science

The World (Internet service provider)

The World (Internet service provider) is a science topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand The World (Internet service provider) rather than just read about it. In short: The World is an Internet service provider originally headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was the first commercial ISP in the world to provide a direct connection to the internet, with its first customer logging on in November 1989.

Key takeaways

The World (Internet service provider) belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect The World (Internet service provider) to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of The World (Internet service provider) from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The World is an Internet service provider originally headquartered in Brookline, Massachusetts. It was the first commercial ISP in the world to provide a direct connection to the internet, with its first customer logging on in November 1989.

Controversy Many government and university installations blocked, threatened to block, or attempted to shut down The World's Internet connection until Software Tool & Die was eventually granted permission by the National Science Foundation to provide public Internet access on "an experimental basis."

Domain name history The World is operated by Software Tool & Die. The site and services were initially hosted solely under the domain name world.std.com which continues to function to this day. Sometime in or before 1994, the domain name world.com had been purchased by Software Tool & Die and used as The World's primary domain name. In 2000, STD relinquished ownership of world.com and is no longer associated with it. In 1999, STD obtained the domain name theworld.com, promoting the PascalCase version TheWorld.com as the primary domain name of The World.

Services The World still offers text-based dial-up and PPP dial-up, with over 9000 telephone access numbers throughout Canada, the United States, and Puerto Rico. Other features include shell access, with many historically standard shell features and utilities still offered. Additional user services include Usenet feed, personal web space, mailing lists, and email aliases. As of 2012, there were approximately 1750 active users. More recent features include domain name hosting and complete website hosting.

Community The World offers a community Usenet hierarchy, wstd.*, which is accessible only to users of The World. There are over 60 newsgroups in this hierarchy. The World users may send each other Memos (password protected messaging) and access a list of all personal customer websites. Much of The World's website and associated functionality was designed and built by James "Kibo" Parry.

Notable sites at The World The Barry Shein Home Page Boston Japanimation Society Brookline Pax General Theory of Religion (archive) The Wombat Information Center The World's Index of Customers' Home Pages

See also Netcom (United States)—West Coast dial-up ISP similar to The World The WELL The Source

References

External links Official The World website 1999 USENIX article: "The first ISP" — on the beginning of The World, by Spike Ilacqua. Wired magazine: "Harmonic Convergence - How we got here and where we're going" 2014 Slashdot interview: "Barry Shein Started the First Dialup ISP"

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with The World (Internet service provider)

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what The World (Internet service provider) claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to The World (Internet service provider) before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about The World (Internet service provider) ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of The World (Internet service provider)

In research: The World (Internet service provider) appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses The World (Internet service provider) in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: The World (Internet service provider) is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics 1989 establishments in Massachusetts, Brookline, Massachusetts, Communications in Massachusetts, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for The World (Internet service provider) outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study The World (Internet service provider) in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what The World (Internet service provider) means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain The World (Internet service provider) out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is The World (Internet service provider) in simple terms?

Why does The World (Internet service provider) matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study The World (Internet service provider)?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on The World (Internet service provider).