In 1996, ABC TV's Http:// program ran a story explaining a popular new thing called the World Wide Web.

What makes this story still so interesting is how it captured the fun and excitement of those early days of the online revolution.

It features Will Berryman introducing Helen Razer, then an online newbie, to the digital era.

In 1995 a small start up company triggered the dot com boom when its initial public offering achieved a market valuation of $US2.9 billion.

That company Netscape Communications had yet to even record a profit, but its extraordinary valuation was because of its principal product - a graphical web browser that made it easy to "surf" something called the World Wide Web.

Twenty years later we take the online world for granted, which brings to mind that famous Douglas Adams quote:

1) Everything that's already in the world when you're born is just normal; 2) Anything that gets invented between then and before you turn 30 is incredibly exciting and creative and with any luck you can make a career out of it; 3) Anything that gets invented after you're 30 is against the natural order of things and the beginning of the end of civilisation as we know it until it's been around for about 10 years when it gradually turns out to be alright really

According to the Internet Live Stats site, as of October 2015, about 3.2 billion people - or around 40 per cent of the entire world's population - are now internet users. (A user is defined as "anyone who has access to the internet at home".)

More devices are already connected to the internet than there are people in the world, because now we are connecting everything from light bulbs to television sets and even supermarket shelves.

One estimate suggests that by 2020 over 50 billion devices will be connected to the internet.

The numbers of internet connections cited in this 20-year-old video now seem so tiny