The Internet

1
The Internet

• Mass Communication Gets Personal

2
The Development of the Internet

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

3

• Packet Switching Letting Computers
  Talk to Each Other
• Paul Baran (1964)
• designing a military communication network that
  could survive a nuclear strike
• packet switchingcutting 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

4

• 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

5

• Connecting Incompatible Networks
• creating the Internets 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

6

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

7
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

8
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
• _at_ fit format, and was not already in use

9

• Instant Messaging
• instant messaging programse-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

10

• Group Communication Listservs and Newsgroups
• listservsInternet 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

11

• Mass Communication The World Wide Web
• Doug Englebart
• in 1968, demonstrated computer interaction
• Ted Nelson
• hypertextmaterial in a format containing links
  that allow the reader to move easily from one
  section to another and from document to document
• all the worlds literature available in hypertext

12

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

13

• 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

14

• 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.

15

• Bringing the Net to the Public
• Berners-Lees 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

16

• Andreesen and Jim Clark founded Netscape
  Communications
• Netscape Navigator
• first commercial Web browser
• 65 million using it in two years

17

• The Last 100 Yards
• March 200642 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 200634 percent using wireless
  connection

18
New Media and Online Entertainment

• Traditional versus New Media
• click and mortarstraditional 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

19

• 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

20

• 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

21

• Weblogs
• bloga 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

22

• 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

23
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 authoritypromote decentralization
• you should be judged by your skills

24

• 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

25

• 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
• language80 percent of Web sites are English
• costs and lack of basic technology
• electric and telephone service

26

• 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

27

• Privacy and the Web
• Amazon.com, online forms, registrations
• cookiestiny 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

28

• 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