Society and Information Technology in Second Life

Wednesdays, August 29 - December 12 , 2007, 4-6, SLT/PT, 7-9 pm ET on Berkman island in Second Life

Course homepage - http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com

 

Instructor: Scott MacLeod (not on Harvard's faculty) = Aphilo Aarde (in Second Life)

http://scottmacleod.com/papers.htm

 

 

 

Oct 10 2007 Soc and Info Tech course transcript

 

 

 

[15:56]  You: Hello Nauka!

[15:56]  Nauka Umaga: Hello Aphilo - I heard you are giving a lecture today. :)

[15:57]  You: Yes, we'll have a talk here this evening.

[15:57]  You: Glad you're here.

[15:57]  Nauka Umaga: Well, sadly, I can only stay for 1/2 hour. My friend is going to make a chat log transcript for me though.

[15:57]  You: Are you experienced in SL?

[15:57]  Nauka Umaga: I build and script, I'm involved with NCI.

[15:58]  Nauka Umaga: I'm a shop owner.

[15:58]  You: Great . . . I also post chat transcripts here: http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com

[15:58]  You: NCI?

[15:58]  You: I see

[15:58]  Nauka Umaga: New Citizens Incorporated, wonderful place for newbies, we have classes, tutorials, freebies, sandbox, and it's policed.

[15:58]  Nauka Umaga: I'll bookmark the transcript page, you may want to mention it again when more people show up.

[15:58]  You: Sounds interesting. What's in your shop?

[15:59]  You: I usually mention this a couple of times during the course of the evening.

[15:59]  You: - thanks

[15:59]  Nauka Umaga: My shop sells IntelliSkirt, a script for prim skirts so they'll look right when sitting, walking, etc. I also sell some pirate costume stuff, a melting candle, old compute t-shirts (not up yet). In the future, there will be pets, but that's a ways off. :)

[16:00]  You: so much potential in world, and what interesting 'products' arise, as a consequence of information.

[16:01]  You: Hello carmonfer

[16:01]  carmonfer Oh: Hi Nauka and Aphilo!

[16:01]  carmonfer Oh: :)

[16:01]  Nauka Umaga: The potential is staggering! I think we limit ourselves when we only image RL products like clothing. We can do ANYTHING here if we can imagine it and LSL allows it.

[16:01]  Nauka Umaga: Hi carmonfer :)

[16:01]  Boston Hutchinson is Online

[16:02]  You: Welcome to "Society and Information Technology," a course on the information technology revolution, vis-a-vis long time Berkeley prof. Manuel Castells

[16:02]  You: research on the Network Society.

[16:02]  Parriah Janus is Offline

[16:02]  carmonfer Oh: ok

[16:02]  Connecting to in-world Voice Chat...

[16:02]  Connected

[16:02]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi all!

[16:02]  You: That's true, Nauka in so many unthought of ways.

[16:02]  carmonfer Oh: Hi Boston !

[16:03]  Nauka Umaga: Hi Boston :)

[16:03]  You: And we'll see a lot of the remarkable developments in the next few decades, not to say years.

[16:03]  You: Hi Boston!

[16:03]  carmonfer Oh: Aphilo, are you the prof. Manuel Castells?

[16:03]  You: Here's the course wiki: http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com

[16:04]  You: I'm not, but know his work, and my research interests overlap.

[16:04]  You: Hello Ralph!

[16:04]  carmonfer Oh: ok

[16:04]  You: Hello Mekatron!

[16:04]  Sean18 McCarey is Offline

[16:04]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi Ralph

[16:04]  Mekatron Koba: hi

[16:04]  Ralph Radius: Hi Everybody!

[16:04]  carmonfer Oh: Hi! :)

[16:04]  Nauka Umaga: Hi :)

[16:05]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi Mekatron

[16:05]  You: As I've mentioned in past weeks, it's great when folks contribute with specific knowledge they have about the Internet

[16:05]  You: SL makes possible rich discussion in chat, that aren't otherwise there, in my experience.

[16:06]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi Andromeda

[16:06]  You: Tonight . . . Hi Andromeda

[16:06]  Ralph Radius: Hi Andromeda.

[16:06]  carmonfer Oh: hi Andromeda

[16:06]  Nauka Umaga waves to Andromeda

[16:07]  Andromeda Mesmer: Hi everybody -- I had to go vote in RL, so late, sorry.

[16:07]  You: I wanted to talk a little about how the Internet developed after and in relation to Tim Berners-Lee created http and html and published them to a BBS

[16:08]  You: http: hypertext markup language - the language of web pages, still, primarily - and http - hypertext transfer protocol - the system of domain names that gives us the possibility to link in almost infinite ways , and which makes up the World Wide Web

[16:08]  You: Hello Rain!

[16:08]  You: BBS - bulletin Board system

[16:09]  You: So in 1989 and 1990, Tim Berners-Lee, a Brit working in Geneva at CERN as a high energy particle physicist, a full time job,

[16:10]  You: connected TCP / IP - Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol - the rules which make information packet transfer possible -

[16:10]  Rain Ninetails: Hi!

[16:11]  You: with DNS - domain name system - leading to the system of linkages

[16:11]  Nauka Umaga: Hi Rain :)

[16:11]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi Rain

[16:11]  Ralph Radius: Hi rain

[16:11]  Rain Ninetails: **smiling**

[16:11]  You: He did this with a colleague - Roger Cailiiau - and, after publishing them to a BBS - graduate students spread the word

[16:12]  You: Berners-Lee also helped to create text based word editors, which could wrtie http

[16:12]  You: And he created the world wide web, basically single-handedly

[16:12]  You: These information technologies were unplanned

[16:13]  You: They did them on their spare time

[16:13]  You: without their boss knowing it, and they gave everybody in the world a web, and a way to post to it

[16:14]  You: Hello bugatti

[16:14]  Ralph Radius: Hi Boston

[16:14]  bugatti Price: HI aplilo

[16:14]  Andromeda Mesmer: hi Bugatti!

[16:14]  bugatti Price: hi all

[16:14]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi Ralph

[16:14]  Boston Hutchinson: Hi buatti

[16:14]  bugatti Price: hi andro!

[16:14]  You: So we'll talk a lot about the development of the WWW and the Internet in the 1990s this evening.

[16:15]  You: I'll post the transcript here at teh course wiki : http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com

[16:15]  You: Discussion is welcome . . .

[16:15]  Nauka Umaga: Even Al Gore jokes? ;p

[16:15]  You: In the 90s, the web became popular - very

[16:15]  You: and it was partly a consequence of browsers, which could display graphics.

[16:16]  Veeyawn Spoonhammer is Online

[16:16]  You: All of these events were unplanned . . . it's a remarkable aspect of the Internet

[16:16]  You: so much happened accidentally

[16:16]  You: After Berners-Lee published http and html to the Web around 1990,

[16:17]  You: some researcheres at the National Computer Center at teh Univ. of Illinois said that taht was cool,

[16:17]  You: but that it would even be cooler with graphics.

[16:17]  You: and they put together MOSAIC

[16:18]  You: they were marc Andreesson and Erci Bina

[16:18]  Veeyawn Spoonhammer is Offline

[16:18]  You: They wanted to make a user friendly way to access the WWW, which berners-lee had made

[16:19]  You: And in 1993, they released mosaic online, for free, - following tradition

[16:19]  You: So much of the Internet has been shaped by hackers and folks just interested in writing software, and then sharing it, for free

[16:19]  Gayle Cabaret is Offline

[16:19]  Juria Yoshikawa is Online

[16:19]  Nauka Umaga cheers!

[16:19]  You: And it wasn't until the 1990s that business got involved in a serious way with the Internet, then helping to disseminate it

[16:20]  Nauka Umaga: question...

[16:20]  You: Much of the Internet in the 70s and 80s was made becuase people liked to play with these

[16:20]  You: Yes, Nauka

[16:20]  You: Discussion is encouraged - one of the cool things about group chat is that we can all think at once, and share it

[16:21]  Nauka Umaga: How much did business contribute to the populairty of the internet? I think lay people want content and SERVICES, and online shopping is a big service. Also, who were the early adopters in the business community?

[16:21]  You: I will try to stay on subject, but I find group chats fascinating . .

[16:21]  You: Good questions . . .

[16:21]  You: So, in response, a real entrpreneur, saw money opportunities in browsers . . .

[16:22]  Andromeda Mesmer: Well some of the entertainment companies had web sites, to promote a program.

[16:22]  Andromeda Mesmer: TV programs.

[16:22]  Xirconnia Morphett is Online

[16:22]  You: The WWW was very young, and this guy had created with Silicon Graphics, a kind of predecessor to entertainment companies

[16:22]  Andromeda Mesmer: ut mostly, fans of various programs got there first, before the big corporations.

[16:23]  You: Remember the Internet didn't become popular until about 1994-95

[16:23]  You: So the early adopters in the business community, in a sense, were the entrpreneurs who saw possibilities in the Internet

[16:24]  You: And Jim Clark, this 'real' entrepreneur, was bored

[16:24]  You: He hired Andreesson and Bina in 1993 to commercialize MOSAIC, the first graphical user friendly browser

[16:25]  You: The product was under Univ. license at this point.

[16:25]  You: And they created Netscape and shipped the 1st browser in Dec 1994.

[16:26]  You: And in 1995, something like the Internet was coming into focus for Microsoft

[16:26]  You: MOSAIC was free, I think.

[16:26]  You: And Microsoft saw the urgent need for a browser.

[16:26]  You: So they bought browser software from Spyglass

[16:27]  You: which had developed it from Tim Berners-Lee's work.

[16:27]  You: And in 1996, Microsoft (MS) released the first version of Internet Explorer

[16:27]  You: Then the whole world could surf, using the World Wide Web.

[16:28]  You: After that, Netscape and MS entered into a commercial war.

[16:28]  Froukje Hoorenbeek is Offline

[16:28]  You: :)

[16:28]  You: In 1998, Netscape released the source code for their Navigator browser

[16:28]  You: MS had done enough against them that they couldn't survive commercailly.

[16:29]  You: AOL bought Netscape . . . and browsers were born . . .

[16:29]  You: Why this battle over browsers?

[16:29]  You: Because they offered a user-friendly way to surf the Internet

[16:30]  You: Tim Berners-Lee devised this browser/editor (text based),

[16:30]  You: which poeple mostly only used as a browser, so passively - and then in small numbers

[16:30]  Barbie Starr is Online

[16:30]  Nauka Umaga: Got to go, RL, but will catch the transcript later. Bye!

[16:31]  Boston Hutchinson: Bye Nauka

[16:31]  You: Bye Nauka.

[16:31]  You: The rate of expansion outside the knowledgable community, was one of the key developments behind the popularization of the Internet

[16:31]  Eon Berkman is Online

[16:31]  You: So the Internet eveloped from synergy, to recap a major theme of this class.

[16:32]  You: And to jump broadly, there were three main contributing groups

[16:32]  You: There was scientific culture, the military, and the grass roots, who worked from and for the people.

[16:33]  You: About the military in the 1990s and before

[16:33]  You: There were not really any military applications, no military software

[16:33]  Luna Bliss is Offline

[16:33]  You: sitll the Military was impressed

[16:34]  You: And in the Cold WAr context - from the 50s and microchips forward - military reserach had UNLIMITED levels of funding.

[16:35]  You: The military for the development of the Internet, esp. chips and network technologies, was decisive in terms o

[16:35]  You: of context, but

[16:35]  You: not in terms of software itself

[16:35]  You: There was no software that could knock down the Soviets, for example.

[16:36]  You: Out of pure luck, the Defense Department supported it, through research agencies - IPTO, ARPA

[16:37]  You: Usually any such program and projects have narrow goals and applications, for the military

[16:37]  You: In this particular case, there were academics working in Defense, who understood that reedom for academics was essential.

[16:38]  You: They wanted something that was so good that missles wouldn't matter.

[16:38]  You: In the cas of US military environment, there was full support

[16:39]  You: But this was only one of three elements in the devleopment of the Internet, the others being technoscientific community, and the grass roots

[16:39]  You: And we've talked a little about these thus far

[16:40]  You: At the sources of design and development of the Internet, business wasn't involved significantly utnil the 1990s

[16:40]  You: And in terms of prevailing ideology, busienss was completely out of the process

[16:40]  You: Business couldn't have created this

[16:40]  You: Public money was the cause.

[16:41]  You: Al Gore didn't invent the Internet, but he was very important in making moneis available - what he did was important (he claimed at one point that he invveted the internet)

[16:43]  You: So Public Money - in terms of research money, both military and academic, as well as good will, specifially with no money, gave rise to the Internet.

[16:43]  You: So the most important technology of our time didn't come from business.

[16:44]  You: Because the Internet developed this way - it isn't telephone lines or computers - it leads to the question of WHAT IS IT? -

[16:44]  You: In terms of "architecture" it's "software" - that is immaterial protocols of information

[16:45]  You: And this architecture is organized in asuch a way that

[16:45]  You: it was open at 2 levels.

[16:45]  You: 1 - on the level of TCP / IP ,w hcih was open to everyone, but took some knowledge

[16:45]  You: Hello Viking

[16:45]  VikingMoonshot Akroyd: hello

[16:46]  You: We're having a class here - you're welcome to join

[16:46]  VikingMoonshot Akroyd: thanks

[16:46]  You: Here's the course wiki: http://socinfotech.pbwiki.com - at large participation is welcome

[16:47]  You: so this architecture is open at the level of software - TCP/IP

[16:47]  You: And the notion of distributive computing, meaning the power of processing is distributive throughout the entire network - is also open

[16:47]  You: Hello Cannon Fodder

[16:47]  CannonFodder Paine: hello

[16:48]  You: It distrubted and based on the star system of networking.

[16:48]  Sysku Mayo is Online

[16:48]  You: So the Internet hasand is based on an open architecture, and it's

[16:48]  You: distributed.

[16:49]  Juria Yoshikawa is Offline

[16:49]  You: The entire system can dispatch and re-route throughout the entire system.

[16:49]  You: Within the Internet, messages which are censored are interpreted as blocked and re-routed.

[16:50]  You: It's a communication system where what goes around, comes around :)

[16:50]  You: And it's based on openness.

[16:50]  You: In this open system, there are some key laws:

[16:51]  You: 1. Users are producers of technology and information

[16:51]  You: Indeed, most of the atual applications were not planned or designed by engineers, but found by hackers.

[16:52]  You: E.g. e-mail wasn't planned - programmers playing on an early network around 73 saw it was cool, and voila

[16:52]  You: e.g. cell phones . . the main use of mobile phones is for personal message - over 75% of use is for this

[16:53]  You: No one ever thought that young people staying in touch would become the backbone of the family, in a way :)

[16:53]  You: From the beginnign the Internet has been multicultural and international.

[16:54]  You: It's a myth that it is American technology and a military product.

[16:54]  You: The researchers mentioned above were always connected with other international reserachs

[16:55]  Connecting to in-world Voice Chat...

[16:55]  Connected

[16:55]  You: TCP/IP = the Internet's protocols, was invented by Cerf and Bob Kahn, as well as Lelann, who was French, and working in the Cyclades

[16:55]  You: Both French and British were essentail.

[16:55]  You: As we talked about, the WWW was invented by a British programmer in an international research center living in Geneva

[16:56]  You: USNET - the first global communication software, which when combined with a node at berkeley was the basis for the INternet around 1980, was developed internatially.

[16:57]  You: By and large, over the past 25 years, the stream of contributions to the Internet have come from around the planet.

[16:57]  You: Also key -

[16:58]  You: The Intenret has been, by and large, self-regulating, although formerly, the Internet was run by 1)Defense and 2) in the 90s, commerce

[16:58]  You: In fact, it has self-governed in a strange way.

[16:58]  You: What is self-government here?

[16:59]  You: It is a set of software - to make sure that protocols are common and the address system is common.

[16:59]  You: After that, the Network does it by itself

[17:00]  You: These developed on the basis of the Network Working Group in the late 1970s, who through a series of papers form 1973-79 invented TCP IP

[17:00]  You: Part of this process involved RFCs - Request for Comments - which were a process to iron out disagreements.

[17:01]  You: In this process, a disagreement would lead toa an agreement > a protocol

[17:01]  You: and the Internet became organized thus.

[17:01]  Joe Petrel is Online

[17:01]  You: Postel and Crocker were very instrumental in shaping RFCs

[17:01]  Sean18 McCarey is Online

[17:01]  You: So Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn organized

[17:02]  You: 1) the Internet Engineering Task Force and 2) the Internet, in the 70s, through

[17:02]  You: a series of open committees

[17:03]  You: these and technical agencies that control them, were very much controlled by Americans even through the turn of millenium

[17:03]  Sysku Mayo is Offline

[17:04]  You: ICANN, being one of the main organizations for regulating Internet names

[17:04]  You: ICANN stands for Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers

[17:04]  You: There were some fundamental critiques of ICANN as it developed in the 1990s.

[17:05]  You: First that it was subject ot crazy people.

[17:05]  Ralph Radius: Do you have a quick summary as to how RFCs are used to resolve disagreements?

[17:05]  You: The European rep in 2000 was a hacker from the German XAOS club.

[17:05]  You: And 2) ICANN is not a democratically represented body.

[17:06]  You: that it's a non traditional form of government rooted in the chaos of the Internet tradition.

[17:06]  You: So

[17:06]  You: to look back at teh History of the Internet

[17:06]  Sysku Mayo is Online

[17:06]  You: The Internet could have been completely different.

[17:07]  You: It could have been a top down, not distributed computer network

[17:07]  You: But history is made by people with values, ideas and preferences

[17:07]  You: What ultimately the Internet is, depend on the ideas and vlaueds of different groups who contributed to the Internet

[17:08]  You: And that's one of the aspects of the Internet which this course examines.

[17:08]  You: What is a cultural creation that made the Internet?

[17:09]  You: Culture in thjis context is a set of values and beliefs that influence behavior

[17:09]  You: Which cultures informed the ideas of the Internet?

[17:09]  You: 4 cultures

[17:09]  You: 1. A technomeritocratic culture

[17:10]  You: where was one VALUES is good technology

[17:10]  Annette Paster is Online

[17:10]  You: Good sortware is the supreme value

[17:10]  You: And the model iin a way is similar to the academic world

[17:10]  You: which is supposed to be based on excellence

[17:11]  You: The value of excellence, comes together with the joy of discovering

[17:11]  Miranda Tibbett is Online

[17:11]  You: There is less emphasis on money, although that has changed some

[17:11]  Xirconnia Morphett is Offline

[17:12]  You: So excellence and meritcracy informed the technomeritocratic culture, perhaps teh most important culture to shape teh intenret.

[17:12]  You: Here to develop good technology is also essentail.

[17:12]  Miranda Tibbett is Offline

[17:12]  You: Cerf, Kahn, etc. used Defense Department money And they wanted good software available to eveyrone

[17:13]  You: Pretty remarkable, given that it happened.

[17:13]  You: 2

[17:13]  You: on the basis of teh above culture, a 2nd culture developed

[17:13]  You: Hacker culture

[17:13]  Gayle Cabaret is Online

[17:13]  You: Pekka Himmanen, a Finnish phil., has written a PC book on this:

[17:14]  You: "The Hacker Ethos: the spirit of the Information Age"

[17:15]  You: In it he develops the great German sociologist Max Weber's "The Prostestant Ethic and Spirit of Capitalism" to

[17:15]  You: identify what shaped the Hacking culture - which include passion, joy, playfulness and hard work

[17:16]  You: So a Hacker here isn't the media construct of a criminal - these he calls 'crackers' -

[17:16]  You: but a hacker is someone for whom good software is the most important thing.

[17:17]  You: It's one who hack, who says I'm going to find a new solution, and shares it.

[17:17]  You: So, hackers hate crackers, who crack codes out of the challenge of it,

[17:17]  You: and make probelms for governments,

[17:18]  You: esp. political crackers

[17:18]  You: Most crackers are kids playing, and challenging the world.

[17:18]  You: Hackers write code for the pleasure of it.

[17:18]  You: How Hacker culture relates to the Internet

[17:19]  You: For Hackers, free speech is free software, free, good software

[17:19]  You: And companies are threatened by this.

[17:19]  You: A minority says software should be free

[17:20]  You: And the majority of Hackers need free software to imporve software

[17:20]  You: through free software and information exchange.

[17:20]  You: E.g. Linux - which name comes from Linus Torvalds

[17:20]  You: He started with the kernel of an operating system, first called

[17:20]  You: FREIX

[17:21]  You: but server adminstrators called it LINUX

[17:21]  You: Torvalds released the program because he wanted the program to be improved

[17:21]  You: And thousands and thousands of people improved it, all for free

[17:21]  You: Why keep it free?

[17:22]  You: Because if you freeze it for yourself, you close it off.

[17:22]  You: So in Hacker culture, you

[17:22]  You: 1) give in order to be given

[17:22]  You: 2. presetige among Hackers is more important than money.

[17:22]  You: And most can get money, but not all can be recognized.

[17:23]  You: They aren't against money, but against money as a supreme value.

[17:24]  You: So a technomeritocratic culture was essentail to informing Hacking culture - with its ability to keep free all key software on the Internet.

[17:24]  You: Who here has heard of UBUNTU?

[17:24]  You: Has anyone?

[17:24]  Andromeda Mesmer: Just the name.

[17:24]  You: It's a free operating system aimed at the average user

[17:25]  You: It's partly the project of a south african businessman

[17:25]  You: It's runs on linux

[17:25]  You: And it's pretty good.

[17:26]  You: SL comes in a linux version, and I met someone who runs it two days ago here in SL, on UBUNTA

[17:27]  You: UBUNTU is an Afrian word, which means "humanity toward others"

[17:27]  You: and it's free - an interesting example of hacker culture

[17:27]  You: *african

[17:27]  Whitelight Christiansen is Online

[17:28]  You: And one laptop per child or x0-1 is running linux, for exmaple - a project which comes out of the MIT Media lab

[17:28]  You: So, in terms of the cultures which gave rise to the internet

[17:29]  You: 3) a communitarian culture also shaped the Internet, and they weren't all hackers, by any means.

[17:29]  You: What was important here was people communicating w people

[17:29]  You: and shaping communities online

[17:29]  You: They wanted to share information

[17:30]  You: and meet in chat rooms and through lists.

[17:31]  You: And as I mentioend a few Wednesdays ago, the San Franciso Science Fiction club, and the Marijuana procurement club, were two of tehfirst and largest communities on the Internet in the 1970s :)

[17:31]  You: (I saw you typing Boston , but nothing appeared).

[17:31]  Boston Hutchinson: sounds like cultural hackers, as compared with programmer-hackers

[17:31]  You: Fourthly, an entrepreneurial culture was significant, but only int eh 90s)

[17:32]  You: :)

[17:32]  You: They said all of this is great, but how can we make a pile of money?

[17:32]  You: Especially when information technologies are very

[17:33]  You: risky investments

[17:33]  You: HOw to make a business out of applications?

[17:33]  Eon Berkman is Offline

[17:33]  You: And this culture helped to diffuse the Internet to the rest of teh world, which led to developing markets, and wide use among people.

[17:34]  You: So the importance of these cultures goes from top to bottom

[17:34]  You: 1. technomeritocratic

[17:34]  You: 2

[17:34]  You: hacker

[17:34]  You: 3

[17:34]  You: communitarian

[17:34]  You: and 4

[17:34]  You: entrepreneurial

[17:34]  You: in terms of shaping the Internet.

[17:34]  You: questions? Thoughts? observations?

[17:35]  Andromeda Mesmer: Yes

[17:35]  You: namely?

[17:35]  Andromeda Mesmer: I'd like to point out that hackers and crackers are not necessarily separate -- an individual can be both.

[17:36]  You: Yes, that's a distinction that's useful in explaining hacker's contribution to free software . .

[17:36]  Andromeda Mesmer: A person might crack a code, jjust for the challenge, but also contribute to the hacker community.

[17:37]  You: And 'reifying' - thingifying - cultures is also a problematic approach - because the internet developments here were quite chaotic, but these

[17:38]  Gayle Cabaret is Offline

[17:38]  You: differences also help clarify some of the values, and ideas informing the devleopment of the internet

[17:38]  Andromeda Mesmer: And some of the he growth in the Open Source moment, and in Linux, was motivated by anti-Microsoft sentiment too -- a concern too that they were a US corpoation.

[17:39]  Andromeda Mesmer: Besides, Linux runs much better, faster, than MS. The MS "blue screen of death" is pretty notorious.

[17:39]  You: Yes, competition between open-source and commercial processes is fascinating - because it's a whole new arean.

[17:39]  Ralph Radius: I'm cureous how RFCs are used to resolve confilicts. There must be lots of disageeements by very opinionated people concerned about software and the internet.

[17:39]  Gayle Cabaret is Online

[17:39]  You: Jochai Benkler, who just moved from Yale to Harvard, makes a fascianting argument in

[17:39]  bugatti Price: I apologize. RL is calling me. Great lecture!

[17:40]  You: The Wealth of Networks : How Social Production Transforms Markets adn Freedom"

[17:40]  Boston Hutchinson: gotta go for a minute. will beback i hope...

[17:40]  You: suggesting that there is a whole new mode of non- market production

[17:40]  Ralph Radius: Bye Boston

[17:40]  You: shaped as a consequence of very low cost computing, thus creating a new economic sphere."

[17:41]  You: The book is available online.

[17:41]  You: RFCs were reconciled via very early networks in the 1970s,

[17:42]  Andromeda Mesmer: another thing worth mentioning is the SETI project -- how they have used the PCs of thusands of people to process data.

[17:42]  Andromeda Mesmer: An example of sharing ...

[17:42]  You: along the lines of we need a protocol to transfer simple mail. There are two options we see now, given the technologies at the time. X wants technology 1, y wants technology 2. let's put it out for ocmment . .

[17:44]  You: It was a remarkable decision making process that emerged organically in the context of networks, since networks and decision making processes about them were invented concurrently.

[17:45]  You: ftp, - file transfer protocol, http - hyper text transfer protocol, smtp - simple mail transfer protocol, were mostly written in the 1970s as ways to share information over networks in specific ways.

[17:45]  You: Boston - were you involved in this, at all, by any chance?

[17:45]  Boston Hutchinson: No, I wassn't unfortunateley

[17:45]  You: A lot of protocols were written about very specific processes . . .

[17:46]  You: and they provide the backbone of the internet to this day . . .

[17:46]  Sean18 McCarey is Online

[17:46]  You: TCP/IP, written as an open system, is difficult to make secure

[17:46]  Ralph Radius: Do the people who read and make the comments just reach a consensus?

[17:47]  You: Transmisison control protocol/Internet Protocol

[17:48]  You: Yes, - most knew each other, and many were working in California, playing - hacking, in a way,with computers

[17:49]  You: So say you were tyring to figure out how to transfer files, and you saw these options, and someone else, whom you knew, was also doing it, if you came to a disagreement, you'd put it out over the web - remember email existed from about 1973, and people would respond . . .

[17:50]  Ralph Radius: It's amazing that something so technically complex as the internet could be created in such a way.

[17:50]  You: I wasn't involved at the time, but it may be like the Macintosh users group in SL where people ask questions.

[17:51]  You: Perhaps you have some knowledge of this, Boston, but these technologies together are very complex, but when you were working on a single protocol in an open context in the 1970s, I imagine

[17:51]  You: the protocols were not that complex.

[17:52]  Boston Hutchinson: I think the word you used earlier--Technomeritocracy?--describes it. A lot of government contracts to academic institutions function similarly

[17:52]  You: Yes .. .

[17:52]  You: It's a collaborative process

[17:52]  You have offered friendship to Rain Ninetails

[17:53]  Boston Hutchinson: People shared ideas. decisions were made by managers, but only after a lot of input, tending to lead to consensus

[17:53]  You: Let's draw to a close in the next few moments,

[17:53]  Rain Ninetails is Online

[17:53]  Ralph Radius: k

[17:53]  Boston Hutchinson: i worked on some NASA and DOD projects that functioned something like this

[17:54]  A group member named Jenn Hienrichs gave you San Francesco Assisi, san francesco assisi (245, 108, 64).

[17:54]  You: But it was the Internet Engineering Task Force, and a very loose group of engineers that helped shape TCP IP in the 70s

[17:55]  You: Yes,

[17:55]  You: Boston, would you like to make a presentation at some point on Croquet?

[17:56]  You: Next week, we'll talk about virtual communities

[17:56]  Boston Hutchinson: I'm afraid I haven't gotten it to work on my network yet...

[17:56]  You: it can be pretty informal

[17:56]  You: just your interest and the potential you see . . .

[17:56]  You: I see

[17:56]  Boston Hutchinson: I have a lot of interest in theory, but not much practical knowledge

[17:56]  Free Info NoteBook from SquirrelTech: This is a free item and is not meant to be sold.

[17:57]  Boston Hutchinson: maybe i should spend some more time working on it first

[17:57]  Parriah Janus is Online

[17:57]  You: One article I read suggested the virtual worlds conference that just went on

[17:58]  You: is trying to distance itself from SL - the conf was in San jose

[17:58]  You: I think Croquet is one fascinating example that might do this . . .

[17:58]  Andromeda Mesmer: Aphilo, could you report on the Virtual Worlds conference at some point?

[17:59]  You: That's fine, Boston . . . just let me know if you'd like to make a presentation.

[17:59]  Boston Hutchinson: I do think croquet has a very exciting design concept, and could be the start of another Internet revolution

[17:59]  Boston Hutchinson: but only if something happens to popularize it

[17:59]  You: because it is distributed, like the internet.

[17:59]  Boston Hutchinson: exactly. no servers

[18:00]  Boston Hutchinson: and its got more computer power than google--every PC on the internet

[18:00]  Ralph Radius: I

[18:00]  Andromeda Mesmer: I could have my own SL island, without buying it from Linden Labs.

[18:00]  You: Making it easy may be the challenge.

[18:00]  You: Perhaps we can have a discussion about this, next week or soon.

[18:00]  Boston Hutchinson: A bit like the SETI project you mentioned earlier, Andromeda, but not under central control

[18:01]  You: Yes.

[18:01]  Boston Hutchinson: Yes, you can run your own island on your own PC, though some software changes might be necessary to keep it going when your PC crashes

[18:02]  Andromeda Mesmer: Unline when SL crashes :)

[18:02]  Andromeda Mesmer: *unlike

[18:02]  You: I'll try to report on the virtaul world's confernece, but I wasn't there.

[18:02]  Andromeda Mesmer: Oh, that's right -- you were in Chicago -- the SL conference?

[18:02]  You: Yes, jet SLCC

[18:03]  Boston Hutchinson: Well, SL has many servers, and theyre more stable than our PCs, but it's possible to achieve that stability through distributed processing also...

[18:03]  You: Well, let's talk about this next week.

[18:03]  Andromeda Mesmer: Then possibly, if my Macintosh does something strange, my Island cold still stay on.

[18:03]  Boston Hutchinson: exactly

[18:03]  You: I'll try to leave open some time at the end of class to talk about this.

[18:04]  Andromeda Mesmer: There may be agreements again -- about who wll be willing to host an island or islands.

[18:04]  Boston Hutchinson: but Macs don't crash. :)

[18:04]  You: Very rarely :)

[18:04]  Andromeda Mesmer: And besides, in a few years, PCs will be as powerful as servers are now.

[18:04]  You: True

[18:04]  Boston Hutchinson: yes, very few years

[18:05]  Andromeda Mesmer: Well, more precisely -- my cable company does something and my connection goes down. You are right. Macs don't crash - against the laws of the universe or something :)

[18:05]  You: Bandwidth may be the limitation for some while, in addition to servers

[18:06]  Ralph Radius: Aphilo, have you considered giving parts of your lectures in SL Voice? People without Mics can not speak but everone in SL can now use their viewers to hear.

[18:06]  Boston Hutchinson: But if your island weas runing on a friend's PC also, and that friend's island was running on your PC, etc, there would be backup

[18:06]  You: I'm interested, but not everyone has even audio enabled computers, I think.

[18:07]  You: Can everyone hear on the their computers here?

[18:07]  Ralph Radius: Yes.

[18:07]  Andromeda Mesmer: This kind of distribution, BTW, is delighting the anarchists who want more ppower to invidiauls.

[18:07]  Andromeda Mesmer: I have sound, yes.

[18:07]  Andromeda Mesmer: Sound is pretty easy, except maybe for some newbies.

[18:08]  Boston Hutchinson: I can hear, but dont have a good mike yet

[18:08]  Andromeda Mesmer: But with sound -- ther is no transcript.

[18:08]  You: The Internet is wonderfully open, and very difficult to control, because it is decetnralized, and in the US, at least, we have freedom of speech.

[18:08]  Andromeda Mesmer: Questions and comments could be typed in.

[18:08]  You: Rain, do you have sound?

[18:08]  Ralph Radius: Audio on computers that can run SL is probably pretty common.

[18:08]  Andromeda Mesmer: I went to an architectural lecture, where that was the method -- worked well.

[18:08]  Boston Hutchinson: the transcript is useful, as is the ability to have mutiple conversations overlapping

[18:09]  Rain Ninetails: I don't know, I had streaming audio in one event I went to

[18:09]  You: and that is lost with voice - type chat is rich, in a sense.

[18:09]  Ralph Radius: I mention it because I have a friend who gives talks that way. She voices and her students type.

[18:09]  Andromeda Mesmer: There was one class like that at the Academy of Second Learning -- but they gave it up.

[18:10]  Ralph Radius: Ah

[18:10]  Andromeda Mesmer: I am also not sure about inccreased lag due to voice --

[18:10]  Andromeda Mesmer: Right now, I am worrying about acrashing -- seem to be freezing at some points.

[18:10]  You: I see . . . let's see who comes next week . . . although it's slow, and slightly laborious, I enjoy type chat for a variety of reasons.

[18:10]  Ralph Radius: Maybe I've been lucky with voice.

[18:11]  Ralph Radius: Sounds good. Thanks Aphilo, That was a very interesing lecture.

[18:11]  You: Glad you all came - the development of the Internet is fascinating . . .

[18:11]  Andromeda Mesmer: Yes, it really was interesting.

[18:11]  Rain Ninetails: yes, and I liked your T shirt -- very ironical

[18:11]  You: See you next week . . .

[18:11]  Rain Ninetails: maybe it should have "L$"

[18:11]  Boston Hutchinson: Thanks, Aphilo, great class!

[18:11]  You: Thanks

[18:11]  Rain Ninetails: **smiling**

[18:11]  Ralph Radius: See you all then.

[18:11]  Boston Hutchinson: And thanks all for the great discussion!

[18:12]  You: At some point, perhaps, Rain . . .but I want to encourage at-large particiaption

[18:12]  You: Yes, thanks for the discussion!

[18:12]  Andromeda Mesmer: Aphilo -

[18:12]  You: Yes, A?

[18:12]  Andromeda Mesmer: Maybe somebody here knows about how to post notices?

[18:12]  Andromeda Mesmer: To events?

[18:13]  Ralph Radius: I don't think its too hard. I could help if you want to try.

[18:13]  You: I was just getting a repeated error message concerning my attempt to post a description

[18:13]  Rain Ninetails: on your shirt , i mean

[18:13]  You: very frustrating . . .

[18:13]  Ralph Radius: Yeh.

[18:13]  Andromeda Mesmer: This is a good course and discussion, and more people should know about it.

[18:13]  You: But I did successfully post the wiki

[18:14]  You: Do check out Second Life events - it's a rich reseource

[18:14]  You: Hello Mandira

[18:14]  Andromeda Mesmer: It is great -- except for me today -- I could not make it work. I will try relogging and see what happens then.

[18:14]  Andromeda Mesmer: I RELY on Search/Events/

[18:14]  Andromeda Mesmer: eduational

[18:14]  You: Please tell friends

[18:14]  Rain Ninetails: of course then god would have to be a linden **smiling**

[18:14]  You: and invite them . . .

[18:15]  You: Rain, are you asking wha'ts on my shirt?

[18:15]  Barbie Starr is Offline

[18:15]  Rain Ninetails: it is quite ironical, I said I like it

[18:15]  You: I see . . . ah Michelangelo

[18:15]  Rain Ninetails: and maybe it should be L$, not $

[18:15]  Ralph Radius: I'll ask I can't see your shirt clearly.

[18:16]  You: God and Adam - finger to finger - from the Sistene Chapel

[18:16]  Rain Ninetails: havAphilo, have you _seen_ your shirt ? *smiling*

[18:17]  You: I still don't have any Linden $ :)

[18:17]  You: Yes . . . on the back it says Berkman island . . . and more . . .

[18:17]  You: Anyway, I have some things I need to do . . .

[18:18]  Ralph Radius: Nite everybody!

[18:18]  Rain Ninetails: ah to dinner for me !

[18:18]  Rain Ninetails: I really enjoyed it

[18:18]  You: Good night . . . Bon appetit

[18:18]  You: really glad you came

[18:18]  Andromeda Mesmer: Good night, Aphilo!

[18:18]  You: See you next week . . .

[18:18]  Ralph Radius: Yes it was very interesting. Thanks Aphilo!

[18:18]  You: TX

[18:18]  Andromeda Mesmer: I will let people know!

[18:18]  Boston Hutchinson: Good night, everyone!

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