What is the Internet?

I would define “the internet” as a computer network using the most popular protocol in the world. A collection of devices and servers that have mutually agreed on the method of communication. It is the sum of it’s parts, and because of this I would also define the information that one can access as part of the internet. As beings that locate things by perception, we would likely identify the internet as a bare minimum of two devices communicating information. In a way, the internet functions quite similarly to any other form of communication. Information is an invisible “thing” that can only be perceived by a “thing” that can process and comprehend it. Does the information contained in words essentially not existent without a sender and receiver that are capable of understanding it? By this (albeit ambiguous and surface-level) reasoning we could claim that we are the internet, just using a system that we call “The Internet” to do what we have always done at an absurdly high speed. Like many technologies, the internet is simply a means of communication.

This crude illustration is mostly inspired by the concept of the “noosphere”, the idea that mind/intellect/information is the 4th “sphere” in the progression of the world (preceded by atmosphere, biosphere, and geosphere). I wonder which is more important, the points that process and display the information, or the lines that represent where the information is “located”. This is what the internet really means to me. It is a hyperactive system of sharing and receiving information that has drastically altered our idea of what information is worth and what it can be.