An interesting thing occurred to us on the journey to the future. The internet changed from an exotic thing to a boring utility, much like mains electricity or running water and we didn’t even notice. We ended up becoming completely dependent on a system that is utterly obsessed. Do you think I’m exaggerating about the dependence? You can ask Estonia one of the most connected nations on earth that was shut down for two weeks due to an ongoing attack on its network infrastructure. Imagine what it would be like if one day, you found you unable to book flights, transfer money from your bank account, look up the timetables of buses, send emails or search Google or call your family via Skype purchase songs from Apple or books on Amazon Buy or sell items on eBay or watch videos in YouTube or BBC programs on the iPlayer or perform the hundreds of other things that are now almost as normal as breathing.
The internet is quietly affecting our lives, yet we’re remarkably unaware of it. This isn’t because we’re deficient of knowledge about the internet in fact we’re inundated with information. We just aren’t sure what all it signifies. We’re in a state that was described by the famous cyberspace scholar, Manuel Castells, as “informed confusion”.
The mainstream media aren’t helping in this regard, as a lot of media coverage of the internet is negative. It’s a must to our children’s education however, they admit, it’s rife with predators online looking for children to “groom” to be abused. Google claims to be “making us dumb” as well as destroying our focus to the point of distraction. The company is also believed to be causing an increase in plagiarism. File sharing is ruining music, the internet is destroying newspapers and Amazon is destroying book stores. The internet has made fun of legal injunctions, and the internet is filled with distortions, lies and falsehoods. Social media fuels the rise of vengeful “flash mobs” that ambush innocent columnists like Jan Moir. And so on.
This could lead an uninitiated observer to wonder what if the internet was an absolute disaster and a disaster, why do 27 percent of the world’s population (or approximately 1.8 billion users) make use of it every day, and billions want internet access?
How can we go to get a more informed view of the internet ? What do you really need to know about what is happening on the internet phenomenon? After thinking about it for a long time I’m convinced that you only need an enumeration of small concepts that, when taken in combination, dramatically reduce the confusion that Castells’s writing is so beautifully.
However, how many possibilities do you have? In 1956, the psychotherapist George Miller published a famous article published in Psychological Review. The title of the paper is “The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some limitations on our capacity for processing information” and in it, Miller attempted to summarize previous experiments that attempted to determine the limitations of short-term memory in people. In all cases, he stated that the actual “channel capacity” was between five and nine options. Miller did not draw any conclusions from this however, and was content with a speculative guess that “the repeated sevens could be a sign of something profound and significant or be simply coincidence”. The most likely conclusion, he believed, was the case.
However, Miller was unaware of the enthusiasm of the popular culture for anything that had the word “magical or “magical” as the subject. Instead of being regarded as an aggregator of research findings, Miller found himself identified as a spiritual sage, a discoverer of the most profound truths regarding human behavior. “My issue,” he wrote, “is that I’ve been a victim of an infinity. Since 2007, this number has been following me around, has gotten into my most private 링크모음 and has snuck me through the pages of our most popular journal… It could be that there truly is something peculiar about the number , or I have delusions of persecutors.”
In reality the fundamental idea that Miller formulated in his 1956 paper appears to have been able to stand the tests of time. The concept is that our short-term memory is able to hold between five to 9 “chunks” of data at any given time (here chunks are defined as an “meaningful piece of information”). Therefore, when trying to determine how many major concepts about the internet could be relevant to the majority of readers It was logical to go with a number of 9. Here the nine ideas.
1. TAKE THE LONG View
The most interesting thing of living through a revolution is that it can be very difficult to know what’s happening. Imagine what it would have been like to be a resident in St Petersburg in 1917, during the time before Lenin as well as the Bolsheviks eventually took over the power. It is clear that important developments are in the making and there are a myriad of contradicting theories and rumours however, no one knows what the outcome will be. Only through retrospective analysis can we have an accurate picture of what transpired. However, the clarity hindsight can provide is not always accurate as it doesn’t reflect the degree of confusion that was evident to those around at the time.
It’s happening right today. We’re experiencing a massive change in our communication environment. Because we don’t have the advantage of hindsight, we aren’t sure where it’s leading us. One thing we’ve learned from the past of technology in communications can be that we tend to underestimate the impact of these technological advances and underestimate the long-term effects of these technologies.
We can see this all in our daily lives as aspiring savants, writers, commentators, and visionaries share their own opinions about what internet technology can mean for publishing, business education, retailing, politics, and the future of civilization as we are used to it. Most often, these opinions are made into a plethora of catchy slogans such as memes, aphorisms, or memes: Information “wants to become free” and”the “long long tail” will be the new retail’s future “Facebook has taken all control over the web” and on. These types of statements are in reality just short-term exaggerations from the past or present. They don’t tell us much about what direction the current revolution we’re experiencing is headed. The issue is: can we be better than this without falling into the trap of pretending that we are omniscient?
This is a revolutionary idea to see what can learn from the past? Since mankind has experienced changes in the world of communications, that was triggered through technology that allowed printing using moving type. The technology revolutionized the world , and in fact it changed the social environment where the majority of people were raised. The best part about it, as seen from the perspective of this article is that we are able to look at it through the lens of the hindsight. We are aware of what transpired.
A thought experiment
Let’s try what Germans refer to as a “Thinkexperiment”an experiment in thought. Imagine that the internet represents the same kind of change in our communication environment as the one caused by printing. What can we learn from this test?
The first Bibles printed appeared in 1455, from the press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the German city of Mainz. Imagine that 1472 is the year which is 17 years following 1455. Imagine being the version of the Mori pollster, sitting on the bridge in Mainz with an instrument in your hands and asking passers-by a few questions. This is question number four on a scale of 1 to 5, in which one signifies “Not at any time likely” and five is “Very likely” How likely do you believe Gutenberg’s invention:
(a) Do you want to undermine (a) undermine the power of the Catholic church?
(b) Power the Reformation?
(c) Facilitate the growth of science and technology?
(d) Create completely new professions and social classes?
(e) What if we changed our perceptions about “childhood” as an unprotected young stage in a person’s life?
On a scale from 1 to 5! It is only necessary to ask the questions to see the absurdity of the concept. Printing was indeed able to produce many of these effects, however, there is no way that anyone who lived in 1472 in Mainz (or any other place in the world, for the matter) would have realized the extent of its effects. be.
I’m writing this article in 2010 it’s been 17 years since the internet became a mainstream phenomenon. If I’m correct regarding the web causing an alteration in our communication environment similar to the one wrought by Gutenberg and the like, it’s clearly ridiculous to me (or any other person) to claim to know the long-term effects of it will be. The truth is that we don’t even know.
The problem is everyone affected by the internet demands an answer today. Journalists and employers are eager to know what’s going change their business. The music industry publishing, television networks, publishers, radio stations and travel agents, government departments and universities, telcos, libraries, airlines and a myriad of other. The unfortunate reality is that all of them will have to develop patience. For certain of them when we have the answers to their questions, it’ll be already too late.
2 THE WEB IS NOT THE WEB, IT’S THE
The most frequent and common misconception is the idea that internet access and the web are one and the same. They’re not. One way to comprehend this is to use an analogy to railways. Consider the internet as a track and signalling, the foundation that runs everything. In a railway system various kinds of traffic are able to run on the infrastructureexpress trains with high speeds slow-stopping trains, freight trains, commuter trains, and (sometimes) special train maintenance or repair.
Internet-based websites are just one of the numerous kinds of traffic that are running on its virtual tracks. Other kinds of traffic include music files that are exchanged through peer-to-peer networks, or via the iTunes store movies that are transferred through BitTorrent; software updates, email, instant messaging; phone conversations through Skype as well as other VoIP (internet telephone) services streaming audio and video as well as other things that are that is too obscure to mention.
And (here’s the most important part) there will be different kinds of traffic, things we’ve never even dreamed of, yet, through the internet in 10 years’ time.
The most important thing to keep in mind is that the internet is massive and extremely important however it’s only one of many things that are powered by the internet. The internet is far more extensive and more significant than everything else that runs on it.
Learn this distinction, and you’re on the right track to wisdom.
3 Disruption is a feature, NOT A BUG
One of the things that confuses (and trouble) users of the internet is its ability to disrupt. In one moment, you’re running an established, profitable company such as, say, the head of a music label; then the next your company is fighting for survival, which means you’re having to pay a ransom of king’s pound for intellectual property attorneys who are fighting to stop the flow. Perhaps you’re a newspaper company and wondering why a steady income stream from classified ads might have gone out of the window or a librarian at a university thinking about why students only use Google these days. What is the reason this happens? How can it happen in such a short time?
The answer lies in the structure of the network. When it was first created in the 1970s Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn as the principal designers were confronted with two challenging challenges: how to create an integrated system that could seamlessly connect many other networks, and also how to create a network that can be a long-term solution. The solution they discovered was amazingly simple. The answer was founded on two principles. First, there should be no central control or ownership or authority to determine who can join the network or what it could be employed to serve. Additionally, the network should not be optimized for specific applications. The result was the concept of an “simple” system that could do just one thing: receive data packets from one end, and then do its best to get them to their destination. The network would not be able to decide in regards to the contents of these packets. They could be fragments of emails porn, porn video telephone conversations, images… It did not care and would treat them equally.
Through the implementation of these two protocols, Vint Cerf and Robert Kahn developed what could be described as an international machine that could provide unexpected events. The idea behind their invention was that If you had some idea which could easily be realized by using data packets, the internet could implement the work for you, with no need to ask. You didn’t even have to seek permission from anyone.
The explosion of innovation that has resulted in innovative applications that has been witnessed since the internet was created in the late 1980s could be taking a number of industries and institutions by surprise however, it was also predictable due to the structure. There are many skilled programmers around the globe and the internet gave them a great launchpad for launching unexpected surprises. What kind of surprises can you expect? The web itself. It was the result by a single person – Tim Berners-Lee who in the year 1991, placed the code on an internet server without needing to seek permission from anyone.
Ten years after Berners-Lee began his work, a frustrated, music-loving teenager called Shawn Fanning spent six months creating software to share music files. He then in 1999, he put his own little surprise on an online server. He dubbed it Napster and it gained more than 60 million happy customers before music companies was able to stop it. However, by the time it was shut down, the file-sharing genie had gone out from the bottle.
While this was happening and happening, a lot of smart programmers were incubating even more dangerous surprisesin the form of a swarm of viruses, spam and worms, as well as various other security “exploits” that they’ve successfully unleashed over an internet that doesn’t really take into consideration the contents of the data you send. The dangers that could be posed by this “malware” surge are alarming. For instance, some mysterious groups have gathered “botnets” (made consisting of millions of secretly compromised, computer networks) that could be utilized for massive and coordinated attacks that could cause the destruction of the network infrastructure of whole industries, or even entire countries. To date except for Estonia in 2007 we haven’t witnessed any such attack, however there is a chance that it could happen and will be the internet’s version of 9/11.
The Internet’s disruption is the result of its technological DNA. In the language of programmers it’s a feature not a flaw – that is, an intentional feature and not a mishap. It’s hard to imagine how we can disable the ability of the network to generate unpleasant surprises , without also removing other types of creativity it generates.
4 Think about ECOLOGY, NOT ECONOMICS.
As a framework for analysis, economics may be a mess when it comes to dealing with the internet. Since economics is the study of the distribution of scarce resources, the internet world is distinguished by its abundance. In the same way, ecology (the research of the natural system) is a specialist in abundance, and it is a good idea to examine what’s happening in the media from the perspective that of an ecologist.
Since the internet became mainstream in 1993 the media “ecosystem” or whatever you like, has become infinitely more complicated. The previous industrialised mass media ecosystem was characterized by declining growth rates and a small number of profitable, powerful slow-moving broadcasters and publishers large audiences comprised mainly of consumers who were not actively engaged in centrally produced content, limited communication channels, and a slow rate of changes. The new media ecosystem is growing quickly: it includes millions of publishers, billions of active, internet-savvy well-informed readers, viewers and listeners; a myriad of channels for communication, and an accelerating pace of change.
For an ecologist, this is a kind of ecosystem that has grown dramatically. It’s like a world where large animals like dinosaurs (think Time Warner, Encyclopaedia Britannica) were moving through the land slowly exchanging information in huge, distinct units, but the world was changing into an ecosystem where millions of small species consume transform, aggregate, or even break up and exchange information in smaller units and new, massive life forms (think Google, Facebook) are appearing. The natural environment is undergoing a transformation. increasing biodiversity is closely linked to greater productivity of the whole system – that is, the speed at which energy and material inputs are transformed into increased growth. It is possible that this phenomenon is also taking place in the realm of information? If so then who will be the beneficiary over the long run?
5 COMPLEXITY IS THE NEW REALITY
Although you may not agree with the concept of ecology it’s clear that our new information-based environment is more complicated – in terms of the number of participants and interaction between these participants, as well as the speed of change – unlike anything we’ve seen before. This complexity isn’t an anomaly or something that can be put off It’s the current reality and one we must confront. This is a problem due to a variety of reasons. The first is that the behavior of complex systems can be difficult to comprehend and difficult to anticipate. Furthermore, and perhaps more important the collective mentality of the public and private sectors aren’t adequately prepared to deal with complex systems. In the past, organizations have attempted to tackle the issue by reducing complexity , such as acquiring competitors and locking in customers by introducing standardised services and products, and so on. These methods aren’t likely to be effective in the new environment where intelligence, flexibility, agility, and the willingness to try new things (and fail) offer better ways of managing the challenges that the networked environment can throw at you.
6 The NETWORK IS NOW THE COMPUTER
For the baby boomers, a computer was a stand-alone PC operating Microsoft software. In the end, these computers were connected, initially local (via offices networks) and later worldwide (via Internet). However, as broadband internet connections were commonplace, something odd occurred: if you had an adequate speed of connection to the internet then you were less worried about the exact whereabouts of your stored information or the computer which was performing computation functions for your. These tasks became much simpler to accomplish. The first time, the companies (Yahoo, Google, Microsoft) that provided search started to provide “webmail” which was email that was delivered through programs that did not run on your computer but rather on servers located in the Internet “cloud”. Then, Google provided word processing spreadsheets, slide-making, as well as other “office”-type services via the network. The list goes on.
This was a shift from a time when the PC was actually the computer and to one where the network functions as a computer. This has led to the rise of “cloud computing” which is a method of computing that allows us to use basic gadgets (mobile phones, laptops with low power and tablets) to connect to computing services provided by servers that are powerful online. The shift to computing as a service rather than a service you offer with your own devices has profound implications for security, privacy and economic growth – and public perceptions are way behind the speed of change. What will happen to your family’s photograph collection if it’s stored in the cloud, and your password is taken to the grave? What happens to your documents and emails, all saved in cloud on a different server? Or your “reputation” on eBay? Anywhere you look the shift to cloud computing has huge consequences, as it makes us increasingly dependent on the internet. Yet, we’re still sleeping in this exciting new world.
7 The WEB is changing
At one time, the web was just an online publication platform that saw editors (professional as well as amateur) uploaded web pages that were not active to servers. For many people working in the field of media it’s their default concept of the web. However, the web has been through at least three distinct phases of development – from the initial web 1.0 and then to the current web 2.0 consisting of “small pieces that are that are loosely connected” (social networking and mashups, webmail and the list goes on) and is currently moving towards a web 3.0 which is an international platform that is based on Tim Berners-Lee’s concept of a semantic web where web pages have enough information about their content to allow software to make educated judgments regarding their importance and purpose. If we want to comprehend the web in its current form and not as it was in the past it is necessary to develop more realistic mental models of the web. In particular, we have to keep in mind that it’s not anymore just a medium for publishing.
8 HUXLEY AND ORWELL ARE THE BOOKENDS OF OUR FUTURE
A few years ago, the critic of culture Neil Postman, one of the 20th century’s most insightful tech critics was predicting that the wisdom of two writers would like two bookends, define our future. Aldous Huxley was of the opinion that we’d be destroyed by the things we cherish, whereas George Orwell thought we would be destroyed by things we fear.
Postman wrote before the internet was a major influence in our society however, I think Postman was right. On one (Huxleyan) side the internet has had an incredibly liberating force on our lives, providing endless possibilities for entertainment, information and pleasure communication, and a seemingly easy consumption to the point that it has become a quasi-addictive force particularly among younger generations. It is possible to gauge the magnitude of its impact through the increasing levels of anxiety among officials, teachers and even politicians. “Is Google making us stupid?” was the headline for one of the most-read articles published in Atlantic magazine in the year 2008. The article is written by Nicholas Carr, a prominent writer and blogger, and asked whether the constant access to information on networks (not only Google) has turned us into a frenzied shallow people with less attention time spans. (According to Nielsen the market research company, the average time spent on a web page is 56 seconds.) Others are concerned that the constant use of internet can be rewiring our brains.
The other (Orwellian) side the internet is the closest thing to a complete surveillance system that the world has ever witnessed. Every action you conduct on the internet is recorded – every email you send, each site you visit, every file you download, and every search you make is recorded and stored somewhere, whether in the server of your Internet service provider or on cloud services you connect to. As a tool to an absolute government that is interested in the behavior, social actions and the thought process of its subjects the internet is about perfect.
9 9 INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY REGIME IS NOT NECESSARILY FIT FOR A the DESIRE
In the analog world the copying process was slow as well as was degenerative (ie duplicates of copied documents got more and more worse than the original). In the digital age the process of copying is simple and flawless. Actually, copying is for computers the same way that breathing is to living creatures in the sense that every computational operation involves it. When you visit a web page, for instance it is copied to a backup page is stored in the memory of video on your computer (or smartphone, or iPad) before your device is able to show it on screen. You can’t even glance at something online without (unknowingly) creating copies of it.
As our current system of intellectual property was created in a time where copying was a challenge and inefficient, it’s not to be expected that it is now out of tune with the connected world. To make things worse (or better depending on your perspective) digital technology has given internet users software that makes it easy to edit, copy, remix and publish anything accessible in digital format that’s a lot of things today. In the end, millions of people are now “publishers” by the fact that their work are published globally through platforms like Blogger, Flickr and YouTube. In other words, everywhere you look there are things that violate copyright in one way or in another way.
It’s a nebulous but unavoidable fact, as unavoidable as the fact that teenagers are more likely to consume excessive alcohol. The only way to stop people from copying is to block the internet. Intellectual property isn’t a problem (or alcohol) in and of itself however, our laws on copyright are so absurdly out of sync with the reality that they’re getting a bad rap. They need to be overhauled urgently to be relevant to the digital age. The issue is that none of our legislators seem to be aware of this, and it’s unlikely to happen anytime in the near future.
Postscript
It’s absurd to think that these ideas encompass all that is there to be learned about the internet. However, they provide an understanding of this phenomenon “in in the open” in the sense of and could serve as a counter-balance to the frenzied extrapolation that frequently is used to provide commentary on changes in the world of cyberspace. It’s a sad reality that if there’s an “truth” regarding web-based technology, it’s rather simple: to nearly every major question regarding the long-term effects of the internet, the only reasonable answer is that famously offered by Mao Zedong’s foreign minister Zhou Enlai, when asked about the significance of the French Revolution: “It’s too for me to know at this point.” It’s true.
