Computers that think, cars that drive themselves and now monkeys that control robots. Here are a few factoids to keep you abreast of some of the crazy things that are going on out there. Share the love. Send us your Fun Facts and we'll publish them on PC.com.
While it took the radio 38 years, and the television a short 13 years, it took the World Wide Web only 4 years to reach 50 million users.
There are approximately 1,319,872,109 people on the Internet.
MySpace reports over 110 million registered users. Were it a country, it would be the tenth largest, just behind Mexico.
By the year 2012 there will be approximately 17 billion devices connected to the Internet.
The average 21 year old has spent 5,000 hours playing video games, has exchanged 250,000 e-mails, instant and text messages and has spent 10,000 hours on the mobile phone.
One of every 8 married couples in the US last year met online.
The number of text messages sent and received in a given day is greater than the world's population.
The average computer user blinks 7 times a minute, less than half the normal rate of 20.
As currently built, there is room for 4.3 billion addresses on the Internet. One-third of those are already in use. There are countries currently implementing IPV6, which will greatly expand the number of addresses.
E-mail has been around longer than the World Wide Web.
The first banner advertising was used in 1994.
Somalia, a north-African country, boasts the highest percentage growth of Internet users in the world going from a mere 200 in 2000 to 90,000 in 2007
Iceland has the most Internet users per capita of any country in the world with over 86 percent of people using the Web, compared with only 69 percent of Americans.
About 183 billion e-mail messages are sent every day by about 1.2 billion e-mail users around the world.
There are approximately 1.06 billion instant messaging accounts worldwide.
Domain names are being registered at a rate of more than one million names every month.
The first computer mouse was invented by Doug Engelbart in around 1964 and was made of wood.
The world's first computer, called the Z1, was invented by Konrad Zuse in 1936. His next invention, the Z2 was finished in 1939 and was the first fully functioning electro-mechanical computer.
These were originally controls for an aircraft's ailerons and elevators. The name "joystick" is thought to originate with early 20th century French pilot Robert Esnault-Pelterie.[1] There are also competing claims on behalf of fellow pilots Robert Loraine, James Henry Joyce and Mr A.E. George. The latter was a pioneer aviator who with his colleague Mr. Jobling built and flew a biplane at Newcastle, England in 1910. He is alleged to have invented the "George Stick" which became more popularly known as the joystick.
Approximately 365 million people in the world have computers while half of the world's 6.5 billion population has never seen or used a telephone.
In the 1980s, an IBM computer wasn't considered 100 percent compatible unless it could run Microsoft Flight Simulator*.
The pound key (#) symbol's true name is octothorpe.
The chess-playing computer created by IBM called Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov in a game of chess in May 1997. Kasparov demanded a rematch, to which IBM replied with a resounding, "no way."
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