Charles wrote:
Their summary judgment: especially the more radical visions of the Internet and the Web (ala Barlow and many others) leading to a new Renaissance, etc. just seemed "so '90s"!
For them, it appears that these technologies are utilitarian in the most boring of senses; precisely because they have grown up with them, they seem no more "revolutionary" than cars or telephones - even cellphones. Rather, these technologies are really, merely tools for them.
I think there are two basic reasons for the current view of many students that the Internet is merely another communication device: Clinton-Gore and the dotcom bust, the mainstreaming of the Internet and personal media into people's lives. Clinton-Gore and the dotcom bust: Students today have grown up along with the Internet. These students have lived through the various stages of Internet hype--the utopian "information superhighway" days, the "We are all going to make a ton of money" days, the Internet as "place for wierdo's" days. I suggest that the dotcom bust has had a major influence on current students and their relationship with the Web. They see the Internet as something that has been over-hyped, and perhaps confuse the revolutionary aspects of the Internet with the failed media rhetoric. Mainstreaming of the Internet: I would be greatly interested in how many of our current students actually do anything online beyond e-mail, gaming, IMing and music. (Okay, maybe looking for homework sources too ;) Do they really experience themselves as participating in distributed community? Are they engaging that much in identity play? It would be interesting to begin to develop a working profile for a mainstream user, one for whom the Internet is merely an extension of their personal computing experience rather than a dynamic realm in itself. Mainstreaming of personal media: With pocket computers and Web-enabled phones, when does an individual decide that they have enough Internet access already? When the Web becomes ubiquitous, the user has to choose what features they will use on a regular basis, and what features they will ignore. Perhaps the many access choices have lead users to devalue the potentialities of the Web and focus on those aspects which are most immediately available/useful. A few thoughts, Matt Eliot PhD Student Department of Technical Communications University of Washington