Welcome to Information Technology and Society

Week 6

 

Here's the wiki with course material: http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/FrontPage.

 

 

In this class we'll focus on how the information technology revolution developed, especially vis-a-vis long time Berkeley Professor Manuel Castells' research on the Network Society, as well as http://webnographers.org - a wiki bibliography on virtual ethnography.

 

I invite your questions, and I'll post a version of the text from each class to http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/FrontPage over the weeks.

There's already a lot of information on this wiki, which will develop with this class.

 

And please join the Google Group for World University and School - like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware -

http://groups.google.com/group/World-University-and-School.

 

 

Social History of the Internet

 

[11:20]  Aphilo Aarde: At the wiki, open World University & School

[11:20]  Aphilo Aarde: you'll also find open, free Second Life teaching and learning material

[11:20]  Aphilo Aarde: here: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Courses#Second_Life_Teaching_and_Learning_Opportunities

[11:20]  Aphilo Aarde: for future reference

[11:21]  Aphilo Aarde: There's a lot of this info on the card I gave you

[11:21]  Aphilo Aarde: Thanks, Mel. So today we'll begin

[11:21]  Aphilo Aarde: So today we'll begin to look the emergence of the world wide web

[11:22]  Aphilo Aarde: We left off 2 weeks ago with USENET -

[11:22]  Arawn Spitteler is Offline

[11:22]  Aphilo Aarde: which was the first global connections of the Internet in the late 70s / early 80s

[11:22]  Gwyneth Llewelyn is Offline

[11:22]  Aphilo Aarde: and BBS - bulletin board networks

[11:23]  Aphilo Aarde: BBS Bulletin Board Systems

[11:23]  Aphilo Aarde: emerging in relation to

[11:23]  Aphilo Aarde: 1 networks emerging out of leading universities (with some PUBLIC military monies)

[11:24]  Aphilo Aarde: in the 60s and 70s

[11:24]  Aphilo Aarde: 2 ARPA NET - 1970s

[11:24]  Aphilo Aarde: for both military (MILNET) and civilian uses

[11:24]  Aphilo Aarde: and 3 in the late 70s - communication software - publicly developed software - where everyone benefits

[11:25]  Aphilo Aarde: With USENET, two developments were significant

[11:25]  Aphilo Aarde: 1 people can communicate with ARPANET - the first internet network - in the mid 1980s

[11:25]  Aphilo Aarde: and 2 USENET could go global from the beginning, where ARPANET couldn't

[11:25]  Aphilo Aarde: These were the very first networks

[11:26]  Aphilo Aarde: And the internet is so amazing because it's a real time world wide communication network

[11:26]  Aphilo Aarde: But even with USENET , users had to have some technical sophistication

[11:26]  Spider Mycron is Online

[11:27]  Aphilo Aarde: There wasn't any user friendly technology in the 1980s , to speak of

[11:27]  JenzZa Misfit is Offline

[11:27]  Luna Bliss is Offline

[11:27]  Aphilo Aarde: And here is where something socially IMPORTANT happened

[11:27]  Luna Bliss is Online

[11:27]  Aphilo Aarde: THe World Wide Web developed from 1991 forward significantly

[11:28]  JenzZa Misfit is Online

[11:28]  Aphilo Aarde: It was first Editor - Browser programs

[11:28]  Aphilo Aarde: to access and combine information

[11:28]  Aphilo Aarde: How did it happen?

[11:28]  Aphilo Aarde: This is another amazing, almost single-handedly change the world stories

[11:29]  Aphilo Aarde: How did it happen?

[11:29]  Aphilo Aarde: It was UNPLANNED

[11:29]  Aphilo Aarde: A British programmer

[11:29]  Aphilo Aarde: Tim Berners-Lee with Roger Coillion

[11:29]  Aphilo Aarde: was a staff programmer working in Geneva Switzerland at CERN

[11:30]  Aphilo Aarde: European Laboratory for Particle Physics

[11:30]  Aphilo Aarde: - high energy physicis

[11:30]  Aphilo Aarde: Berners-Lee had a job

[11:30]  Aphilo Aarde: He was in love with his job

[11:30]  Aphilo Aarde: And on his spare time, without his boss knowing

[11:30]  Aphilo Aarde: he created the WWW

[11:31]  Aphilo Aarde: His immediate boss said "You are working on the Internet - Drop this American technology"

[11:31]  Aphilo Aarde: But Berners-Lee didn't.

[11:31]  Aphilo Aarde: He wrote programs for HTML, HTTP, and URL, finishing them in the 1990s.

[11:32]  Aphilo Aarde: HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language

[11:32]  Aphilo Aarde: Who can say what the other acronyms stand for?

[11:32]  Aphilo Aarde: HTML is still a key langauge of web pages

[11:32]  Kazuhiro Aridian is Online

[11:33]  Aphilo Aarde: If you right click on your browser and click "view source" you'll probably see html

[11:33]  Aphilo Aarde: Many of the protocols of the web - TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocal

[11:33]  Aphilo Aarde: were written in the 1970s

[11:33]  Sybex Drachnyd: hypertext transffer protocol

[11:34]  Aphilo Aarde: They are the highway of the web - guidelines for packet switching

[11:34]  Aphilo Aarde: We explored this some weeks ago

[11:34]  Aphilo Aarde: Yes, Sybex

[11:34]  Robin Mochi is Offline

[11:34]  Aphilo Aarde: HTTP - look in your web address field

[11:35]  Sybex Drachnyd: universal resource locater

[11:35]  Aphilo Aarde: stands for hypertext transfer protocol

[11:35]  Aphilo Aarde: and http one protocol of the addressing system of the web

[11:36]  Aphilo Aarde: It corresponds to a number - a universal resource locater, or uniform resource locator

[11:36]  Marian Dragovar is Online

[11:36]  Aphilo Aarde: ... in part, when is how web pages are categorized and organized

[11:36]  Aphilo Aarde: There are potentially a very, very large number of these.

[11:37]  JenzZa Misfit is Offline

[11:37]  Aphilo Aarde: ... which means in a sense there are LOT of channels! in the distributed world wide real time network

[11:37]  Kazuhiro Aridian is Offline

[11:38]  Aphilo Aarde: And Tim Berners-Lee designed this system, drawing in part on Apple MacIntosh hyperlink cards

[11:38]  JenzZa Misfit is Online

[11:38]  Lucretia Brandenburg is Offline

[11:38]  Aphilo Aarde: And in doing this, Berners-Lee made the web a lot more friendly

[11:39]  Aphilo Aarde: He provided a basis - a structure - for all the possible web pages we view - even to some degree - SLURLs - Second Life Uniform Resource Locators

[11:39]  Aphilo Aarde: THe SL addressing system

[11:39]  Aphilo Aarde: So, in his spare time, without his boss knowing, he created the WWW

[11:40]  Aphilo Aarde: By August 1991, he posted these on a CERN BBS

[11:40]  Aphilo Aarde: So, he posted all this software and instructions on how to get it, for FREE.

[11:41]  Aphilo Aarde: The intermediate step between Berners-Lee and the Public

[11:41]  Aphilo Aarde: were students

[11:41]  Aphilo Aarde: mostly graduate students

[11:41]  Aphilo Aarde: At the University of Illinois at the National Computer Center

[11:41]  Aphilo Aarde: folks there said that's COOL

[11:42]  Aphilo Aarde: But http, html and url would be even cooler with GRAPHICS

[11:42]  Aphilo Aarde: Up to this point, all of these very early WWW was text - open editor, open pages ... for FREE ... where anyone could post anything they liked

[11:43]  Aphilo Aarde: So people at the National Computer Center at the Univ of Illinois made MOSAIC

[11:44]  Aphilo Aarde: Marc Andreesson

[11:44]  Aphilo Aarde: Marc Andreessen and Eric Bina

[11:45]  Aphilo Aarde: took this early WWW, added graphics and made it even more user friendly

[11:45]  Aphilo Aarde: Mosaic is the web browser credited with popularizing the World Wide Web. It was also a client for earlier protocols such as FTP, Usenet, and Gopher. Its clean, easily understood user interface, reliability, Windows port and simple installation all contributed to making it the application that opened up the Web to the general public.[2] Mosaic was also the first browser to display images inline with text instead of displaying images in a separate window.

[11:46]  Michele Mrigesh is Online

[11:46]  Aphilo Aarde: While often described as the first graphical web browser, Mosaic was preceded by the lesser-known Erwise[3] and ViolaWWW.

[11:46]  Aphilo Aarde: Mosaic was developed at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign beginning in late 1992. NCSA released the browser in 1993, and officially discontinued development and support on January 7, 1997

[11:46]  Aphilo Aarde: However, it can still be downloaded from NCSA

[11:47]  Aphilo Aarde: ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Web/Mosaic/

[11:47]  Aphilo Aarde: :)

[11:47]  Aphilo Aarde: Andreessen and Bina released MOSAIC online for FREE, following tradition.

[11:48]  Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[11:48]  Aphilo Aarde: A real entrepreneur saw a money opportunity.

[11:48]  Aphilo Aarde: Jim Clark, who created Silicon Graphics, was bored.

[11:49]  Aphilo Aarde: In 1993, he was hired by Andreessen and Bina to commercialize MOSAIC (which was produced under a University license).

[11:49]  Aphilo Aarde: And they created Netscape

[11:49]  Aphilo Aarde: They shipped their first browser in December 1994.

[11:49]  Draxtor Despres is Online

[11:49]  Gentle Heron is Offline

[11:49]  Aphilo Aarde: It was a program online for free.

[11:50]  Whitelight Christiansen is Offline

[11:50]  Aphilo Aarde: In 1995, Microsoft saw a need for something like this to access the Internet

[11:50]  Aphilo Aarde: MS saw an urgent need for a Browser

[11:51]  Aphilo Aarde: And this started what some desribe as browser wars

[11:51]  Aphilo Aarde: Microsfot bought browser software from Spyglass

[11:51]  Aphilo Aarde: who had developed Spyglass from Tim Berners-Lee's work

[11:51]  Aphilo Aarde: And MS released Internet Explorer in 1996.

[11:52]  Aphilo Aarde: Then the whole world could surf the web, using the World Wide Web.

[11:52]  Eme Capalini is Offline

[11:52]  Aphilo Aarde: From that time, Netscape and Microsoft into a commercial war.

[11:52]  Aphilo Aarde: In 1998, Netscape released the source code from Navigator.

[11:53]  Aphilo Aarde: MS did enough that Netscape couldn't survice economically.

[11:53]  Aphilo Aarde: And America Online - a huge company at the time - bought Netscape

[11:53]  Aphilo Aarde: And that's how browsers emerged.

[11:54]  Aphilo Aarde: WHY BATTLE OVER BROWSERS?

[11:54]  Aphilo Aarde: Because it was a user-friendly way to surf the Net

[11:54]  Aphilo Aarde: Tim Berners-Lee devised a Browser / Editor, where people only used a kind of browser passively

[11:55]  Aphilo Aarde: The rate of expansion of the WWW outside the knowledgeable community grew dramatically

[11:55]  Aphilo Aarde: And those are key elements behind the development of the Internet

[11:56]  Aphilo Aarde: Graphical Browsers popularized the WWW in very far-reaching ways.

[11:56]  Aphilo Aarde: So, to recap a little, before we take a break

[11:57]  Aphilo Aarde: The Internet developed from SYNERGIES

[11:57]  Aphilo Aarde: between 1 scientific culture, 2 the military, and 3 grass roots - that is, from and for the people

[11:57]  Andromeda Mesmer is Offline

[11:57]  Bon McLeod is Offline

[11:58]  Aphilo Aarde: About the military - there were no real military applications for software

[11:58]  Aphilo Aarde: Still, the military was impressed

[11:58]  Aphilo Aarde: And, especially in the context of the COLD WAR

[11:59]  Aphilo Aarde: Military research had UNLIMITED levels of Funding.

[11:59]  Aphilo Aarde: The military was decisive in terms of CONTEXT

[11:59]  Aphilo Aarde: - a kind of concern for knocking down Soviets -

[11:59]  Aphilo Aarde: but not in terms of Software itself

[12:00]  Hydra Shaftoe is Offline

[12:00]  Robin Mochi is Online

[12:00]  Aphilo Aarde: By pure luck, ARPA early on recieved Defense Department support - in terms of a research agency, and this lead to so much which was non-military

[12:00]  Aphilo Aarde: with these PUBLIC monies

[12:01]  Aphilo Aarde: Well, let's take a 10 minute break ... see you at 10 past ... I'm curious about your questions.

[12:01]  Aphilo Aarde: See you at 10 past

[12:01]  Aphilo Aarde: brb

[12:05]  CathyWyo1 Haystack is Offline

[12:06]  Tarek String is Online

[12:09]  Draxtor Despres is Offline

[12:09]  Budd Raymaker is Online

[12:10]  Aphilo Aarde: Hello again!

[12:10]  Aphilo Aarde: Questions thus far?

[12:10]  Aphilo Aarde: Thoughts!

[12:10]  Aphilo Aarde: Observations?

[12:10]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: wb Aphilo

[12:10]  Aphilo Aarde: :)

[12:11]  sandhya2 Patel: none from me

[12:11]  sandhya2 Patel: it is quite a clear history

[12:11]  sandhya2 Patel: and amazing too

[12:11]  Aphilo Aarde: So much in the developments of the IT revolution was unplanned and accidental

[12:11]  Sybex Drachnyd: i am sorry i missed the first part

[12:12]  Aphilo Aarde: and the result of synergies around Information Generation and Inforamtion Production

[12:12]  sandhya2 Patel: science developes in this random way also

[12:12]  Aphilo Aarde: Check out the transcripts, Sybex, from the first 5 classes

[12:12]  Aphilo Aarde: at socinfotech.pbworks.com

[12:12]  Sybex Drachnyd: yes i will do that

[12:13]  Aphilo Aarde: They won't take long to skim

[12:13]  Aphilo Aarde: While these transcripts are partly still in conversation form, I hope to make the ones from this course pretty exclusively course-ideas

[12:14]  Aphilo Aarde: that is, previous course transcripts will remain as conversation while this semesters will be focused notes ... so they'll be quick to skim

[12:14]  Whitelight Christiansen is Online

[12:15]  Budd Raymaker is Offline

[12:15]  Aphilo Aarde: I draw a lot on long time UC Berkeley Professor Manuel Castells' research on the Network Society

[12:15]  Aphilo Aarde: In fact, here's a UC Berkeley GLOBETROTTER conversation with him

[12:16]  Aphilo Aarde: http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html

[12:16]  Aphilo Aarde: 6 pages of transcript - as well as their hour long video interview

[12:16]  Aphilo Aarde: Worth watching ...

[12:16]  Whitelight Christiansen is Offline

[12:16]  Aphilo Aarde: Castells is now a professor at University of Southern California, after being at Berkeley for 23 years.

[12:17]  Aphilo Aarde: USC, as the internet developed, has historically almost kind of taken a moral role

[12:17]  Aphilo Aarde: in the various conflagrations which have been part of the development of these technologies.

[12:18]  Aphilo Aarde: Particularly, Jon Postel, who helped to write the first protocols - TCP / IP - played something of this role in the 70s and 80s

[12:18]  Aphilo Aarde: So, to continue

[12:19]  Aphilo Aarde: By pure luck, ARPA early on recieved Defense Department support - in terms of a research agency, and this lead to so much which was non-military

[12:20]  Aphilo Aarde: Usually, any program for the MILITARY has narrow applications.

[12:20]  Aphilo Aarde: In this particular case, academics working in DEFENSE , understood that FREEDOM for ACADEMICS was essential

[12:20]  Aphilo Aarde: These academics wanted to do something that was so good that missles wouldn't matter

[12:21]  Aphilo Aarde: In the case of the U.S. military environment

[12:22]  Aphilo Aarde: these academics had full support, but only for one of three key elements which lead to the development of the Internet - FUNDING - a fundamental one

[12:22]  Alvenoh Asp is Online

[12:22]  Aphilo Aarde: BUSINESS and the development of the Internet

[12:23]  Aphilo Aarde: As a source of design and development of the Internet, there was NO BUSINESS role until the 1990s.

[12:24]  Aphilo Aarde: In terms of the prevailing ideology, business was completely out of the process.

[12:24]  Aphilo Aarde: Business couldn't have created this.

[12:24]  Aphilo Aarde: Public money was the cause.

[12:25]  Aphilo Aarde: And Al Gore, contrary to a claim, didn't invent it, but Gore was very important in making monies available on Capitol Hill.

[12:25]  Aphilo Aarde: What Gore did was very important ... in helping to make funding available.

[12:26]  Aphilo Aarde: So, what gave rise to the internet was pbulic monies - from the military and academia,

[12:26]  Aphilo Aarde: and good will, deliberately with no money - so all the grass roots contributions of hackers, and people like Tim Berners-Lee to make the internet FREE and open, and an interesting community

[12:27]  Aphilo Aarde: So the Most Important technology of our time didn't come from BUSINESS

[12:27]  Aphilo Aarde: ARCHITECTURE

[12:27]  Aphilo Aarde: Because the internet developed with these influences, it isn't telephone lines or computers.

[12:28]  Aphilo Aarde: (As we've examined before - it emerges from developments in and synergies from microelectronics, computing and telecommunications).

[12:29]  Aphilo Aarde: What is the internet in terms of architeture?

[12:29]  Aphilo Aarde: It's SOFTWARE.

[12:29]  Aphilo Aarde: immaterial protocols of information.

[12:29]  Aphilo Aarde: This ARCHITECTURE is organized in such a way that

[12:29]  Aphilo Aarde: it was OPEN at 2 levels

[12:29]  Kymsara Rayna is Offline

[12:30]  Robin Mochi is Offline

[12:30]  Aphilo Aarde: 1 from 1973-1978 TCP/IP Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol - the information highway - was OPEN to everyone.

[12:31]  Aphilo Aarde: 2 the notion of distributive computing, meaning that the power of processing is distributed thoughout the entire network ...

[12:31]  Aphilo Aarde: is how it was also open.

[12:32]  Aphilo Aarde: So , the cable communication system

[12:32]  Aphilo Aarde: is a cable with a lot of end users along the cable.

[12:33]  Aphilo Aarde: It's one form of broadband, and it's speed depends on how many people are using it.

[12:33]  Aphilo Aarde: Cable is like a interstate highway system, where, if more people get on the cable, traffic builds up, and packet switching slows down.

[12:34]  Aphilo Aarde: DSL - Digital Subscriber Line - informs another kind of

[12:34]  Aphilo Aarde: or part of the architecture

[12:35]  Aphilo Aarde: DSL works over copper telephone lines; it's an information technology where

[12:36]  Aphilo Aarde: where people can talk at the same time as bit and packet transmission is occurring, due to the technical properties of copper and this technology

[12:36]  Aphilo Aarde: DSL requires routers to be spaced every incremental distance

[12:37]  Alvenoh Asp is Offline

[12:38]  Aphilo Aarde: something like 1.25 miles for older DSL technologies

[12:38]  Aphilo Aarde: The copper can transfer both voice and bits due to differential frequencies.

[12:39]  Aphilo Aarde: Prior to these technologies, data was transmitted over modem technologies and phone lines at much slower rates.

[12:40]  Aphilo Aarde: Now fiber optics and other technologies are very fast and can handle great amounts of data.

[12:40]  Aphilo Aarde: In addition radio frequencies can transmit data quickly.

[12:41]  Aphilo Aarde: And the Internet is DISTRIBUTED so it's built on a STAR system ... with multiple inputs and outputs from any given node

[12:41]  Aphilo Aarde: The Internet is built on protocols.

[12:41]  Aphilo Aarde: It's an open architecture and makes possible distributed computing

[12:42]  Marian Dragovar is Offline

[12:42]  Aphilo Aarde: The entire system can dispatch and reroute throughout the entire system.

[12:42]  Aphilo Aarde: Download, upload, latency and jitter are measures of date transfer for end user's computers

[12:43]  Alvenoh Asp is Online

[12:43]  Aphilo Aarde: ON the Internet, messages or packets, where are censored, or stopped, are interpreted as blocked, and rerouted.

[12:43]  Aphilo Aarde: Communication that goes around, comes around.

[12:44]  Aphilo Aarde: So this Architecture is based on Openness.

[12:44]  Aphilo Aarde: KEY ASPECTS / LAWS of an OPEN SYSTEM

[12:45]  Champler Snook is Online

[12:45]  Aphilo Aarde: 1 Users are producers of technology

[12:45]  Aphilo Aarde: -most of actual applications were not planned or designed by engineers

[12:45]  Aphilo Aarde: There were discovered, or innovated, not planned

[12:46]  Aphilo Aarde: e.g. email - programmers saw it was cool, and started to innovate

[12:46]  Aphilo Aarde: for its personal value

[12:47]  Aphilo Aarde: e.g. cell phones ... the main use of mobile phones is personal messages - people never thought

[12:47]  Aphilo Aarde: that young people would use this for staying in touch.

[12:47]  Aphilo Aarde: ... that cell phones would become a back of the family.

[12:47]  Aphilo Aarde: 2 From the beginning, the Internet has been multicultural and international

[12:48]  Aphilo Aarde: It's a myth that's it's an American technology and a military product

[12:48]  Aphilo Aarde: Researchers above were always connected with other international researchers

[12:49]  Aphilo Aarde: TCP/IP was invetned internationally by Vint Cerf, Bob Kahn and others.

[12:49]  Aphilo Aarde: In France Cyclades was an exarly example.

[12:49]  Aphilo Aarde: ... of internet technologies.

[12:50]  Aphilo Aarde: Both Friend and British were essential to these multicultural and international developments of the internet

[12:50]  Aphilo Aarde: As we saw earlier, one precursor to the WWW was a British program at a major International Research Center in the 1950s.

[12:51]  Aphilo Aarde: 3 USENET - the main developer was international

[12:52]  Aphilo Aarde: By and large, over the past 20 years, there have been a stream of contributions to the Internet from around the planet

[12:52]  Aphilo Aarde: And with Glasnost in Russia, this important network of the Internet diffused into Russia

[12:53]  Aphilo Aarde: 4 The Internet has been, by and large, self-regulating.

[12:53]  Mariis Mills is Offline

[12:53]  Aphilo Aarde: Although formerly, the internet has been run by 1 DEFENSE 2 COMMERCE.

[12:53]  Tarek String is Offline

[12:54]  Aphilo Aarde: In fact, it has self governed in a strange way.

[12:54]  Aphilo Aarde: INTERNET REGULATION

[12:54]  Aphilo Aarde: What is self-government?

[12:54]  Aphilo Aarde: It's a set of software, to make sure protocols are common and that the address system is common.

[12:55]  Aphilo Aarde: After that, the Network does it by itself.

[12:55]  Mariis Mills is Online

[12:55]  Aphilo Aarde: And these developed on the basis of the NETWORK WORKING GROUP in the later 1970s.

[12:55]  Aphilo Aarde: Well, let's stop there for today.

[12:56]  Ignatius Onomatopoeia is Online

[12:56]  Shawna Isenia: bonjour !

[12:56]  xShawna Isenia: hello!

[12:56]  Aphilo Aarde: ... and before office hours from 1-2, are there any questions, observations?

[12:56]  xAphilo Aarde: ... et avant les heures de bureau de 1-2, y at-il des questions, observations?

[12:56]  Shawna Isenia: :3

[12:56]  xShawna Isenia: : 3

[12:56]  Aphilo Aarde: Thoughts about how we might continue this kind of innvoation.

[12:56]  xAphilo Aarde: Réflexions sur la façon dont nous pourrions poursuivre ce type de innvoation.

[12:56]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: You do know the web is about 550x larger than what google shows, right, Aphilo?

[12:56]  xMelchizedek Blauvelt: Vous ne savez le web est d'environ 550x plus large que ce que Google montre, à droite, Aphilo?

[12:57]  Aphilo Aarde: What kind of measures are they using, Mel?

[12:57]  xAphilo Aarde: Quel type de mesures sont-elles en utilisant, Mel?

[12:57]  Aphilo Aarde: Hi Shawna

[12:57]  xAphilo Aarde: Salut Shawna

[12:57]  Aphilo Aarde: Welcome to a course on Harvard's virtual island

[12:57]  xAphilo Aarde: Bienvenue à un cours sur l'île virtuelle de Harvard

[12:57]  Aphilo Aarde: "Information Technology and Society"

[12:57]  Shawna Isenia: Désolé de tracasser votre classe…

[12:57]  xShawna Isenia: Sorry to bother your class ...

[12:58]  Aphilo Aarde: about how the IT revolution has developed.

[12:58]  xAphilo Aarde: comment la révolution informatique s'est développé.

[12:58]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: None - it's criminals using forgotten sites and servers to spread child pornography and promote drug trade

[12:58]  xMelchizedek Blauvelt: Aucun - ce n'est des criminels utilisant les sites oubliés et serveurs pour diffuser la pornographie enfantine et promouvoir le commerce des drogues

[12:58]  Hydra Shaftoe is Online

[12:59]  Aphilo Aarde: Interesting ... yes

[12:59]  xAphilo Aarde: Intéressant ... oui

[12:59]  Shawna Isenia: CE QUI ! ? O_O

[12:59]  xShawna Isenia: WHAT! ? O_O

[12:59]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: I have a hard time seeing the web as self-regulating to be honest

[12:59]  xMelchizedek Blauvelt: J'ai de la difficulté à voir le web comme l'auto-régulation, pour être honnête

[12:59]  Aphilo Aarde: We'll look at some aspects of criminality.

[12:59]  xAphilo Aarde: Nous verrons quelques aspects de la criminalité.

[13:00]  Shawna Isenia: tout que j'ai entendu était pornographie infantile ainsi j'ai obtenu concerné

[13:00]  xShawna Isenia: all I heard was child pornography and I got concerned

[13:00]  Shawna Isenia declined your inventory offer.

[13:00]  Shawna Isenia is Online

[13:00]  sandhya2 Patel: is it not the kind of regulation that simply prevents blockages to all information?

[13:00]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: When the vast majority of it is being used for crime (whatever you think crime is)

[13:00]  xMelchizedek Blauvelt: N'est-il pas le genre de réglementation qui empêche simplement des blocages à toutes les informations?

[13:00]  xMelchizedek Blauvelt: Lorsque la grande majorité de celle-ci est utilisé pour la criminalité (ce que vous pensez crime est)

[13:00]  Aphilo Aarde: I'd point you, Mel, to Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, for further information

[13:00]  xAphilo Aarde: J'avais point que vous, Mel, à Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, pour plus d'informations

[13:00]  Shawna Isenia: Je fais des excuses ; Je ne suis pas futé, ainsi je ne suivrai pas cette classe….

[13:00]  xShawna Isenia: I apologize, I'm not smart, so I will not follow this class. ...

[13:00]  Shawna Isenia giggles.

[13:00]  xShawna Isenia: / me fous rires.

[13:00]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: Under a guise of "web neutrality"

[13:00]  xMelchizedek Blauvelt: Sous un couvert de «neutralité web"

[13:01]  Aphilo Aarde: The internet is hard to control because it's distributed ... when authoritarian regimes block some sites, other urls spring up ... citizens lose access to the new york times, for example, which is a loss

[13:01]  xAphilo Aarde: L'internet est difficile à contrôler car il est distribué ... lorsque les régimes autoritaires de bloquer certains sites, d'autres urls printemps up ... citoyens perdent leur accès au New York Times, par exemple, qui est une perte

[13:02]  Aphilo Aarde: but porn sites in China, just multiply, for example. The internet is hard to control.

[13:02]  Aphilo Aarde: In the U.S. Network Neutrality is not only a policy

[13:02]  Aphilo Aarde: but also backed by 1st amendment rights.

[13:02]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: I never had access to the NY times until recently - they wanted my private information, and I didn't want to give it to them

[13:03]  Aphilo Aarde: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berkman_Center

[13:03]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: I don't like to give my info to a company in a country which can incarcerate me without legal recourse, ya know

[13:03]  Aphilo Aarde: I see.

[13:04]  Arawn Spitteler is Online

[13:04]  Aphilo Aarde: I'll also point you to a recent blog post of mine from a Stanford day long seminar which lays out more of the contemporary issues.

[13:04]  Aphilo Aarde: When an internet service provider selectively blocks some content, there are negative consequences for it.

[13:05]  Aphilo Aarde: Agreed, Mel ...

[13:05]  Rajah Yalin is Offline

[13:05]  Michele Mrigesh is Online

[13:05]  Aphilo Aarde: and trust issues on the WWW are developing in a variety of ways, but technically and legally, I think the Internet in the U.S. is nearly neutral, and pretty neutral in much of the west

[13:06]  Robin Mochi is Online

[13:06]  Aphilo Aarde: Every country is developing in a different way vis-a-vis this world wide real time distributed network.

[13:06]  Sybex Drachnyd is Online

[13:06]  Aphilo Aarde: And it's good to be cautious

[13:06]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: Do you know how many GPS systems were tapped last year alone in the US, Aphilo?

[13:06]  Aphilo Aarde: but these technologies connect - that's what they do - so when some are blocked, concerns rise

[13:07]  Aphilo Aarde: I don't.

[13:07]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: 80 mllion

[13:07]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: *million

[13:07]  Aphilo Aarde: Every country is developing in a different way vis-a-vis network neutrality

[13:07]  Aphilo Aarde: but this Stanford talk points to a fair number of lawyers who are working to keep it open:

[13:08]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: All I can say to that is: well, at least the US is open about it

[13:08]  Aphilo Aarde: http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/01/nest-three-outputs-for-world-university.html - January 25, 2010

[13:08]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: I have no clue how much surveillance there is here in Europe, for instance

[13:09]  Aphilo Aarde: Yes, these information technologies are causing many changes, and countries don't know how to respond, because many don't understand them, vis-a-vis their own particular histories.

[13:09]  Aphilo Aarde: And yet these technologies make university, school, libraries, entertainment, banking, and creativity so rich, when it's an open internet!

[13:10]  Aphilo Aarde: I think Europe, especially Britain, lives in the curious mindset of a surveillance society

[13:10]  Aphilo Aarde: and the internet opens things ... interest confluence of culture and technologies :))

[13:10]  sandhya2 Patel: is it not a behavioral microcasm?

[13:11]  sandhya2 Patel: all things being subject to those who use them

[13:11]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: Oh it's worse in Italy - Berlusconi (the prime minister) owns 98% of all media

[13:11]  Aphilo Aarde: So, fortunately, these technologies work well when they're open.

[13:11]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: That means tv, radio, internet, newspapers

[13:12]  Sybex Drachnyd: is this political debate part of the course?

[13:12]  Aphilo Aarde: Governments eventually learn that, but the U.S. and other countries, have, in part, recognized their openness, and are developing policies and laws around this.

[13:12]  Aphilo Aarde: Yes, Sandhya - every 'local' responds differently to the global phenomena of these networks.

[13:13]  Aphilo Aarde: This is open office hours, Sybex

[13:13]  Aphilo Aarde: so conversation here can lead to new ideas

[13:14]  Aphilo Aarde: Yes, Mel, yet the internet is a many to many technology -which we'll get to in the course - wheras the information technologies you mention tend to be one-to-one or one-to-many.

[13:15]  Aphilo Aarde: The internet is causing profound changes societally, on a different scope and scale so than

[13:15]  Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[13:15]  Aphilo Aarde: previous industrial revolutions, as we've seen.

[13:16]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: As long as it's supported by bright students with too much time on their hands, yes

[13:16]  Sybex Drachnyd: has anything been writen about changes in society already made by this technology sharing?

[13:16]  Aphilo Aarde: Hopefully, we'll see lots of bright students shape a lot more profound, fun and fascinating information techological changes.

[13:17]  Aphilo Aarde: A lot, Sybex!

[13:17]  Aphilo Aarde: http://www.webnographers.org/index.php?title=Books

[13:17]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: It's almost impossible to keep up with it all Sybex

[13:17]  Aphilo Aarde: I'm the main aggregator / editor of the above virtual ethnography wiki (editable web pages) which we can all add to.

[13:18]  Aphilo Aarde: There's already an amazing amount of information about these changes

[13:18]  Aphilo Aarde: on webnographers.org.

[13:18]  Free Radar HUD v1.1 by Crystal Gadgets

[13:18]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: All of a sudden we have these "social media experts" rise up from the woodwork, telling you how to say hello to somebody

[13:18]  Aphilo Aarde: I would point to John Postill's work - a British Media anthropologist - for example.

[13:19]  Aphilo Aarde: He has a blog and he focuses a lot on change questions, quite readably. He has a blog.

[13:19]  Aphilo Aarde: You might add this to your blog reader:

[13:20]  Aphilo Aarde: johnpostill.wordpress.com

[13:21]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: I really like Christopher Browning's "Ordinary Men"

[13:21]  Aphilo Aarde: Yes, Mel, and there are also fairly serious-minded academics, like Castells - watch his video above - who offer great insight and understanding about some of the changes that are occurring.

[13:21]  Aphilo Aarde: I'll check it out. I'm not familiar with it.

[13:21]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: It's about the German commandos in Poland during WWII

[13:22]  Aphilo Aarde: ok

[13:22]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: How they were all very normal folks, pastry chefs etc

[13:23]  Sybex Drachnyd: thank you i must go now

[13:23]  Aphilo Aarde: Social psychology is powerful ...

[13:23]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: And how they became mass murderers in the span of days, simply by distantiating themselves from their victims

[13:23]  Aphilo Aarde: Nice to meet you, Sybex

[13:23]  Sybex Drachnyd: interesting content

[13:23]  Aphilo Aarde: Thanks for coming.

[13:23]  Sybex Drachnyd is Offline

[13:24]  Aphilo Aarde: Check out Stanfor Professor emeritus Phil Zimbardo, who also looks at related questions to Milgram - concerning explaining obedience to authority

[13:24]  sandhya2 Patel: i must leave also thank you for your presentation

[13:24]  Aphilo Aarde: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6_5lGvIxK0

[13:25]  Aphilo Aarde: Zimbardo is great ... and offers compassionate insight into understanding some of the questions you're thinking about, Mel.

[13:25]  Aphilo Aarde: Thanks, Sandhya!

[13:25]  Aphilo Aarde: Nice to see you ... until next time.

[13:26]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: gah, I could've presented about this!

[13:26]  Kobra Snakeankle is Online

[13:27]  Aphilo Aarde: I haven't seen too many studies that focus on social psychology and the internet, but I'll post them when I do at webnographers.org

[13:27]  Aphilo Aarde: I'd check out danah boyd's work on teens, as a method for understanding some social dynamics of the Net and teens.

[13:28]  Aphilo Aarde: I'd also check out Sherry Turkle's "Life on the Screen"

[13:28]  Aphilo Aarde: to look at how these technologies make possible multiple identities.

[13:29]  Melchizedek Blauvelt: see now this is getting way more interesting than the lecture!

[13:29]  Aphilo Aarde: Both of these are at webnographers.org - Turkle under Books, and a video about Boyd's work on Kjelstorm.

[13:29]  Aphilo Aarde: Conversation is most interesting ... I welcome your inputs during my talk ... but I am aiming to cover a lot of ideas relating to internet development.

[13:29]  Hydra Shaftoe is Offline

[13:29]  Aphilo Aarde: I need to focus on some things here, Mel!

[13:30]  Aphilo Aarde: Nice to chat with you! 

 

 

 

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