elviajero

This special report on the History of the Internet was published by Wired magazine recently. Basically, it chronicles the life of the Internet up to today. Highly informative, and makes me think that the Internet was the most significant invention of the last fifty years. Yes, I know without the personal computer it wouldn’t be possible, yet the Internet’s impression is much more lasting. What good is a PC without the Internet? It’s then just glorified typewriter.

No other form of communication has brought our world closer together than the Internet. It is the product of globalization that has been developing since the end of WWII, and I feel we have yet to understand its true potential. Yet, because we are living in the Computer Age, advances in this great invention will be seen sooner then we think. I’m excited.

This is highly pertanent to class. This article from Wired comments on how the most popular blogs on the web actually directly copied material from lesser known ones, according to researchers at HP Labs. The article’s main point is how ideas that are initially contained in isolation grow in their respective environments. For blogs, that means ideas originally stemming from one blogger and infecting the blogosphere as time goes on:

To satisfy their curiosity, the researchers began analyzing data from Intelliseek’s BlogPulse Web crawler, which regularly mines thousands of blogs for references to people, places and events.

When they plotted the links and topics shared by various sites, they discovered that topics would often appear on a few relatively unknown blogs days before they appeared on more popular sites.

This type of activity is similar to what we were talking about on copyrights and patents. Mickey Mouse’s animated short, “Steamboat Willy”, was what rocketed the cartoon mouse to fame, yet the idea originated from a previous live-action short by the physical comedian Buster Keaton. What I’m basically saying is that all types of environments create ideas that eventually are co-opted by people other than the originator. We see this in music and movies all the time (doesn’t that Franz Ferdinand song sound a lot like Talking Heads? Is Madonna copying herself with her new album?). As we all know, there is a fine line between copying and adding your own input to a previous idea in order to make a new one.

From DiMaggio and Celeste’s “Technological Careers…”

From one perspective, the Internet is disruptive of existing patterns of technology, both because it privileges youth, who are more technologically adept, and because it reduces the cost of information, so that more of it will be within the reach of low-income persons. In this view the Internet is a potentially liberating technology because it makes available to the masses information that in the past would have been accessible only to person willing and able to pay for it or to persons who had the skills to find it through extensive search and the means to sustain high search costs.

From NDN PAC:

Think of the difference between your experience watching TV and being online. With TV you sit. With the Internet you engage. One is passive, the other active.

From Wired Magazine:

The scope of the Web today is hard to fathom. The total number of Web pages, including those that are dynamically created upon request and document files available through links, exceeds 600 billion. That’s 100 pages per person alive.

How could we create so much, so fast, so well? In fewer than 4,000 days, we have encoded half a trillion versions of our collective story and put them in front of 1 billion people, or one-sixth of the world’s population. That remarkable achievement was not in anyone’s 10-year plan.

And thus concludes Internet and Society for Fall 2005. I hope everyone is realizes how significant the Internet truly is. The Internet to me will do exactly what its name suggests: “net”. It will expand, grow and amass into something that doesn’t just give us stock quotes, sport scores and Google searches. It will tie our whole world together. I have these kind of discussions with my friends and family all the time, and dream of a day when our entire world is connected in every way. Soon every technological item we possess will use the Internet as its interface. Already we can see this happening. AT&T, who recently merged with SBC Communications, announced recently that it would begin creating new technologies that are all Internet-based. The Wall Street Journal talks about AT&T’s new plan:

A key to AT&T’s new growth strategy is to deliver video, data, wireless calls and phone traffic over a single network to consumers and large corporate customers. AT&T executives say the technology will let it offer a new form of television with 1,000 or more channels available to consumers within the next 18 months. The company also plans to beam TV content to cellphones; offer targeted advertising on TV, much like Google offers on the Internet; and eventually provide thousands of programs and movies on demand. Yahoo Inc., which has been working on ventures with SBC since 2001, will work closely with AT&T in this effort and will help develop search technology and advertising.

But that’s only the half of it. Everything will use the Internet as its engine. The physical locations will give way to digital ones, as banks will gradually prefer online over face-to-face banking, adspaces like billboards will be updated in real time via streaming Internet-based information, CD and DVD media will be completely digital, and, as AT&T has already suggested, all our forms of media will be streamed to one console (i.e. our computers) so that TVs, radios, DVD and CD players completely disappear. I also see a future in which paper money is completely eliminated, and all transactions are carried out using digital money. Essentially, what we are entering is a stage of consolidation, which will be possible via the Internet.

Naturally, this will take quite some time. But the future might be closer than we think. When the Internet emerged just a mere 10 years ago, did anyone think it would be where it is today? Probably not. Imagine what we’ll accomplish in 5, 10 and 15 more years. Welcome to the Age of Consolidation.

Upon watching Edward Felton’s lecture at Princeton University on copyright protection, I understood that this whole copyright debate could be boiled down to the relationship between consumers and producers. It’s not about the destroying the “artist’s integrity” or the “intellectual property”. It’s all about the money. Period.

What better way to see this than the whole Betamax affair of the 1970s and 1980s? According to Felton, the introduction of Sony’s revolutionary technology was the beginning step towards transferring more power to the consumer of media, thus altering the balance between the consumer and the producer. Consumers would be able to record television and skip commercials, decreasing the revenue gained by companies that advertised on television. The debate on copyright infringement was on.

The whole point of copyrights, according to Felton, is to limit the control given to the consumer. This control enables revenue to be gained, which in turn gives artist an incentive to create. I for one don’t believe the artist creates based on revenue (although there are certainly some out there that do), but Felton seems to think that this is how creativity is spurned for profit-making media corporations.

What the Betamax ultimately proved was that the new wave of technology would blur the lines between legal and illegal. Sony argued that the Betamax could be used for both illegal and legal purposes. In fact the latter ironically boost profits immensely for the movie industry, something Jack Valenti and Motion Picture Industry of America never imagined could happen. Essentially, Felton highlights his presentation with two important issues regarding copyright infringement:

1) The struggle for control.
2) Multi-use technologies.

The Betamax was a multi-use technology (it could be used for both legal and illegal purposes) and also transferred more control over the media to the consumer. This is the underlying reason why media companies are doing whatever they can to impose copyright laws on consumers.

So what does the future hold? Will the producers of media lose their fight against “piracy”, giving the consumer complete control? That would be an ideal situation. But a society always needs balance, and copyright laws, for however horrible they can be sometimes, do create that balance. If the producers completely regulated the media, the consumer would be left with no choice. If the consumer completely controlled what he or she likes, the producers would become bankrupt, resulting in finding out alternative ways of supplying media to the masses. Either way, the fight over copyright laws must stay in balance, giving neither side too much control.

SimCity…ah, yes…I have fond memories of this revolutionary city-building simulator. Along with Will Wright’s creation, I also owned a series of “edutainment” programs for my Macintosh LCIII, including Math Blasters (as mentioned in Paul Starr’s article), Super Mario Typing, Reader Rabbit, and, of course, Oregon Trail. But Sim City stood out as perhaps a game that was too advanced for a seven year old like myself at that time.

But what did it all mean?

Starr argues that SimCity taught its users “the management of complex systems based on intelligent scanning of streams of constantly changing information”. Essentially, SimCity was preparing us for the computer and Internet revolution. It helped us adapt to the streaming information that now hits us at incredibly fast rates. If something happens, we usually hear about it almost instantaneously. Completely streaming, and in real time. This is what the future holds for us as a society. We will be completely in tune to every event in the world, and the lag between the event the subsequent reporting of that event will shrink faster and faster.

But Starr also warns us of the inherent bias that goes into simulation games, as they are designed with a real-life model in mind. True. However, as simulations evolve, developers will not just draw from one source but from many. SimCity, for example, would use multiple theories of urban planning, as well as developers that have different views about urban planning. And as statistics proves, the greater your sample, the less amount of standard deviation exists between the sample’s variables.

Starr ironically foreshadows the development of the Internet. The article was written in 1994, right when the World Wide Web was taking off. Starr notes that the simulator is a “crossover intellectual technology”, being used initially as a tool for the government before gaining consumer appeal. Flight simulators were mainly used by the army before the widespread success of Microsoft Flight Simulator as well as countless other jet fighter games. The Internet followed a similar development, being used mainly as a tool for the government before becoming the great consumer medium that it is today.

Today, with the huge success of Will Wright’s the Sims, the simulator is reaching new and exciting levels. Although I personally have a hard time creating a simulated person, several other people don’t, leading to the mass appeal of the Sims. Yet how come other aspects of life haven’t been simulated? Perhaps we should develop a college life simulator, in which you have to take a class called Internet and Society and subsequently write a blog. Or not.

2:36 AM to 2:41 AM. Sunday, November 13th, 2005. For these five minutes, I completely deactivated myself from the world’s technologies. The world’s distractions. I sat at my desk, with just my desk lamp on and myself stoically positioned in my chair…and focused. Once you extricate yourself from all of society’s technological lubricants, time moves quite slowly. It helps you appreciate every minute that was given to you…every second…every millisecond.

So what did I do for my five minutes of extrication? Absolutely nothing. I had a few thoughts here and there (i.e. Thinking about what I was going to do tomorrow, wondering how long five minutes really was), yet more often than not I just found myself to be relaxed. Taking yourself out of the game for a bit is always refreshing. Since this moment in time was a particularly windy one weather-wise, I got to calmly listen to the wind rustling outside, banging against my windows with terrible force. I got to see how my desklight gradually illuminates my wall and, most importantly, listen to my heartbeat.

Funny thing. When my five minutes were up, and I opened my computer to type this blog, I had to kind of tone down technology, so I would not be shocked by my temporary removal from it. My music was started at a much lower volume and my movements were less rapid. But the event reminded me of something I did after my senior year of high school.

I went backpacking in the Colorado Mountains for a month, and our final test was to be on our own for 24 hours, away from our group and campsite. So, with a little nourishment and just my sleeping bag, I set camp on a small hill of land and completely disconnected myself from any sort of human communication. The event was definitely memorable…it was like this five minute exercise times 288.

When you’re on your own, things appreciate in value and you begin to notice detail. It’s quite a trip when you’re only left with yourself.

If you didn’t catch it in the Daily last Thursday, here’s my friend’s take on movin’ on to the real world. Enjoy.

Think you have to be part of our generation to blog? Think again. Booyah!

Researching for Jason Gallo, I began the search with the most basic search phrase: “Jason Gallo”. (With the search is must be noted that my Google extension for Firefox thought I was typing Jason Galloway, in which I dutifully hit the “Back” button). The way I usually conduct my research on the Internet is to start with the basic form. I then head to the websites the search brings up, and click on links of the results in order to spread my search even further.

The first two results Google listed was 1) an article of Gallo on Internet Research 4.0, in which no other links of use were truly provided. The second result was called “Into the Blogosphere”, which I didn’t even know existed. A site dedicated to the culture of blogs? I guess it’s never to early to start. Alas, no contact information was provided for Gallo, unlike some of the other contributing writers. I then searched the website for Gallo articles, In which I found this interesting article. The next two results were both from EH’s sites, here first being her blog and the second being the Internet and Society course site. However, the first two sites offered a better glimpse of Gallo via his writings, and now I know he contributes to tracking the blogging phenomenon.

That is a question Healy brings up in his article, “Digital Technology and Cultural Goods”. One of the Internet’s greatest contributions to society is “its ability to deliver content over its network quickly and at zero cost.” News is transmitted in real-time, videos streamed via media players like Real, Windows Media, and music files downloaded in seconds. As the Internet becomes more efficient and more and more of its members are connected via high-speed opportunities, media and information will be transmitted faster, approaching the point of virtually no lag. This is the future of the Internet.

So how can the censors control this seemingly endless and limitless flow of information? Although it seems improbable right now, eventually the Internet will become a regulated medium just like the ones it followed. Although in theory the Internet could become a completely unregulated information infrastructure, yet this is highly unlikely due to intervention by social and political institutions (i.e. the RIAA). Healy labels these types of institutions as the “information regime”. As the probability of the Internet’s infinite information transmittal potential becomes more visible, the probability of the passing of Internet regulation legislature increases. People in general focus more attention on what is more visible or noticeable. As the old adage says, “the squeaky wheel gets the grease”.

Healy, who seems to be a proponent of user customization, criticizes a previously read article by our class. He notes that Sunstein’s remedy for limiting the “un-democratic” personalization that the web offers is a form of government regulation in itself:

“[Sunstein] argues that the state should help create ‘Town Halls’ where people can debate various issues and that political websites should be required to link to sites espousing alternative views. Beyond that, search engines and portal-sites (like Yahoo) might be required to provide links to nonprofit or political sites on their front page.”

This quote brings up another interesting point on Internet regulation. Perhaps the Internet will not be regulated by the government, but rather by the powerhouses that currently operate within it. Portal sites like Google, Yahoo, and AOL could indeed create a form of regulation via their portal websites. As the Internet evolves, so will these portal sites, as they will offer more and more readily available content to the public. Perhaps alternative media sources, blogs and music will eventually have their own space on these mainstream websites, thus blurring the lines of what is “pop” and what is “alternative”. This is already happening right now in the music industry, as big record labels are trying to market “indie rock” as a mainstream music form. Groups like Franz Ferdinand, the White Stripes, and Modest Mouse still possess their indie-rock sound, yet operate within the major-label system, making “indie” the new mainstream. (Alternative music went through a similar process with the arrival of Nirvana in the early nineties. The form is now considered mainstream).