10 The Internet Mass Communication Gets Personal Xo

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 Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) headed by J.C.R. Licklider universities supplied with large, expensive computers in Fall 1969 ARPAnet connected four institutions oinitial nodes were: University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) Stanford Research Institute University of California-Santa Barbara University of Utah ofirst message from UCLA to Stanford ocoincided 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

faster, more efficient networks being built Internet2 Consortium oas of 2007, participants include: more than 200 U.S. universities 70 corporations 45 government agencies 50 international organizations The Next-Generation Internet

Computers as Communication Tools Interpersonal Communication: and Instant Messaging  electronic 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 fit format, and was not already in use

Instant Messaging  instant messaging programs— 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 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 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 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 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  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:  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