The Internet Mass Communication Gets Personal

The Internet

• Mass Communication Gets Personal

The Development of the Internet

• Internet—a diverse set of independent networks, interlinked to provide its users with the appearance of a single, uniform network

• Packet Switching: Letting Computers Talk to Each Other

• Paul Baran (1964):
• designing a military communication network that could survive a nuclear strike
• packet switching—cutting messages into little pieces and sending them on along the easiest route to their final destination
• message reassembled on the receiving computer
• Donald Davies (England):
• coined the name packet switching

ARPAnet

• ARPAnet

• Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)

• headed by J.C.R. Licklider

• universities supplied with large, expensive computers

• in Fall 1969 ARPAnet connected four institutions

• initial nodes were:
• University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA)
• Stanford Research Institute
• University of California-Santa Barbara
• University of Utah
• first message from UCLA to Stanford
• coincided with first moon landing, significance

• Connecting Incompatible Networks

• creating the Internet’s protocols:

• Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf
• invented TCP/IP
• TCP stands for Transmission Control Protocol
• allowed for conversion and transmission of messages across previously incompatible networks

• Commercial Networks

• Compuserve, Prodigy, and Quantum provided access for non-academics
• 1989—Quantum became America Online (AOL)
• between 1993 and 1998, AOL subscribers grew from 200,000 to 8 million

The Next-Generation Internet

• faster, more efficient networks being built

• Internet2 Consortium

• as of 2007, participants include:
• more than 200 U.S. universities
• 70 corporations
• 45 government agencies
• 50 international organizations

Computers as Communication Tools

• Interpersonal Communication:

• E-mail and Instant Messaging

• electronic mail (e-mail)—a message sent from one computer user to another across a network
• initially limited to messages on a single computer
• Ray Tomlinson (1972):
• developed a system to send messages across systems
• created the addressing format
• @ fit format, and was not already in use

• Instant Messaging

• instant messaging programs—e-mail systems that allow users to:
• chat with one another in real time
• hold virtual meetings that span multiple cities
• keep track of which of their “buddies” are online
• most programs are incompatible:
• violates a generally accepted standard for the Net

• Group Communication: Listservs and Newsgroups

• listservs—Internet discussion groups that use e-mail to exchange messages between as few as a dozen people or as many as several thousand:
• users must subscribe to the group
• newsgroup bulletin boards:
• allow for international discussion of topics
• usenet one of the largest

• Mass Communication: The World Wide Web

• Doug Englebart:
• in 1968, demonstrated computer interaction
• Ted Nelson:
• hypertext—material in a format containing links that allow the reader to move easily from one section to another and from document to document
• all the world’s literature available in hypertext

• Tim Berners-Lee and the Birth of the World Wide Web:

• World Wide Web—a system that allows users to view and link documents located anywhere in the world using standard software
• in 1990 the European Organization for Nuclear Research had the first Web server online

• The World Wide Web has three major components:

• Uniform resource locator (URL)
• the address of content placed on the Web
• Hypertext transfer protocol (http)
• a method for sending text, graphics, or anything else over the Internet from a server to a Web browser
• Hypertext markup language (HTML)
• the programming language used to create Web pages

A Vision for the Web

• A Vision for the Web

• The basic technology is free.

• Principles:

• Information of all kinds should be available through the same window, or information space.
• All documents on the Web must be equally accessible.
• There must be a single address that will take users to a document.
• Users should be able to link to any document at any space.
• Users should be able to access any type of material from any type of computer.
• Users should be able to create whatever types of relationships between information that they want to.
• The Web should be a tool not just for information but also for collaboration.
• There is no central control.
• The Web software should be available free to anyone who wants to use it.

• Bringing the Net to the Public

• Berners-Lee’s browser:
• limited to certain computers, no graphics
• Mosaic:
• first easy-to-use graphical Web browser
• created by Marc Andreessen at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana
• 1 million downloads after release

• Andreesen and Jim Clark founded Netscape Communications

• Netscape Navigator:
• first commercial Web browser
• 65 million using it in two years

• The Last 100 Yards

• March 2006—42 percent of Americans had high-speed connections at home, while 31 percent were using dial-up
• broadband service:
• ten times faster; allows for streaming audio, video
• wireless access:
• December 2006—34 percent using wireless connection

New Media and Online Entertainment

• Traditional versus New Media

• click and mortars—traditional media companies that publish news online
• sites may include supplementary material only found online
• particularly effective with breaking news
• can effectively cover multiple stories
• customizable content

• Movies and the Net:

• promotion of films and filmmakers
• requires high speed connection
• users unwilling to pay for online films
• forced to watch in front of their PC

• New Media:

• Slate and Salon, exclusively online magazines
• low publishing costs, quick updates
• readers expect updates, no subscription revenue

• Aggregator Sites

• Excite, Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Netscape

• The Changing Nature of News:

• large amounts of information, accurate and otherwise
• distinguishing what is good from what is nonsense can be difficult
• many stories start out on the Internet, then creep into the mainstream media
• rumors can spread uncontrollably

• Weblogs

• blog—a collection of links and commentary in hypertext that can be created and posted on the Internet with relatively little effort:
• provides a forum for people to write, post content
• offers readers different perspectives

Search as a Medium

• Search as a Medium

• search engines provide information and news
• some world governments restrict Internet searching
• France and Yahoo
• China and Yahoo

• The Long Tail of Internet News

• citizen journalism
• YouTube

The Internet and Society

• The Hacker Ethic:

• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniaks’ blue boxes

• Stephen Levy, Hackers”

• “Digital trespassers”:
• access to computers should be unlimited and total
• all information wants to be free
• mistrust authority—promote decentralization
• you should be judged by your skills

• The Man Who Invented Cyberspace

• William Gibson

• coined the phrase “cyberspace” in his 1984 book Neuromancer
• Gibson on cyberspace: “an expression of the hippie ideals of freedom and self-expression”
• also credited with the word cyberpunk

Community on the Net

• Community on the Net

• Face-to-face communication not required

• Is It Really a World Wide Web?

• 73 percent of Americans have Internet access at home.

• Only 16 percent of world population has Internet access:

• 13 percent in Brazil, 19 percent in Mexico

• Barriers:

• language—80 percent of Web sites are English
• costs and lack of basic technology:
• electric and telephone service

• Conflicts over Digital Media

• Controlling content on the Web:
• open forum where anyone can publish anything
• great deal of inappropriate material for kids
• filtering software
• original Net built to prevents blocks and barriers

Privacy and the Web

• Privacy and the Web

• Amazon.com, online forms, registrations
• cookies—tiny files used to identify Web site visitors and potentially track their actions on the Web
• used for personalized content delivery

• Clifford Stoll: Silicon Snake Oil

• assisted U.S. government in catching hackers in late 1980s
• internet replaces real interactions and experiences
• false sense of intimacy without the emotional involvement

Convergence of Old and New Media:

• Convergence of Old and New Media:

• National Public Radio and News 2.0
• Al-Jazeera started its English-language service online
• Politico and premature John Edwards announcement

• From newspapers to brands:

• Arthur Sulzberger, New York Times publisher/owner
• states in a speech that the Times will continue to deliver news and advertising in whatever forms will turn a profit