Some things you should really know about the internet as it is today.
Some things you should really know about the internet as it is today.Firstly I confess that at my house, we spend far too much time on the internet. Two weeks ago our internet connection failed and for the entire weekend we had no access.
It was almost as if some essential utility had been disconnected. Not that long ago the internet was a new phenomenon, a computer network used only by scientists. A place where geeks exchanged emails about computer stuff and nerds adopted the guise of game characters who only existed in virtual worlds called MUDs. Now the internet is something that more and more of us are becoming dependent upon. How did this happen? And what does it mean for us as individuals and as information workers? How can we gain a more rounded view of what the internet has become?
To answer the above I want to share with you an article by John Naughton which appeared in The Guardian online edition. Naughton lists nine points to consider in his essay; I will list them here and attempt brief summaries, but if you are remotely interested, read the essay at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know
1. Take the long view. - We are living through a revolution. Its only 21 years since the web was born and there was nothing like it before, so we can't learn from history. We have many questions about what the internet will eventually mean in terms of its effect on a thousand things including say, libraries. But its too early to tell. We will just have to wait. Even if by the time we know the answer it may be too late to do anything about it.
2. The web is not the net. - Many people think the web is the net but the web is just a part of the whole internet which includes all the infrastructure, email, file exchanges of all sorts, phone and video traffic and in the future, traffic that we have yet to imagine. So the web is important but its only one part of the jigsaw.
3. Disruptions are par for the course. - The very open nature of the beast makes it vulnerable to attack by viruses etc. The original design of the internet allowed anyone to send any type of computer file to anywhere on the net. If the path is blocked the network looks for another route The idea was to put packets of data in and hopefully deliver them to the correct recipient. This inevitably led to smart but belligerent programmers testing the system with viruses and other disruptive programs.
4. - Think Ecosystem. In the natural world, plant and animal evolution happens very very slowly. Before the internet, in the information 'ecosystem" things took many years to change. (The Encyclopaedia Britannica 11th edition was published in 1911, and although updates have been issued over the years the current edition is only the 15th). The advent of cheap computing and the internet has accelerated the evolution of the information ecosytem at rates which were unbelievable only twenty years ago.
5. - The new information environment is complex. - Get used to it.. Faster change - more participants - more interraction - sms, email, socilal websites, flickr, twitter, facebook, blogs, forums, google, wikipedia, databases and catalogues. PCs, laptops, smartphones, iPads. Its hard for individuals organisations and institutions to keep up, to adapt and to change.
6. The Network is now the computer. - The first public computers owned by the library were not connected to any network. The only way to get information off them was via a floppy disk or a printer. Today, a comptuer which does not connect to the net is the exception. Your email and other files are just as likely to live on a remote server owned by someone like Google, as they are to live on your PC. This makes us more and more dependent on the internet. and more willing to give up any privacy associated with our files.
7. The old web model is dead. - Not long ago the web was just a publishing medium. You made webpages and they were hosted on a web server. But since then we have had web 2.0 with webmail, voice and video chat, youtube, blogging, social networking etc. And the development continues apace.
8. The good vs the bad. - The internet can be a great and wonderful force for good but also contains material which can harm us. The debate will go on forever, but as a surveillance tool there is none better. Everything we do on the net is recorded.
9. Copyright law is obsolete. - Everywhere you look on the net you can see things that infringe copyright. In a digital world copying is not only effortless, it is necessay. Every web page you view is a copy, downloaded from the host computer. The only way to stop this would be to shut down the internet. We need new laws relevant to the digital age. But we will be shutting the stable too long after the horse has bolted.
Read the full article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/20/internet-everything-need-to-know
Max
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1 comment :
Hi Max,
My internet and land line went out unexpectedly early Saturday morning and it will take about 2 business days to fix. I can totally relate to what you wrote about the use of the net in your house. I never really considered myself much of a 'computer person' for leisure and am now astonished to find that is not the case at all.
I check emails, chat with people on various forums and connect to craft people. It's interesting for me how much computers and the internet has affected such a traditional thing as craft.
I have a (greeting) card making blog and have subscribed to various RSS feeds of other card crafters. I also get a lot of inspiration from the blogs of manufacturers and supplies of these type of products. There is plenty of free downloads available, and no need to say anything about the shopping.......
The down side of this I think is that it leads to less face to face communication, and the community that can be created by fellow 'crafters' is radically changed. But can we have both?
It makes me think about whether reading/information seeking is a solo pursuit, and how much a sense of community is important to what we do as a point of leisure and information provision. Does the cyber community that is created by things such as blogs and online reading groups replace or interlink with what we do? Do we provide the old way and the new way of creating a community and how can we use them together?
Just some musings - thanks for your post, it was thought provoking
Deborah H
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