Many people think that the World Wide Web is the same as the internet so they use the word interchangeably.

If you have been doing that, I want you to stop it.
Yes, stop it.

The web is different from the Internet.
The Web is one of the infrastructures built on the Internet. Think of the web as one of the Faculties in your university. In a university, several faculties range from Law, Social Sciences, Medical sciences, Arts, etc.

Each faculty contains several departments within the field which the Faculty covers. For instance, in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Nigeria Nsukka, we have 9 departments which are History, Linguistics, Fine and Applied Arts, Music m, Theatre and Film Studies, Archeological and Tourism, Combined Arts, Foreign Languages, English, and Literary studies.

Each department is a specialty in the field of Arts. Relating this to the web, as a faculty, you can do so many things like find information regardless of your geographic location, and access a database with the web. Each use of the web represents a department within a Faculty in the real-world university system.

Now, think of the internet as your university. Some universities have up to three campuses with about 20 faculties that offer undergraduate and postgraduate programs. Aside from studying Law or History, you can study Medicine at the same university. One structure, which is the University, with different uses and purposes.

It's the same with the internet. With the internet, you are not limited only to the functions the Web can let you do. You can do so much more.

Further, the Web cannot function without the Internet. It is the internet that defines the web. The idea of the web when Tim Berners Lee began to develop its first model in 1989 was to develop a system that would ensure the borderless sharing of information. I am in Enugu state, Nigeria 🇳🇬 but I am sharing this information with you. I am pretty sure you are reading this content from another state in Nigeria, or another country or continent.

This system of borderless information sharing is made possible by the internet. That is why when your data is turned off, you won't be able to send a message to your friend. Also, you would see a pop message on your screen saying, no internet.

With the Internet, you can share information, get entertained, perform borderless transactions and do so much more.

So, know today that the Web is different from the Internet. Don't use the Web in place of the Internet. They are not synonyms. They mean different things.

Did you learn something new today?