Religion and the World Wide We
Religion and the World Wide WeThe Internet began as the ARPANET during the cold war in 1969. It was developed by the US Department of Defense's (DOD) research people in conjunction with a number of military contractors and universities to explore the possibility of a communication network that could survive a nuclear attack. It continued simply because the DOD, it's contractors, and the universities found that it provided a very convenient way to communicate. In 1990, HTML, a hypertext Internet protocol which could communicate the graphic information on the Internet, was introduced. Each individual could create graphic pages (a Web site), which then became part of a huge, virtual hypertext network called the World Wide Web (WWW). The enhanced Internet was informally renamed the Web and a huge additional audience was created (Wendell 1997).
With this audience came new ideas and concepts on just about any topic. One such topic was religion. Religion is a system of symbols that acts to establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in people (Angrosino). The blending of the WWW and religion has created an explosion of information for all beliefs. This information explosion has been blamed for causing religion splint off�s (Wright).
The WWW should not be blamed for starting all-modern splint off�s, but should be also commended for providing extensive religious information sites. For instance www.religion-online.org was developed to provide an extensive library of hundreds of entries, presenting many different points of view, but all written from the perspective of sound scholars (Fore 1999). This web site lets professors and the general public learn about any religion. The quest for knowledge is universal and this web site fulfills that quest.
Most sites that solely provide information are not to blame for these so-called religion splint off�s. Since January 1, 1999 more than 30,000 visitors from 76 countries have downloaded...
To view the complete essay, you be registered.