Most of us have a pretty good understanding of how the Internet works - but it can be notoriously difficult to explain in plain English. (just listen to US Senator Ted Stevens' infamous "series of tubes" speech from 2006).
The video below is a useful one to send to friends and family to explain things a little more eloquently. It's from the World Science Festival and titled "There and Back Again: A Packet's Tale". In the three-and-a-half minute video, you follow a packet of data as it travels from a home computer to a server on the other side of the globe and back again -- all in the space of a second.
"Look deep beneath the surface of the most basic Internet transaction, and follow the packet as it flows from your fingertips, through circuits, wires, and cables, to a host server, and then back again, all in less than a second," explains the accompanying blurb.
The explanation is somewhat oversimplified and a bit heavy on analogy (not to mention laser effects), but still, it shows that it's as simple as saying data goes through tubes.
