Overview and introduction part II

Abstract

The internet reached the general public in the early 1990s. Since then it has changed dramatically. In its early days it was primarily an information source where its novel users could marvel about what new ways of information dissemination, such as Gopher and later the World Wide Web had to offer. People also communicated. For instance by means of email, which typically involves communication between people who already know each other or are aware of each other's email address. Other types of communication involved Newsgroups, bulletin boards and IRC channels where its participants did not have to know each other in advance. © 2011 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.