Re: Maren Hartmann's comment - "And yes, there therefore seems to be both - a) a change somewhere in the late 1990s (but not necessairly related to the dot.com crash only)" I have to add that, unless we are simply discussing the Internet as accessed through the WWW then there are two distinct phases to the Internet based on the most logical component - how we see at the level of the user interface. To compare my days on the Internet as a unix-driven text-based device of "vi" "rn" and "ftp" is hardly the same internet that I access and view today through http and html. To me, (I've written one unpublished paper called "The Internet, the WWW and Cyberspace") these are not at all the same locations -- because how I experience it, subjectively, cognitively, aesthetically, it's not the same place at all. (I won't address cyberspace, a really ugly thing as Phil Agre points out in his recent book, "the limits of cyberspace"). To me the Internet is before the WWW and what we have now is, really a bastardization of the Internet as viewed through the WWW, or the Web. Both the Internet and the Web appeared WAY before the dot.com crash, if that's significant, fine, but I can't see it as an epistemological moment, more like an obvious result of advanced capitalism that worked its way through to the obvious conclusion. I'm sure someone here will put me straight on this ;-) Denise ===== "it's easier to use your mouse than your brain" Denise Rall, Sustainable Forestry Mentoring Coordinator & PhD student, School of Education, Southern Cross University, PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637 Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/edu/research/deniserall/index.html __________________________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now. http://mailplus.yahoo.com