Like billions of people around the world, I have been working from home for the past year and a half, unable to go to work because of the pandemic-wrought citywide restrictions. While the pandemic itself has been scary, working from home has been a pleasant experience. No commute, no need to wake up too early, being able to have a relaxed morning coffee, and other such conveniences. One of the best perks has been working at my desk surrounded by my three dogs.
A neighbor’s kid, no more than 8–9, sees me standing outside my house in the morning, having a relaxed after-breakfast smoke. He is also stuck at home as schools are shut. Yesterday, he finally got curious enough to ask me why I wasn’t going to work. I didn’t go to school, I went to work, so surely I didn’t have a time-off. I explained to him that I wasn’t going to work because of the same reason he wasn’t going to school — the pandemic and the restrictions. He then asked me if I wasn’t working, was I getting paid? Because his dad, a store owner, still has to go to the store every morning.
I told him I was working from home. He asked how that works? I told him I use the Internet to collaborate with my colleagues. The kid then stumbled me up with a question I least expected — what is the Internet? Kids have an unending, innocent curiosity.
Now this kid knows Facebook, Facetime, and Instagram, but, he doesn’t quite understand the Internet in general, as the abstraction it really is, built atop the physical network.
What is the Internet? To an adult I would simply say, “well it is a physical network of computers called servers that provide data processing software, platforms, and infrastructure, and users or browsers that consume these services like banking, email, and airline ticketing”. Simple, right? But, how do you explain that to a kid?
So I offered an alternative explanation. I told him when his dad took his picture, it is called data. Instagram and Facebook use computers called servers to store this “data”. His uncle in New York has to use a computer called a browser to retrieve or see his picture. And what connects the two computers is called the Internet.
“So you spend all your time on Facebook and Instagram?”, he continued. How in the world was I going to explain Slack, Zoom, and Trello to him? I simply told him I used a Facetime-for-adults. That was good enough for him. He nodded, patted my dog, and went on about with his day.
Back inside the house, I got thinking. We have come to think of the Internet as a cool mashup — a “source”, a “tube” — of services and information. But, how do you present a unified, simple, concise, and singular picture of the net? Connect it all back to what it really is. Data. In all simplicity, the Internet is still just a data network, with 4 key interconnected elements. The interconnection makes it easy to understand that Internet as one giant “blob” rather an a mashup of stuff.
The 4 layers, to my mind, are:
- A physical layer: the data processing and communication infrastructure — software, hardware, and the network
- A second abstract layer: software-based services built atop the physical layer — Software-as-a-Service (Saas; your email is a SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS)
- A third abstract later: entities/accounts — providers and users/consumers of data-based services
- A fourth abstract layer: models — different (business) models of how entities exchange goods, information, and services
Like Einstein said, “if you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself”. A singular explanation of the net, rooted in data, goes a long way to wrap your head around what it all really is!
Now if a kid asks you what the Internet is, hopefully I’ve helped!
