How does it work?

The web is a collection of text documents that are linked together. They are just plain ASCII text (even if you see pictures, the actual document being sent across computer lines merely contains text).
Browsers (Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.) actually bring the web pages to your desktop computer.
Q: How does the browser bring the web to the desktop?
A: Through a set of instructions called "hypertext transfer protocol"
http://server-machine/folder/page.html
http://www.stanford.edu/people/markb/index.html

The web is a collection of text documents that are linked together. They are just plain ASCII text (even if you see pictures, the actual document being sent across computer lines merely contains text).