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Basically what it says in the title.
I'm not massively clued up on physics (history being my subject of choice) and am curious about this.

How does it work? Is there anything controlling it? Could it ever be shut down?
Can you even define the internet? Is it just a catch all concept for stuff to detailed to merit a word of its own?

I have content on my computer, which your computer is linked to. You tell your computer where to look to find my content. Your computer asks my computer for that content, and shows it you.

That's basically how the internet works as far as I know.

Although it is horrible, I will link wikipedia to help you with this set of questions regards the history of the internet and how it works.

For your more specific questions:

Nothing controls it as such, although the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is the closest thing to a controlling body as you will get, as far as I am aware.

And you can shut it down in the same way as any other electronic system, by cutting the power, introducing a virus, physically destroying parts of the network (there are certain key points where many lines and connections pass through which could cut of parts of "the internet" for large numbers of people if damaged or otherwise taken offline).

I don't know about someone just turning it off though. I suppose it is possible for a country to simply deactivate their phone/internet system if they wanted to, but I can't really see the need other than in the most dire circumstances.

Every now and then a major cable gets cut linking 1 country to another (or a region to another) and the internet slows to a crawl as the info is routed through other available lines, or alternatively it just times out when you try to look for something.

Last year a major cable was cut linking QLD to the rest of Australia.
We lost the net, phones, ATMs, EFTPOS for about 24 hours.

http://www.google.cn/intl/zh-CN/renrou/index.html

Google Translates human manpower search into "human flesh" search.

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=y&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=1&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.cn%2Fintl%2Fzh-CN%2Frenrou%2Findex.html&sl=zh-CN&tl=en

It's a series of tubes.

In all seriousness I think The Dreadnote has the right of it.

About 10 minutes ago I switched my avatar from yours to this.

Inquisitor_Syphonious wrote:It's a series of tubes.

Balls, I wish I'd thought of posting that. Oh well. *goes to listen to "series of tubes" dance remixes on YTMND*

At its absolute unperverted core ideal The Dreadnote is absolutly right. For you to truely understand more though you need to factor in security, for example you may ask my computer for my Credit Card info but I don't want to give it to you so my computer ignores the request by not making that information avalible through the established channels.

SilverMk2 is being a soothsayer. Although it is theoretically possible it is functionally impossible to shut down the internet as defined by the loose parameters we have given it here. The internet is not a centralised entity so 'shutting it down' would require a catastrophic event that would have to be too large to realistically engineer.

Some countries try to control the content allowed to be viewed or posted on the Internet. The more obivious ones are China and Iran but recently also Australia for some reason with national firewalls and black listed sites. The US and other western countries do something similar with laws that prohibit certain things like listing millions of stolen credit card numbers and the users name in any public forum including online and that way indirectly influence the shape of the internet.

In short it's nothing terribly complicated but there is a lot to consider when trying to explain it to someone.

With Sunshine and Giggles.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gGopKNPqVk

The Internet is the Hive Mind.

ComputerGeek01 wrote:SilverMk2 is being a soothsayer. Although it is theoretically possible it is functionally impossible to shut down the internet as defined by the loose parameters we have given it here. The internet is not a centralised entity so 'shutting it down' would require a catastrophic event that would have to be too large to realistically engineer.

I didn't mean to imply that it would be easy, but it is possible to functionally "destroy" the "internet" by destroying or disabling enough key points to reduce data transfer between users (effectively stopping computers communicating with each other, which is one of the main purposes of the internet), and possibly even cut off sections from each other altogether.

As Waaagh_Gonads pointed out, it is not unheard of for a technical failure or natural event to sever the main links between major hubs. I'm also pretty sure that phone companies have the ability to simply "pull the plug" on their networks (the telephone exchange near where I live is apparently one of the major exchange hubs for the UK and it is in a fortified underground bunker in the middle of town - which is quite cool ).

Both destruction of physical links and mass organised corruption of the core routing tables would cut countries off the Internet. There is always a way through, but the bulk would end up segregated.

The people who control the cables and routers control the Internet ultimately. They can deny routing to entire sections of the Internet and cut off large chunks. That is why google now has so much fiber - so the telecoms cant pressure them much due to data exchange agreements.

Anyhow, it only takes 2 or more people to make a new Internet. Core routers are easy enough to make for low capacity and easy (though expensive). If you just want simple data sharing, setting up a wireless network is trivial and I'm sure someone will come up with plug and play city wide wireless data sharing when metro-area wireless takes off.