You know how England is in the United Kingdom, but the United Kingdom isn’t England, even though people often slip up and act like they’re the same thing?
The Internet and the World Wide Web are kind of like that. They’re not the same thing. They’re not synonyms. They don’t even serve the same function. And, just like your friends who don’t know the difference between the UK and England, when you get the distinction wrong, you can inadvertently sound like a dummy. I mean, most of the time, they can be used synonymously and no one will care, but if you’re talking about history or technical stuff and you want to be accurate or a know-it-all or beat a computer at Jeopardy, you should know the difference.
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Case in point: a few days ago I wrote a story about the first photo on the World Wide Web (hereafter known as “the Web”—that term is an acceptable synonym for the World Wide Web) and it spread far and wide on the Web.
Read the rest over at Motherboard.