What's your Web IQ?

Technology is everywhere. But do you really know how it works? Where it came from?

Pew Research Center quizzed 1,066 Americans recently, and found we still have plenty to learn: Vocabulary, tech milestones, the meanings of privacy policies. Yikes.

Let's just say admitting what we don't know is the first step toward better understanding.

"Policymakers, tech designers, and those orienting their organizations around digital life can profit from knowing just how 'technology literate' people are and where gaps in their knowledge might be," said Aaron Smith, senior researcher at the Pew Research Center. "Just because people use these gadgets a lot doesn't necessarily mean they know everything about how they work and where they came from."

So put down your smartphone and test your digital smarts with this abbreviated version of Pew's quiz. Click the link on the right to see the answers.

1. The Internet and the World Wide Web are the same thing.

True or False

2. Twitter limits the number of characters per tweet to 140.

True or False

3. Moore's Law relates to how many transistors can be put on a computer chip.

True or False

4. When a company posts a privacy policy, it ensures that the company keeps confidential all the information it collects on users.

True or False

5. The first widely popular graphical Web browser, released in 1993, was:

a. Netscape Navigator

b. Internet Explorer

c. Mosaic

d. Opera

6. The Apple iPhone was first released in what year?

a. 2005

b. 2007

c. 2009

d. 2011

7. Choose the bigger amount of information:

a. Kilobyte

b. Megabyte

8. "Net Neutrality" refers to:

a. The postings on websites that are nonpartisan

b. A promise by users of some websites that they will not make critical comments

c. The way Wikipedia editors are instructed to handle new entries on their site

d. Equal treatment of digital content by Internet service companies

9. Which university was the first on Facebook?

a. Harvard

b. Stanford

c. MIT

d. University of Illinois

10. What does "URL" stand for?

a. Ultra Reliable Linkage

b. User Responsibility Liability

c. Unique Rate Limit

d. Uniform Resource Locator

Katie Humphrey • 612-673-4758