Stine, yes, it is quite early but in the Scandinavian countries, the US, Canada, you have already reached the late majority user, in diffusion research parlance. So, this is late, in diffusion terms. You can compare with other communications media with the same functions, and then you see that there are different actors that pushed the developement. I think understanding the Internet from the user side is ok, but it's only half of the story (at least). Frank gotved@mit.edu wrote:

David and others,

In my classes, I've used the different waves of users to shape the history of the net; see Guise 1998: 'Looking Backward and Forward at the Internet' in The Information Society 14(3). It's another angle and rather simple - and good to take the discussions beyond the technology in itself. However - sometimes I wonder if it isn't too early to grasp the net's history; we might need some more 'time distance' to recognize/reconstruct the patterns of importance...

Stine

david silver wrote:

...

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.

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