture is uploaded, an e-mail is sent or a blog is written, it must travel through these servers to reach the destination it was originally intended for in cyberspace.
Cyberspace, Milan said, is the information available on the Internet.
"You always hope the information only goes to your original destination," Milan said. "But over the last decade, people have gotten better at intercepting data over the Internet to use for their own purposes, which is why encryption has become so important."
Encryption is the coding of information in order for it to be transferred.
"Encryption is a way of taking a peice of data and scrambling it up so that only you and the person you are sending it to can unscramble it to see what the original data was," said Jonathan Edwards, Office of Information Technology specialist.
He said there are two types of encryption that are most commonly used on the Internet.
The first is used by Web sites, like a bank login page, that tells you that that particular page was encrypted when the bank sent the page to you. This means, Edwards said, that you can be 100 percent sure the Web site is secure.
The other type of encryption is used sometimes in e-mail when information is meant to be kept private. This is not done on all e-mails, but encrypting it prevents phishers from stealing the information within the email.
Once information has made it to the servers and been decoded, it is available for access on the Internet depending on where it is located.
As long as information remains on these servers, then it is available for viewing.
In order to delete information off of the Internet, Yu says it must be removed from the server it is located on.
"Things can be deleted from the Internet servers just as they can be deleted from your e-mail," Yu said.
Because of the complex series of networks information must travel on, Milan said things can sometimes get lost in cyberspace.
"Nothing is permanent, and whether it disappears or not depends on where it's stored and where it is saved when you upload it," Milan said.
It is important to remember that while the Internet has overtaken every facet of American culture, from entertainment to business, it is still just a network of computers and the information out in cyberspace can be intercepted.
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