thinking about the question of "computer / internet hierarchy" for a couple days, i came up with this:
at the bottom end are discrete components; resisters, capacitors and diodes;
next would be circuits: transistors, logic gates, adders, comparators, filters built up of discrete components;
combining circuits creates subsystems: video generation, data storage, processing, displaying data and power supplies;
put the appropriate subsystems together and one gets general purpose computers and application specific computing devices (phones, gaming consoles, that thermostat on the wall, watches etc.);
connecting general purpose computers together (ethernet, apple talk, token ring, wireless) gives one a network whether it be a "local area network-LAN" such as one would find in a home or an office, a "metropolitan area network-MAN" such as used by cities, for example, to connect different departments of a municipality (police services [increasingly including patrol vehicles], courts, fire services, etc.), or a "wide area network-WAN" such as the internet.
at the bottom end are discrete components; resisters, capacitors and diodes;
next would be circuits: transistors, logic gates, adders, comparators, filters built up of discrete components;
combining circuits creates subsystems: video generation, data storage, processing, displaying data and power supplies;
put the appropriate subsystems together and one gets general purpose computers and application specific computing devices (phones, gaming consoles, that thermostat on the wall, watches etc.);
connecting general purpose computers together (ethernet, apple talk, token ring, wireless) gives one a network whether it be a "local area network-LAN" such as one would find in a home or an office, a "metropolitan area network-MAN" such as used by cities, for example, to connect different departments of a municipality (police services [increasingly including patrol vehicles], courts, fire services, etc.), or a "wide area network-WAN" such as the internet.