Re: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life
Thanks to Steve for some thought-provoking comments. I've also recently grappled with the issue of Internet/internet though for slightly different reasons. In my PhD thesis (now almost completed) I abandoned early on the use of Internet with the capital 'I', preferring instead to use 'internet'. This was partly due to the fact that other media are not capitalised, as Steve points out, and also that using the capitalised version somehow implied that it is set apart from the everyday, that it should somehow stand out or is mysterious. As my thesis is looking at everyday domestic uses of the internet this seemed wrong. Also, using 'Internet' seemed somehow to reify all the biases inherent in the early history of the technology (the gender, class, and ethnic biases particularly) which I did not want to do. So I now always use 'internet', although I always try to pin this down by stating what I really mean by the term (i.e. am I just referring to the WWW, or to other aspects of the wider global internet, or to some historical interpretation of it, or whatever). I just wanted to throw this in as this is the first time I've seen this topic discussed anywhere! Lisa Lisa McGerty Applied Social Sciences University of Bradford, UK ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Jones <sjones@uic.edu> To: <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 12:32 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life
Email overload, I'm finally picking up threads of conversations from days ago....
In short, although my talk focused largely on issues related to immersive virtual reality, it began by discussing networks, and I did say that I thought it is time to abandon the notion of an "Internet" and think about an "internet." (With due respect for citation, this occurred to me after a lengthy phone conversation with Joe Turow in which he noted that other media are not capitalized.) The former I use to refer to the process, begun in the 1960s with U.S. government funding, of connecting computers and standardizing communication among them. The latter I use to refer to the networking of computers that may or, more importantly, may not rely on that process. In this latter category are included any type of networking project, from home networking to wireless network to cellular networks to Internet2 and so on. In other words, _the Internet_ is an internet (i.e., internetwork) but _the internet_ is a medium akin to other media (e.g., television, radio, etc.).
The larger point was that use of the term "network" embedded in these is itself important, whether we are discussing the actual, as in hardware, software, etc., or more importantly when discussing the symbolic, as in the relatively recent popular use of networks as metaphors for everything from stock markets to relationships to biology. That's what made me strongly consider _internet_, for I've been reminded of the ways in which a signal point in the development of media is when we begin to use it symbolically and metaphorically to compare other aspects of life to it.
I expect to develop this further when I get to taking the talk and turning it into something publishable at some point, but in relation to the discussion at hand that's what Ulla was referring to, and while it doesn't really sort out the matter of "Internet eras," perhaps it does provide still another way to think about the development of the technology and its uses (symbolic and otherwise).
Thanks, Sj
At 7:29 PM -0500 11/25/02, Ulla Bunz wrote:
last week at the national communication association Steve Jones was featured in a keynote conversation. He talked about "internet" versus "Internet."
Steve, are you willing to repeat the main thoughts here briefly?
Ulla
From: david silver <dsilver@u.washington.edu> Date: 2002/11/25 Mon PM 07:12:30 EST To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday
Life
Hi Folks,
i just returned after giving a class lecture which featured an
abbreviated
history of the internet and found barry's post quite interesting. besides information about his and caroline haythornthwaite's book, he included the following excerpt from the introduction:
***
Excerpts from the Editors' Introduction, Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite:
_The Internet in Everyday Life_ is about the second age of the Internet as it descends from the firmament and becomes embedded in everyday life. The first age of the Internet was a bright light shining above everyday concerns. In the euphoria, many analysts lost their perspective. The rapid contraction of the dot.com economy has brought down to earth the once-euphoric belief in the infinite possibility of Internet life.
***
i'm curious about this notion of two stages of the internet. if i'm reading the paragraph correctly, the authors suggest the net has had two stages: before and after the dot.com crash. i'm interested in hearing what others think about this concept of a two-staged internet history.
in my own lecture this morning, i tracked a number of stages, all of which contain, i believe, significant differences between them. for example (and this is the abridged version):
1960s/early 1970s - ARPANET
1975 - a more social internet with lists like SF-Lovers
1979 - a more public internet (here i'm defining the internet more expansively) with the introduction of usenet groups
late 1980s/early 1990s - mass influx of users via prodigy/compuserve/aol
1991 - a more distributive (and later graphical) turn with berners-lee's world wide web, followed by mosaic (1993), and netscape (1994)
1995 - netscape goes public, wall street goes crazy, dot.com daze begins
etc etc etc.
(like all historical stages, these are complex and reflect an interesting intersection among social and cultural contexts, technological developments, economic conditions, etc.)
thoughts?
david silver http://faculty.washington.edu/dsilver/
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Hi all, When I think of Internet vs internet (as I do most days) I make the choice based on whether I'm referring to an entity or a phenomenon. For example, there is only one Internet (in terms of the common experience/parlance), but there could potentially be many internets (in terms of the ability to hook up computers and make a network). In this case, the grammatical device of capitalisation implicitly denotes the definition, similar to the difference between Indigenous people (people who identify as part of a culture that was present prior to the arrival of Western colonist/invaders/settlers (let's not go there right now), for example, Aboriginal Australians, Inuit, etc, vs indigenous people (I regard myself as an indigenous Australian - I was born here - but I am not in any way Indigenous). This seems a simple, unambiguous definition, however, I note there the talk of a number of Internets. What do others make of it? Cheers, Hughie Hugh Brown Editor, On Line Opinion www.onlineopinion.com.au Ph +61 7 3852 2138 Mob +61 409 622 395 Fax +61 7 3252 9818 -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org]On Behalf Of Lisa-Jane McGerty Sent: Friday, November 29, 2002 22:24 To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: Re: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life Thanks to Steve for some thought-provoking comments. I've also recently grappled with the issue of Internet/internet though for slightly different reasons. In my PhD thesis (now almost completed) I abandoned early on the use of Internet with the capital 'I', preferring instead to use 'internet'. This was partly due to the fact that other media are not capitalised, as Steve points out, and also that using the capitalised version somehow implied that it is set apart from the everyday, that it should somehow stand out or is mysterious. As my thesis is looking at everyday domestic uses of the internet this seemed wrong. Also, using 'Internet' seemed somehow to reify all the biases inherent in the early history of the technology (the gender, class, and ethnic biases particularly) which I did not want to do. So I now always use 'internet', although I always try to pin this down by stating what I really mean by the term (i.e. am I just referring to the WWW, or to other aspects of the wider global internet, or to some historical interpretation of it, or whatever). I just wanted to throw this in as this is the first time I've seen this topic discussed anywhere! Lisa Lisa McGerty Applied Social Sciences University of Bradford, UK ----- Original Message ----- From: Steve Jones <sjones@uic.edu> To: <air-l@aoir.org> Sent: Thursday, November 28, 2002 12:32 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life
Email overload, I'm finally picking up threads of conversations from days ago....
In short, although my talk focused largely on issues related to immersive virtual reality, it began by discussing networks, and I did say that I thought it is time to abandon the notion of an "Internet" and think about an "internet." (With due respect for citation, this occurred to me after a lengthy phone conversation with Joe Turow in which he noted that other media are not capitalized.) The former I use to refer to the process, begun in the 1960s with U.S. government funding, of connecting computers and standardizing communication among them. The latter I use to refer to the networking of computers that may or, more importantly, may not rely on that process. In this latter category are included any type of networking project, from home networking to wireless network to cellular networks to Internet2 and so on. In other words, _the Internet_ is an internet (i.e., internetwork) but _the internet_ is a medium akin to other media (e.g., television, radio, etc.).
The larger point was that use of the term "network" embedded in these is itself important, whether we are discussing the actual, as in hardware, software, etc., or more importantly when discussing the symbolic, as in the relatively recent popular use of networks as metaphors for everything from stock markets to relationships to biology. That's what made me strongly consider _internet_, for I've been reminded of the ways in which a signal point in the development of media is when we begin to use it symbolically and metaphorically to compare other aspects of life to it.
I expect to develop this further when I get to taking the talk and turning it into something publishable at some point, but in relation to the discussion at hand that's what Ulla was referring to, and while it doesn't really sort out the matter of "Internet eras," perhaps it does provide still another way to think about the development of the technology and its uses (symbolic and otherwise).
Thanks, Sj
The capital I I had the cite somewhere, but Vinton Cerf, the inventor (as I recall it) of the IP protocol, especially the 'peer 2 peer' component, defined those connecting to the Internet (as a network) as any who exhibit IP protocol on the client side, or was identified to the network with a proper IP address. There of course is some flexibility in this as dial-up clients, by proxy servers and through socket emulation, etc., are assigned temporary IP addresses. I would say it's standard practice. This is demonstrably *not* the same activity as other clients connecting to other networks, (apparently PLATO) BITnet, dial-up modem protocols like x-modem, etc. that dominated other, asynchronous networks, such as the Well. IMHO, the Internet is a discrete entity governed by a specific set of protocols (although vastly distributed) that do absolutely govern the transmission and reception of messages that travel on it ("you're either on the bus or off the bus"). I.e., before we get too far from the 'mere technical details' -- if I am not, as a client, sending a TCP/IP based or translated packet (BITnet and other protocols have been boosted to TCP/IP networks, likewise the newer protocols of WAP etc.) it will not arrive on the Internet for all my pals to see. Internet transmission & reception is determined by a fixed protocol and bent packets are not sent packets. End of story. However, the internet or perhaps the 'Net as I believe is under discussion here is a much broader network that will conceivably be accessed by a number of differently configured protocols. If we are talking about the larger networks, from mail to telegraph, teletype, telephone, cell phones, camels, SMS and so on then it is not really the point to call that larger communicative context 'the Internet.' In fact it would be pretty weird to do so. So if I get the drift here, we have good, cultural reasons to liberate the internet from a specific context of interaction, *even though* that specific interaction determines what objects appear on the 'net, at least at present. Indeed, it is the simplicity, flexibility and robustness of the TCP/IP protocol that brings us the endless peripherals like the web cam, and the internet fridge. It's that lowest common demoninator that addresses and gets the packets there. I stand by for further corrective treatment (and thanks for not beating me up too much the last time). 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
Dear Aoir's - Now that I have put everyone offside with my protocol analysis, I'd like to ask a question - Does anyone out there, who cares to reply (on or off list) know of specific research on the role of volunteers in the development of computing services at nonprofit organizations? THANKS! 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
hi Denise You may want to get in touch with Ted Zorn at University of Waikato Management School and ask him about his paper: Politics, Emotion and the Discourse of ICT Adoption and Implementation 2002 Australia-New Zealand Communication Association Conference The paper addressed ICT adoption issues in not for profits, I can't remember how much volunteers were addressed specifically but I'm sure there would be leads that will be useful. http://www.mngt.waikato.ac.nz/ict (visit "Team" to get to Ted's Bio) Danny Denise N. Rall wrote on 5/12/02 7:32 PM:
Dear Aoir's -
Now that I have put everyone offside with my protocol analysis, I'd like to ask a question -
Does anyone out there, who cares to reply (on or off list) know of specific research on the role of volunteers in the development of computing services at nonprofit organizations?
Denise, I've done some research in the area of ICTs and non-governmental organisations - see http://homepage.eircom.net/~johnlannon/TechTies.pdf for a copy of my 2002 MA thesis entitled "Technology and Ties that Bind: The Impact of the Internet on Non-Governmental Organisations Working to Combat Torture". It does not deal specifically with the role of volunteers, but if you are interested in the NGO sector it may give you some useful references. John ------------------------------------------------- John Lannon Tel: +353 87 8225087 email: johnlannon@eircom.net -----Original Message----- From: air-l-admin@aoir.org [mailto:air-l-admin@aoir.org] On Behalf Of Denise N. Rall Sent: 05 December 2002 06:33 To: air-l@aoir.org Subject: [Air-l] Ok, now a question on volunteers and their role in computing at nonprofit orgs Dear Aoir's - Now that I have put everyone offside with my protocol analysis, I'd like to ask a question - Does anyone out there, who cares to reply (on or off list) know of specific research on the role of volunteers in the development of computing services at nonprofit organizations? THANKS! 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 _______________________________________________ Air-l mailing list Air-l@aoir.org http://www.aoir.org/mailman/listinfo/air-l
participants (5)
-
Danny Butt -
Denise N. Rall -
Hugh Brown -
John Lannon -
Lisa-Jane McGerty