Internet Culture
Computer Science 01i
Introduction to the Internet
Neal Sample
27 February 2001
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We will talk about...
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Odds and ends: FTP
What is a culture?
Internet User Demographics
Delayed Collaboration Communities
Real-time Communities
Virtual Societies
Gaming Communities
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Odds and Ends: FTP
• File Transfer Protocol (FTP)
• Transfers files between two machines
 Requires an FTP server on the host machine
and an FTP client on user’s machine
• Much like the webserver/webbrowser
relationship (“client-server”)
 Requests and replies for files instead of HTML
documents and components
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FTP: manual ftp
• Login to host machine
 ftp sole.stanford.edu
 username:
bob
 password:
******
• To request a file(s)
 get program1.cc
 get *.html
• To send file(s)
 put program2.cc
 put *.html
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FTP: Getting Graphical
• Many, many free graphical FTP programs
are available
• Two recommendations are:
 WS_FTP LE
 CuteFTP
• Both are available at:
 http://www.tucows.com
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FTP: GUI Login
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FTP: GUI Use
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Internet Culture
What is a culture?
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What is a culture?
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History
Habitat
Architecture
Community
Artifacts
Property and Commerce
Psychology
Behavior, Sanctions, Norms, Status
Political Structure
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Demographics
Who do you think
uses the net most?
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Age
• Average age: 33
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Sex
1997: 68% male, 32% female
1998: 59% male, 41% female
2000: 60% male, 40% female
W3C
GA Tech
user survey
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Education
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Income
Average Income: $59,000/yr.
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Marital Status
• Married:
41.1%
• Single:
38.7%
• Living w/ someone:
9.2%
• Divorced or separated: 8.3%
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Geography
• USA:
84.4%
• Europe:
5.8%
• Canada:
4.9%
• All other:
4.9%
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Internet Experience
• Under 6 mo.s:
7.9%
• 6-12 mo.s:
10.5%
• 1-3 years:
45%
• 4-6 years:
27.2%
• over 7 years:
9.4%
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Internet Usage
• 78% of respondents use their web
browser more than once a day
 38% use it more frequently than 4 times a day
 40% use the web 1-4 times a day
• 19% use it less frequently than once a day
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Occupation
• Educational:
24.9%
• Computer related:
21.4%
• Professional:
22.5%
• Management:
11.4%
• Other various fields:
19.8%
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Operating System (1999)
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Windows:
81.3%
Macintosh: 13.0%
Unix:
2.7%
WebTV:
0.8%
Dos:
0.6%
OS2:
0.2%
Other or unknown: 1.4%
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Shopping Habits
• 77.8% have purchased products or
services online
• 21.6% have never purchased a product or
service online
• 0.7% don't know
 Of the females who responded, just over 70%
have purchased online and of the males, 80%
have purchased online.
Not a vast difference in markets.
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Purpose on the net?
• Browsing around (surfing): 79%
• Entertainment:
65%
• Work / research:
51%
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Odds and ends
• Bookmarks
 77% have between 11-50 bookmarks
 19% have over 100 bookmarks
• Access
 64% access the Net from home
 31% access from work
 5% other access
• 81% are registered to vote
• 98.3% use English as their primary language
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Who is John Q. Internet?
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33 year old married male
No children
College graduate, likely holds graduate degree
Earns about $59,000
Live in the US, speaks English, votes
Been on the net 1-3 years
Surfs more than once a day
Uses Microsoft Windows
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Internet Communities
• Communities as groups of related users
• Each internet community has its own
“culture”
 Hackers and gamers and chatters and
activists are all vastly different groups
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Delayed Collaboration Communities
• Groups of people that share ideas and
thoughts in stable messages
• No “face-to-face” time, user interaction
• Different types:
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On the web, “newsgroups” on various topics
Bulletin boards
Instant Messaging (some flavors)
Email lists
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Delayed Collaboration Examples
• www.dejanews.com
 newsgroups on various topics
• gsc@drizzle.stanford.edu
 mailing list of all Stanford graduate students
• www.stepfamily.net
 email questions with public replies
 ask the experts
 like “Dear Abby” or NPR’s Car Talk
• http://www.delphi.com/extremecompute/start/
 specific topic message boards, hardware
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Realtime Collaborative Communities
• Groups of people that share ideas
and thoughts
• Actual “face-to-face” time, conversational
• Different types:
 IRC - Internet Relay Chat
 AIM chat, ICQ chat
 AOL chatrooms
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What “chat” looks like
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Virtually Societies
• MUSH - MUltiuser Shared Hallucination
 “rooms” connected to myriad other rooms
 “walk-around”, explore, build, interact
• Virtual Worlds
 Ultima Online
 EverQuest
 Asheron’s Call
“games”
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to Earth
 building knowledge, collaboratively
 http://www.h2g2.com/
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Lang. of Abbr.
• afk: Away from keyboard.
• otoh: On the other hand.
• bbiab: (I'll) be back in a bit.
• rl: Real life.
• bbl: (I'll) be back later.
• rotfl: (I'm) rolling on the floor
laughing.
• brb: (I'll) be right back.
• btw: By the way.
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• spam: A lot of unwanted text
on your screen, usually
fubar: [Messed] up beyond
scrolling by so fast that it's
all repair (or recognition).
difficult to read or text that you
imho: In my humble opinion.
want to see gets lost in it.
irl: In real life (as opposed to
• ttyl: (I'll) talk to you later.
virtual reality).
• vr: Virtual reality.
jk: Just kidding.
• lol: (I'm) laughing out loud.
• wtf: What the [heck]? A vulgar
exclamation of unpleasant
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surprise or confusion.
Gaming Communities
• All sorts of games
 Turn-based: Cards, chess, Trivial Pursuit
• often use web-browsers, free, high latency ok
 Realtime Strategy: War games,
empire Building
• purchased software, high latency not too bad
 FPS: First person shooters
• purchased software, low latency to be competitive
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Gaming Societies
• By game, e.g., the “Quake Community”
 http://www.planetquake.com/
• In team games, by group/clan/tribe
 http://www.tribalwar.com/vanguard/
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Elements of game culture
• The culture is very feudal
 wars are waged on virtual battelfields
 win and lose virtual turf
http://www.ogl.org/cgi-bin/league.pl?league=ctf_open&mode=display_universe
• Status derived from skill
• Highly Uncivilized in nature
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“Professional Gamers?”
• Dennis “Thresh” Fong, 25, Cal. dropout
• The first “professional gamer”
 industry consulting
 endorsements
 website:
www.firingsquad.com
• Is it lucrative?
 1997 E3 winnings:
• $5000
• A new Intergraph PC workstation
• oh yes, and a Ferrari
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Gamer Demographics
• Last update Feb 27 2001 11:45am PST
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www.theclq.com
Online Players:
12,873,958
Online Teams:
261,366
Online Servers: 316,940
• Typically Male, 16-24
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Other groups and cultural traits
• Hackers
 Status through exploits and “hacks”
 Anarchists
• Open Source Developers
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“Gift culture”
Noosphere
Linus Torvalds - Linux
Socialists with “ego-profits”
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Sources and further reading
• University of Colorado at Denver
 http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/culture.html
• Gateway Virginia
 http://www.gateway-va.com/ad/gvaad.htm
• Survey.net (users add their own data)
 www.survey.net
• US Hostnet (marketers)
 http://ushostnet.com/host/
• Protocol Communications (Georgia Tech Survey)
 http://java.protocom.com/protomall/Protocom/benefit/who.html
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Project: Spice Girls?
• In the immortal words of Ginger Spice:
“Tell me what you want, what you really
really want.…”
• So many topics, so little time
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