The Internet
In the beginning
Before there could be a World Wide Web, a bit like the creation of the universe, some necessary and sufficient conditions needed to be in place first.
How the WWW came into being
The infrastructure; the wires, the routers, and the computers to carry, direct, and store all the messages and pictures is commonly called the Internet. All this hardware was necessary but it required something else to make the hardware useful, a transmission language, so that computers could talk to each other and so some bright spark, physicist Tim Berners-Lee, invented HTTP, Hypertext Transfer Protocal (1989). Berners-Lee was also responsible for the first web browser, called 'WorldWideWeb' (1991), this confused people so he changed the name to Nexus. In addition, Berners-Lee, among many others, was finding practical applications for hypertext, as a means of organising and navigating to and through large amounts of information. (See sidebar note for a discussion of Hypertext)
Sending off the referees note:
With the technical ingredients in place, all that was now needed was to open up access to the infrastructure to commerical traffic and this began to happen, enabling everyone to start using the Web. Not all academics were signed up to Berners-Lee's world view. The academic community, who largely had everything to themselves before the early 90s, did not want their networks opened up to commercial use. This was not surprising when you consider that the academic community saw itself as the referee, the arbiter of all knowledge - the growing potential of the Web would challenge this world view.
Jimmy Wales, who founded Wikipedia in 2001, suggests it's time for academics to play a much bigger role in disseminating knowledge by becoming expert editors for the on-line encyclopedia.
Early Internet Use
Before the first browsers came on the scene there were no web pages as we know them today but there were virtual communities, forums of people using dial-up bulletin board systems (BBS). One of first was The Well (1985) inspired by the spirit of counter culture, free access and free expression, collaboration and sharing. In a sense The Well established the 'open source' philosophy that still prevails on the Web today, despite Bill Gates's efforts to profit from the click of every mouse button.
Bill Gates and megalomania
Gates did his best to take control of the Web in the 1990s and attempted to use anti-competitive scams to force genuine innovators out of the browser market. Gates was late to the Internet party and he couldn't live with his own lack of foresight. Specifically, he couldn't comprehend the concept of collaboration, people giving freely of their time, giving software code away; there was no place for it in a mind that applauded only grasping. Ultimately, the US Courts freed the browser market from the grasping of Microsoft and even Gates had to give his browser away for nothing.
One of Gate's early Internet ideas was to set up a web site that people would pay to use, he described it as a 'walled garden', full of marvelous content. It was a short lived venture, it offered nothing that wasn't abundantly free elsewhere. This was Gate's last effort to control WWW. Gate's major contribution was in the realm of operating systems, not the WWW, he was and is bit part player.
Who owns the Internet
All the wires and cables, servers and routers that enable the movement of information around the globe instantly are owned by governments and large Telcos. This global infrastructure grew from US efforts to build a post nuclear attack means of communication in the early 1960s. The demands of the military drove network developments, like 'packet switching', that made fast and reliable communication between phyically remote computers possible. The research behind the cold war mania produced ARPANET, the initial core of today's Internet. From the late 60s onward, developments in global networking was the product of a collaborative international research effort.
The role of Internet Service Providers (ISPs)
The ISPs are the Internet Gatekeepers, they rent the cables from the Telcos and sell access to the public and they provide storage space on-line for their customers' information; in a sense they 'house' information and make it freely available to the world. The ISPs also provide email services. The first dial-up Internet Service was launched in 1989 in the US.
The role of Domain Name Services (DNS)
Ownership of websites, top-level domains, e.g. .com, .net, .gov etc are controlled under licence by a few companies world wide who keep a register of all website names. Customers buy names from an intermediary, who in turn pays a fee to maintain the register. Subsequently, the name can be traded, again through an intermediary company.
The purpose of the DNS system is to ensure that each Internet address is unique. Additionally, the system supplies all new blocks of web addresses to match the growth of the Internet. When we type a website name into a browser that name corresponds to a unique computer number, i.e. a web address; all a bit like the postcode system.
Note: ICANN (The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), is the independent organisation that controls the world’s domain name system
Regulating Technical Standards
Every aspect of the Internet and World Wide Web specifications are under constant revision. Every new innovation goes through the grinder of the regulators, a collaborative global perpetual discussion to maintain the integrity of the Web.
All the details that users take for granted now is governed by the World Wide Web Consortium (WC3), informed by a whole range of technical and expert groups.
The Paradox of the Web
The World Wide Web provides the free and unfettered exhange and access to information across the globe, it thrives on the counter cultural philosophy of anything goes and yet it is highly regulated and controlled at the level of its orgainisation. The WWW is open to everyone for a minimum outlay but governments can pull the plug if they fear the freedom it promotes (e.g. China). And the way its structured lends itself to an invasion of individual freedom, e.g. the UK Government's multi-billion pound scheme to eaves-drop on citizens' communications. We are also seeing threats to bar individual users from Web use to protect the profits of big business, who refuse to adopt and adapt their historic business models. This last example is worth pondering for a moment.
The efforts of big players in the music and film industries to prevent peer to peer file sharing are being constantly thwarted by the amateur Web pirates. Having no technical answer to the pirates, business uses its muscle to enlist political support to restrict the sharing activities of net users. What we have here are two diametrically opposed world views, the one insists on the openness of the web, the other seeks to control the web.
The newspaper industry is now considering charging for on-line versions of its publications. It doesn't like the concept of free, prevented by an innate arrogance about the ownership of public knowledge. Some are dreaming up electronic tagging systems to track web authors who steal 'their ideas'. And book publishers are in despair over the appearance of digitized versions of their blockbusters on the web before they appear in the shops but J K Rowling seems to be surviving.
The openness of the Web doesn't just threaten the insecurities of companies, it also makes governments fearful. And as China and Iran have demonstrated, the State wants to be the final arbiter of how open a society will be. Optimistically, this may be a vain quest.
Reasons to be cheerful
The controlling ambitions of some states may be damned by the distributive structure of the Web, the escape and sharing of information is not in one place, it's everywhere. The dissent broadcast mechanism is not conveniently packaged into easily identifiable groups but rather millions of individual voices and opinions. This broadcast of dissent cannot be phyically unplugged without unplugging all the activity that the State sanctions. Paradox!
The December 2010 attacks on Wikileaks demonstrate clearly that even the mighty USA can't stifle dissent.... but China and Syria are doing a pretty good job.
However, don't get too carried away....
The Personalisation of Information (June 2011)
King of the search engines, Google, has been heavily criticized for its antics, in particular, in relation to the hijacking of personal data whilst filming for its peep show, Street View. However, few users of Google will be aware of Google's new corporate strategy of personalising everyone's searches.
Google has re-written its code, so that when a user carries out a search, Google also attempts to second guess what else that user might be interested in. In addition, it will tailor the search list according to your supposed preferences.
The problem with this attempt at personalisation is that two individuals using the same search criteria will end up with different outcomes. In effect, Google's code makers are deciding what you get. They do this by assessing you against over 50 different criteria, building up a profile of you over time. This process of profile building informs the 'code' about what information you are interested in - whether you are interested or not.
Some argue that this corporate strategy puts users in an information bubble. Effectively, the user's world of information is being reduced and managed.
The creators of the internet envisaged something bigger and more important than a global system for sharing pictures of pets. The manifesto that helped launch the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s championed a "civilisation of Mind in cyberspace" – a kind of worldwide metabrain. But personalised filters sever the synapses in that brain. Without knowing it, we may be giving ourselves a kind of global lobotomy instead.
If "code is law", as Creative Commons founder Larry Lessig declared, it's important to understand what the new lawmakers are trying to do.
The Dark Side Luke (Aug. 2011)
Beyond the Internet, that Google thinks it owns, lays a deeper layer, a hidden web, containing supermarkets for illegal trading. Here criminals trade firearms, drug-making paraphernalia, hacking kits, compromised data and child porn', as well as, forged passports, stolen credit card details, and hardcore drugs. Some of the sites are nothing more than a hidden club for geeks and the hacking community; groups like LulzSec and Anonymous lurk on the Dark Side of the web.
The Dark Side has developed its own currency, Bitcoin, making it difficult for the forces of law and order to 'follow the money'.
The websites have deliberately obscure addresses and cannot be found by accident, and they are not indexed by any search engines. In order to access them a user must download special software - and when they access the sites, the technology means that they do so anonymously; the software disguises the computer's IP address.
The police claim to be on top of the problem?
Google: making life difficult
Life does not have to be difficult unless you're Google, then you insist on making things ridiculously difficult.
Take a deep breath. Everyone knows that Google have upset quite a few people with their prying Street View project. However, how many people know that Google also managed to grab a whole load of private data from citizens WiFi connections as it roamed the streets being nosy for no good reason.
Citizens used their home computers oblivious to the fact that the Google car was passing by collecting the information being sent from their computer across wireless Internet connections. Google says this was a mistake; they had left some code in their program that should have been taken out and this inadvertently gathered citizens private communications.
O.K. just delete the data then. Ah, can't do that since it is now evidence. Google says it is retaining the data until the Information Commission's Office (ICO) says it can go ahead and delete it.
Well actually, ICO has told Google to delete the data but Google doesn't want to do so yet. Why? Because campaigning group Privacy International is suggesting that Google is liable under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act of obtaining data unlawfully.
It gets worse. In Germany and elsewhere in Europe Google is being investigated for breaches of data protection laws, specifically, computer hacking.
Let's hope a very large fine or two is handed out to Google. Street View has no value except if you are a crook looking for thieving opportunities.
A Citizen's Guide to Social Networking
Social online Networking...
is it a mediocre digital nightmare? Or is it something more special, is it about community and collaboration, is it about taking power from the few and distributing it a bit more widely, people informing and helping one another and "changing the way the world changes" (Grossman, Time, 2006). Probably not. More probably, as Tim Berners-Lee suggested, it's about "people to people" and that is what the Web was supposed to be all along.
Unfortunately, whatever the Web was supposed to be, it's not. The bit the marketing men and big business have not taken control of is now in the hands of the nutters; every fruitcake with a computer is out there blogging, making virtual friends, telling the world what they had for breakfast, living a 'second life', playing war games and generally losing themselves... is it all just the modern day equivalent of going to Butlins for a holiday, minus the spyware, adware, and domain hijackers.
Four-Square: owned by founder Dennis Crowley, launched into the digital world in 2009, Four-Square has 2 million users. And what do these people do? They tell the world where they are - that's it, I'm in Starbucks and if I tell the world often enough and I gain a frequency rating and may become a 'Mayor' of a given location. This late comer to Social Networking really is at the business end, ie. providing live marketing data for big business. " Our data generates hugely interesting trends that would enrich search", Crowley tells the world. Translated this means expect a tie up with a big search engine soon. Four-Square has been valued at $95 million (July 2010).
MySpace: controlled by Fox International Media, owned by News Corporation, i.e., Rupert Murdoch. This is the weakest spot in News Corp's finances its digital media division, where losses at the social networking website MySpace continue to pile up. Murdoch said he had confidence in a new management team charged with changing the direction of MySpace, which has been eclipsed in popularity by rival Facebook. He indicated that News Corp would keep trying to turn it around: "We'll see it through for some time yet." (July 2010) However, Dec. 2010, word on the Web is that MySpace is all but dead in the water, drown by Facebook and Twitter.
Facebook Inc.: privately owned, CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft have a small 1.5% stake. Facebook has 500 million active users and annual turnover of $1 billion.(July 2010)
There is also a business focussed social networking site, similar to Facebook called LinkedIn. This site has 70 million users and its main purpose is to allow people to 'network' in the business sense, i.e. sell themselves. Also growing fast in business networking are Viadeo (30 million) and XING (9 million).
You Tube: owned by Google. YouTube was set up by three former PayPal employees in 2005 and bought by Google at the end of 2006 for $1.6 billion. You Tube is straightforwardly a video-sharing website which has caused concern for the film and music industries, the Premier League and politicians. Critics would argue that You Tube is not the greatest policeman in the world, when it comes to monitoring user generated content. There have been a number of lawsuits but few have been successful to date.
Twitter: privately owned but backed up by a tangle of venture capitalists in the US. Twitter is described as a microblogging site, meaning you don't have to write an essay. In fact, postings, called Tweets, are limited to 140 characters - which is about all most Tweeters can manage, as they share the boring mundane details of the their daily lives with the rest of the world. The definition of a Twitter is "a short burst of inconsequential information," say no more. Currently, about 65 million tweets are posted each day. (July 2010)
Bebo: "Blog early, blog often" owned by AOL, owned by Time Warner Inc. (until June 2010) Now owned by Criterion Capital Partners. Bebo is not just about blogging and is very similar to Facebook in practice but its user base has declined in favour of Facebook and Twitter.
Skype: owned by 35% by eBay but the software that runs the show is only licenced and Joltid, the software owners, are not happy with eBay - there will a court action in June 2010. Note: the people behind Joltid are the same people who created the nefarious Kazaa peer-to-peer file sharing music software. Who owns the other 65% of Skype? US private equity group Silver Lake Partners backed by JP Morgan, Barclays and RBC Capital Markets, private equity firm Index Ventures, the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, and Andreessen Horowtiz, a new venture capital group led by Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and his long-term business partner Ben Horowitz.
World of Warcraft, often referred to as WoW, is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) owned by Blizzard Entertainment. WoW has 60% of the online game market with over 11 million subscribers a month. The gaming industry has eclipse the film box office by billions of dollars in recent years.
Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Labs. 'Residents' interact (sic) with each other through avatars. In January 2010, 18 million accounts were registered. Second Life, in all respects is just the same as the First one, i.e. reality. The difference lays in users ability to recreate themselves as they would wish to be via the use of the avatars.
Groupon Dec. 2010
Watch out for the rise of Groupon, a new form of Internet shopping.
Groupon is a compound of Group and Coupon. The basic idea, the more people that sign up for a deal, the cheaper it becomes.
A nice little earner for the founder, Andrew Mason, set to do a deal with Google said to be worth $6 billion.
