I have spent the past few days catching up with internet events before heading off for a holiday.

Imagine my surprise when I discovered a simple and sensible summary of this thing we call "cyberspace" from, of all people, the Pope.

In a document published last week on the Vatican's web site, His Holiness made a comparison between the internet and the forums of ancient Rome, which were also centres of daily civic and commercial activity, covering everything from entertainment and sport to trade.

The Pope said: "The internet is certainly a new forum understood in the ancient Roman sense of that public space, where politics and business were transacted, where religious duties were fulfilled, where much of the social life of the city took place, and where the best and the worst of human nature was on display.

"It was a crowded and bustling urban space, which both reflected the surrounding culture and created a culture of its own. This is no less true of cyberspace, which is, as it were, a new frontier opening up at the beginning of this new millennium.

"Like the new frontiers of other times, this one too is full of the interplay of danger and promise and not without the sense of adventure which marked other great periods of change."

Although the document goes on to encourage people to use the internet to spread God's message and ensure the survival of Catholicism, which some surfers won't be too interested in, it is a thoughtful piece and worth searching out.

There is also a historical slant to the re-emergence of Alexa, one of the first browser companions launched in the late Nineties. Alexa provided information about the pages being viewed, including a list of similar or related pages, but it wasn't the hit everyone was hoping for and, by the time it was purchased by Amazon, it was in decline.

But Alexa is back, using tricks from Google and Amazon to make a noise in the web's computerised cacophony. One feature allows people to review sites, the theory being if sites get good reviews they should attract more traffic.

Other historical information includes the date the site went online and a link to the internet wayback machine (IWM). If you haven't come across the IWM, which can show you what a site used to look like, it's worth adding to your list of favourites, as is Alexa.

The past might be another country but maybe the internet can help you get there.

www.vatican.va
www.alexa.com
www.amazon.com
www.google.com
web.archive.org