This is Internet On The Air, I'm Joan Silvi. What's the connection between cyberspace and a 1950's horror movie? The answer in a moment.

Funding Credit: Internet On The Air is a production of the University of Michigan School of Information and Michigan radio, made possible by a grant from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.

Do you remember watching a 1950s movie called "The Blob"? It was called The Blob because nobody knew what it was or where it came from; it just seemed to grow and fast. Some people view the Internet as the "Blob of the 90s"... because it's amorphous, hard to define, and grows at an exponential rate. But, we do know where it came from.

The Internet was born in 1986, that's when five supercomputer centers were connected and became literally a network of networks. People were no longer confined to their single computer network. Now, they could travel in cyberspace to exchange information with people from different networks, regions and countries. One year later, business, education, and government sectors collaborated to build a nationwide connection with the University of Michigan as the base of operations.

Widespread growth began in early 1993, that's when the National Center for Supercomputing Applications introduced the first browser, Mosaic, that allowed anyone with a computer to join in, access, and navigate the Internet's resources. Thus, the World Wide Web was born.

In seven short years, the Internet population has grown from roughly the size of East Lansing with 50,000 people to the size of Germany with 80 million people. Experts around the world are at work to find ways to organize and harness the Internet. But in the meantime, you as a member of the Internet community are its creator, user and regulator.

For more information about the Internet's history and growth, see our Web page at www.si.umich.edu/iota. I'm Joan Silvi, for Internet On The Air.