Internet
A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE COMPUTER
Computers were born of the attempt to free people from routine mathematical calculations, not to mention the bonus of speeding up the counting process. Early computers were mechanical, the most successful, and the only mechanical one still in operation, the abacus, was developed in the East. In the West, early attempts date back to Pascal’s 17th century shoebox-size calculator, von Leibniz’s exploration of binary language, and Charles Babbage and Augusta Ada Byron’s unsuccessful 19-year attempt to build a steam-powered, football field-sized “analytical engine.”
In 1880, Herman Hollerith invented a punch card reading system to help tabulate census data more quickly. His machine a success, he started IBM. In 1940 Howard Aiken built a room-size digital computer at Harvard, and a few years later researchers at the University of Pennsylvania built ENIAC, the world’s first true working computer. Trouble was, it was two stories high, had 18,000 tubes, and weighed 30 tons (a hand calculator could easily surpass its abilities).
In the 1950s the invention of transistors and integrated circuits eventually led to the development of the silicon chip, which then paved the way for microprocessors. Personal computers were first seen in the rough in the 1970s, with the advent of the IBM desktop PC in 1982.
Originally designed for home and business use in the areas of word processing and games, the development of the modem enabled connected computers to “talk” with one another, over phone lines or directly if connected to a local area network (LAN). By the 90s, PCs had grown much more powerful, software more flexible and diverse, equipment lighter and smaller. The ability of users to communicate with one another via network systems had also expanded immensely.
THE INTERNET
The Internet is nothing more than a network of networks. When you log on, your PC becomes part of--temporarily at least--a world-wide network that you can access and manipulate from your own computer. These individual networks are operated by government agencies, businesses, universities, organizations, and in some cases individuals. Today you can connect to the Internet directly via phone line, cable TV, optical fiber, or wirelessly.
Since the Internet is a network of voluntary networks, there is no ‘Internet Company,” no one owns the Internet, and no one--or no country--has control over the collective system.
From ARPANET to Internet
The Internet was a Cold War idea designed to keep vital computer networks linked up with one another even if a nuclear attack cut one or more of the connections to those networks. A decentralized system of multiple interconnections between computer systems solved the problem so that every computer could talk to every other computer. Information was bundled in a packet, called an Internet Protocol packet, which contained the destination address of the target computer system. Computers themselves figured out how to best send the packet. The Pentagon named this early networking system the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network, or ARPANET.
The new network was used mostly by researchers to send e-mail and access remote databases. In the 1980s, the National Science Foundation decided to form a more widespread network to link its five expensive supercomputers (scattered all over the country) with other university and research facility computers. Using Internet Protocol, the NSF linked several regional networks together and essentially launched a civilian super network that became known as the Internet.
The Internet remained an arcane and hard-to-use resource until the 1990s when two developments gave it almost overnight and universal appeal:
. 1990 birth of World Wide Web (Web) and the hypertext navigation system
. 1993 development of web browsers, which made web navigation simple for PC users
On December 31, 2000, there were 361 million Internet users worldwide. As of March 31, 2011, that number had grown to 2.1 billion (30.2% of the world's population).
In North America, there were 108 million people online in 2000 and as of March 31, 2011, that number had grown to 348 million (roughly 80% of the North American population).
STRUCTURE AND FEATURES OF THE INTERNET
Each PC on the Internet uses the same electronic rules called a protocol so that any computer can talk with any other computer; this communication protocol is called Transmission Control Protocol/ Internet Protocol (TCP/IP), which dictates how data travels from one PC to another. Using TCP/IP, data is broken down into packets, sent to a destination by the best available route, and then reassembled at the destination PC. People can gain access to the Internet in two ways:
. via an independent Internet Service Provider (ISP) who charge connect fees (AT&T, Time-Warner, Verizon FIOS, Comcast, etc.)
. via a commercial network who provides both its own services and aconnection (AOL)-- (surprisingly, millions of homes STILL have AOL).
E-mail
Electronic mail, or e-mail, has become the number one source of written communication, already far surpassing US mail volume (in 2009, an average of 247,000,000,000 e-mails were sent PER DAY). E-mail is fast, cheap, and reliable. You can send e-mail to anyone who can access the Internet, and your message can contain text, graphics, pictures, sounds, or even an attached computer file. E-mail is not without drawbacks, such as being used inappropriately to communicate messages better suited for traditional communication formats. Second, e-mail is neither practically nor legally private. Third, spam, junk e-mail, is an increasingly annoying e-mail application that has the ability to clog the entire Internet system with unnecessary messages. E-mail can also cause cocooning as people e-mail people with messages they would earlier have communicated in person, by phone, or—more likely—not at all; this, in turn, has also led to a sharp increase in the number of daily messages people must now routinely sift through, respond to, or delete, an operation that takes up considerable time. Lastly, e-mail has also become a major conduit for the spread of computer viruses.
One of the biggest drawbacks to e-mail, ironically enough, is that it’s so simple to use that it’s often used too much. And with e-mail, it’s just as easy to send multiple copies of your message to groups of people as it is to send to just one person.
Newsgroups/Social Networking Sites/Blogs
Newsgroups are the Internet equivalent of theme-related bulletin boards where people go to post and read messages, and, if they wish, reply to them. There are thousands of newsgroups featuring topics from the normal (health news) to the arcane (academic discussions of ancient Mayan ruins) to the eccentric (space alien infiltration in the US).
Newsgroups, in effect, were the predecessors to social networking sites (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.). They are virtually unused today, but they still exist. If we wanted to generalize, we would say that the combination of Facebook and blogs killed the newsgroup.
The Web
A web site (located on a web server computer) is a complete set of hypertext pages linked to each other that contain information about a common topic. A web page is a hypertext page that is contained within that web site. One special page at a web site is called the home page, a combination electronic storefront, front door, and index to other items (all cross-indexed via hypertext links) that browsers might find at that web site.
People can explore web sites by clicking a mouse to go from one web address to another. These web addresses are called Uniform Resource Locators (or URLs); a typical URL would look like this:
http://www.emmysfoundation.org/college-television-awards
Individuals, organizations, and governments all host web sites, and there is no limit to the topics available on the web, the people behind them, or the motivations for those sites. Some sites function as portals, which serves as an entryway or jump off page to other web sites. Today (July 20, 2011), there are an estimated 19 billion unique web pages (http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/). Finally, although the words “world wide” are part of the WWW, the dominant languages in use are English, German, French, and Japanese.
THE EVOLVING INTERNET
Broadband
Broadband refers to any of the several Internet transmission channels that can carry information at 30 to 60 times the speed of a conventional 56k modem. The increase in upload/download speed makes large information transfers (such as voluminous text, music, graphics, and video) practical, quick, and easy. Broadband Internet access is now available in several forms:
• Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN)
• Satellite
• Cable modem
• Digital Subscriber Line (DSL)
One big advantage of broadband access is that you are always connected to the Internet, making access and use quicker, more convenient, and therefore more common.
Microcasting
Broadcasting sending the same content to a very broad range of people (TV show)
Narrowcasting sending special-interest content to highly select subgroups (Top 40, ESPN)
Microcasting sending highly specific content to a very select group (wedding, sales pitch, babysitting service, funeral, training session, and so on)
Microcasting is basically digitized video sent out on the Internet and “tuned into” by anyone with Internet access and an invitation to watch the content. The application possibilities are endless.
Most of YouTube is microcasting.
Economics
The Internet and the National Economy
There is no doubt that the Internet has had an impact on the nation’s financial condition. By reducing the cost of information and increasing its availability, the Internet allows companies to function more efficiently, thus increasing profits and productivity.
After reaching celestial heights between 1998-2000, the bubble burst for the dot.com companies, their investors, and their employees. Instead, businesses came back to earth with more practical and inexpensive Internet-based applications. The Internet became a business tool for such things as promoting products and services, facilitating order and information requests, handling customer relations, and allowing greater worker online interactivity. While the final economic impact of the net is yet to be determined, most experts are optimistic.
E-commerce
E-commerce is the term used to describe selling goods and services online. There are two types: the traditional consumer variety and the B2B (business to business) type. The sales figures for e-commerce speak for themselves. In the 1990s the total figure was near zero; by 2000, consumer e-commerce was running at $20 billion in annual sales. As of 2010, it was over $200 billion. The figures in the B2B world are even more impressive: $114 billion in 1999 and, while it's difficult to get current statistics, it's thought that today, in the United States alone, business-to-business sales online are in the trillions of dollars.
Website Economics
Profit motives vary from site to site. This discussion is limited to those businesses who set out to make money online. There are three main ways to make money over the Internet.
1. Site subscription: web content so attractive or useful that people are willing to pay to get it
2. Product/service sales: books, information, music, auction items, education, reservations
3. Sell advertising: Advertisers find popular web sites, much like high-rated TV shows, a highly attractive forum to place their ads. As such, popular sites like Yahoo, Google, Facebook, and a host of others make incredible profits providing advertising space on their web pages.
FEEDBACK
Like other media, the Internet uses independent companies to provide accurate audience data to attract would-be advertisers. Two companies dominate: Media Metrix and Nieslen/NetRatings.
Audiences
Internet audience demographics have changed and evolved rapidly. Today, more than 300 million people regularly use the Internet in the U.S. and Canada, with the typical user spending about 10 to 15 hours online per week, generally to send e-mail or get a specific piece of information. In short, the Internet audience has begun to mirror the demographics of the general population.
SOCIAL IMPLICATIONS
The social implications for the Internet, as well as the implications for traditional mass media, are continually changing. The Internet may affect the surveillance function of older mass media, for example, in that now anyone with the ability to post information on the Internet becomes, in a sense, his or her own reporter, photographer, columnist, and editor. The decisions of what information to include or exclude now flow from the bottom up rather than the reverse.
Lack of Gatekeepers
Without gatekeepers, the risk of the Internet being overwhelmed with unwanted, irrelevant, trivial, unrequested, worthless, or inconsequential messages has increased tremendously. Gatekeepers serve as objective evaluators of information; without them, we must judge the credibility or accuracy of the information we obtain online for ourselves. The Internet also diminishes the media’s interpretation function. Since anyone can post their views on a topic, the role of the professional critic, editor, judge, and evaluator are often taken out of the equation. Everyone becomes an expert without having to prove their qualifications.
Information Overload and Lack of Interpretation
The Internet provides an information retrieval source that is unparalleled in its scope, providing you know how to use and evaluate the data you get from it properly. First, there is the danger that the large amount of data you retrieve on a subject might be more overwhelming in volume than useful in substance. And second, since the results of an Internet search are not moderated, filtered, or interpreted by a professional information guide or content expert, both the credibility and the authority of any information you receive is open to question.
Privacy Concerns
Because of the variety and easy accessibility of Internet databases, it’s relatively easy to obtain facts about anyone. Since the Internet can neither be censored nor regulated (at least not easily), personal privacy remains a growing concern. One specific concern, for example, is the crime of “identity theft,” in which someone uses the Internet to steal facts about your personal identity for criminal gain, mischief, or just plain revenge. Though many laws and regulations to safeguard personal privacy have been discussed, the issues here are so complicated and the potential to do more harm than good are so risky that no regulations have been seriously set forth.
Need for Regulation
Though many important and legitimate concerns have arisen about Internet use (and misuse), technology still seems light years ahead of any enlightened or significant legislation. Since the Internet is neither owned nor controlled by anyone, regulating to any great extent may be next to impossible.
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