10
The Internet
Mass Communication
Gets Personal
The Development of the
Internet
• Internet—a diverse set of independent networks,
interlinked to provide its users with the appearance
of a single, uniform network
• Packet Switching: Letting Computers
Talk to Each Other
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Paul Baran (1964):
• designing a military communication network that could
survive a nuclear strike
• packet switching—cutting messages into little pieces
and sending them on along the easiest route to their final
destination
message reassembled on the receiving computer
 Donald Davies (England):
• coined the name packet switching
ARPAnet
• Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
• headed by J.C.R. Licklider
• universities supplied with large, expensive
computers
• in Fall 1969 ARPAnet connected four institutions
o initial nodes were:
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University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA)
Stanford Research Institute
University of California-Santa Barbara
University of Utah
o first message from UCLA to Stanford
o coincided with first moon landing, significance
Connecting Incompatible Networks
• creating the Internet’s protocols:
• Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf
• invented TCP/IP
TCP stands for Transmission Control
Protocol
• allowed for conversion and transmission of
messages across previously incompatible
networks
Commercial Networks
 Compuserve, Prodigy, and Quantum provided
access for non-academics
 1989—Quantum became America Online
(AOL)
• between 1993 and 1998, AOL subscribers grew
from 200,000 to 8 million
The Next-Generation Internet
• faster, more efficient networks being built
• Internet2 Consortium
oas of 2007, participants include:
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more than 200 U.S. universities
70 corporations
45 government agencies
50 international organizations
Computers as Communication
Tools
Interpersonal Communication:
• E-mail and Instant Messaging
 electronic mail (e-mail)—a message sent from one
computer user to another across a network
 initially limited to messages on a single computer
 Ray Tomlinson (1972):
• developed a system to send messages across systems
• created the addressing format
• @ fit format, and was not already in use
• Instant Messaging
 instant messaging programs—e-mail systems that
allow users to:
• chat with one another in real time
• hold virtual meetings that span multiple cities
• keep track of which of their “buddies” are online
 most programs are incompatible:
• violates a generally accepted standard for the Net
• Group Communication: Listservs and Newsgroups
 listservs—Internet discussion groups that use e-mail
to exchange messages between as few as a dozen
people or as many as several thousand:
• users must subscribe to the group
 newsgroup bulletin boards:
• allow for international discussion of topics
• usenet one of the largest
• Mass Communication: The World Wide Web
 Doug Englebart:
• in 1968, demonstrated computer interaction
 Ted Nelson:
• hypertext—material in a format containing links that
allow the reader to move easily from one section to
another and from document to document
• all the world’s literature available in hypertext
• Tim Berners-Lee and the Birth of the World Wide
Web:
 World Wide Web—a system that allows users to view
and link documents located anywhere in the world
using standard software
 in 1990 the European Organization for Nuclear
Research had the first Web server online
• The World Wide Web has three major components:
 Uniform resource locator (URL)
• the address of content placed on the Web
 Hypertext transfer protocol (http)
• a method for sending text, graphics, or anything else
over the Internet from a server to a Web browser
 Hypertext markup language (HTML)
• the programming language used to create Web pages
A Vision for the Web
• The basic technology is free.
• Principles:
 Information of all kinds should be available through the same
window, or information space.
 All documents on the Web must be equally accessible.
 There must be a single address that will take users to a
document.
 Users should be able to link to any document at any space.
 Users should be able to access any type of material from any
type of computer.
 Users should be able to create whatever types of relationships
between information that they want to.
 The Web should be a tool not just for information but also for
collaboration.
 There is no central control.
 The Web software should be available free to anyone who wants
to use it.
Bringing the Net to the Public
 Berners-Lee’s browser:
• limited to certain computers, no graphics
 Mosaic:
• first easy-to-use graphical Web browser
• created by Marc Andreessen at the University of Illinois
at Champaign-Urbana
• 1 million downloads after release
Andreesen and Jim Clark founded Netscape
Communications
 Netscape Navigator:
• first commercial Web browser
• 65 million using it in two years
The Last 100 Yards
 March 2006—42 percent of Americans had highspeed connections at home, while 31 percent were
using dial-up
 broadband service:
• ten times faster; allows for streaming audio, video
 wireless access:
• December 2006—34 percent using wireless connection
New Media and Online
Entertainment
Traditional versus New Media
 click and mortars—traditional media companies that
publish news online
• sites may include supplementary material only found
online
• particularly effective with breaking news
• can effectively cover multiple stories
 customizable content
Movies and the Net:
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promotion of films and filmmakers
requires high speed connection
users unwilling to pay for online films
forced to watch in front of their PC
• New Media:
 Slate and Salon, exclusively online magazines
 low publishing costs, quick updates
• readers expect updates, no subscription revenue
• Aggregator Sites
 Excite, Yahoo, Google, AOL, and Netscape
The Changing Nature of News:
 large amounts of information, accurate and otherwise
 distinguishing what is good from what is nonsense
can be difficult
 many stories start out on the Internet, then creep into
the mainstream media
 rumors can spread uncontrollably
Weblogs
 blog—a collection of links and commentary in
hypertext that can be created and posted on
the Internet with relatively little effort:
• provides a forum for people to write, post
content
• offers readers different perspectives
Search as a Medium
 search engines provide information and news
 some world governments restrict Internet searching
• France and Yahoo
• China and Yahoo
The Long Tail of Internet News
 citizen journalism
 YouTube
The Internet and Society
The Hacker Ethic:
• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniaks’ blue boxes
• Stephen Levy, Hackers”
 “Digital trespassers”:
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access to computers should be unlimited and total
all information wants to be free
mistrust authority—promote decentralization
you should be judged by your skills
The Man Who Invented Cyberspace
• William Gibson
 coined the phrase “cyberspace” in his 1984 book
Neuromancer
 Gibson on cyberspace: “an expression of the hippie
ideals of freedom and self-expression”
 also credited with the word cyberpunk
Community on the Net
• Face-to-face communication not required
Is It Really a World Wide Web?
• 73 percent of Americans have Internet access at
home.
• Only 16 percent of world population has Internet
access:
• 13 percent in Brazil, 19 percent in Mexico
• Barriers:
• language—80 percent of Web sites are English
• costs and lack of basic technology:
electric and telephone service
Conflicts over Digital Media
 Controlling content on the Web:
• open forum where anyone can publish anything
• great deal of inappropriate material for kids
filtering software
• original Net built to prevents blocks and barriers
Privacy and the Web
 Amazon.com, online forms, registrations
 cookies—tiny files used to identify Web site visitors
and potentially track their actions on the Web
• used for personalized content delivery
Clifford Stoll: Silicon Snake Oil
 assisted U.S. government in catching hackers in late
1980s
 internet replaces real interactions and experiences
 false sense of intimacy without the emotional
involvement
Convergence of Old and New Media:
 National Public Radio and News 2.0
 Al-Jazeera started its English-language service online
 Politico and premature John Edwards announcement
From newspapers to brands:
 Arthur Sulzberger, New York Times publisher/owner
• states in a speech that the Times will continue
to deliver news and advertising in whatever
forms will turn a profit