What is the Internet?

The Internet, sometimes called simply "the Net," is a worldwide system of computer
networks - a network of networks in which users at any one computer can, if they
have permission, get information from any other computer (and sometimes talk
directly to users at other computers). The U.S. Department of Defense laid the
foundation of the Internet roughly 30 years ago with a network called ARPANET. But
the general public didn't use the Internet much until after the development of the
World Wide Web in the early 1990s.