Internet

 Some questions include:

Does the Internet?

1.   Destroy in person contact-people so caught in th.e virtual world they lose contact with reality

2. Promote escapism-compartmentalized sights lose touch with big picture

3. Is it `apolitical’?

Internet Defined-

• Defined-the internet is giant network of computers located all over the world that communicate with each other.

Riding the Highway

From highway to web =

• compartmentalization,

• specialization,

• differentiation.

Commercialization of the Technology1994

• Commercialization of the Internet involved not only the development of competitive, private network services-

Dawn of the Information age.

• The 1980s involved the transition between the industrial and information age.

• 1989-Tiannmen Square-

• 1994-Year of capitalism and the internet

Early Vendors

• Originally, commercial efforts mainly vendors providing the basic networking products, and service providers offering the connectivity and basic Internet services.

• But the first Pizza was sold in 1994. Pizza Hut.

Timeline of The Internet

1. 1939 First Television2. 1945-War ends-domestic production and

consumerism begins3. 1957-Sputnik4. 1960-From military use to University5. 1980-WWW6. 1990’s and beyond –capitalism and

globalization.

SPUNIK & ARPA

• The USSR's launch of Sputnik spurred the United States to create the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) 1957

J.C.R. Licklider `Father of the Internet’

• In 1950, Licklider moved from the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory at Harvard University

Galactic Network" concept.

• 1960 he envisioned a globally interconnected set of computers through which everyone could quickly access data and programs from any site.

• In spirit, his concept was very much like the Internet of today – man and computer-symbiosis…

Man-Computer Symbiosis.

• "A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines" which provided "the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions. "—J.C.R. Licklider[1957

Internet ,Time and Fear

1. Space Race and the Cold War created fear

2. Fear led to innovation in the US

3. Telephones could be broken

4. What happens if a missile attack occurs?

5. How does The President `push the button’

6. How do we contact him on `The Red Phone?

Date of the First Connection

• 1965 working with Thomas Merrill, connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to the Q-32 in California

• Connection: low speed dial-up telephone line creating the first (however small) wide-area computer network ever built.

The transition toward an Internet

1974•

• TCP –a key in linking remote computers through a common `server’

• The term "Internet" was adopted in the TCP protocol ( Internet Transmission Control Program, December 1974).

•

Jan 1983 Internet Birthday

• (This date is held by some to be technically that of the birth of the Internet.)

• It was then followed by the opening of the network:

"The Internet"

• "The Internet" came to mean a global and large network using TCP/IP.

Internet's technologies

• As interest in wide spread networking grew and new applications for it arrived, the Internet's technologies spread throughout the rest of the world.

• Easy to use any existing network infrastructure, to carry Internet traffic.

Internet

• The Internet has now become almost a "commodity" service, and much of the latest attention has been on the use of this global information infrastructure for support of other commercial services.

Sociological TheoriesThe Great Change

• For the sociologist, the internet raises a number questions:

• Structural Functionalist-the quest for community…New vertical communities replaced horizontal…(see R.Warren)

THE GREAT CHANGE

• The Community in America

• by Roland L. Warren.

• Introduces Two key concepts in understanding community and internet:

Internet Communities

• Internet provides an ideal platform to:

1. Disperse information and news quickly, easily and cheaply (Content)

2. Interact and reach targeted audiences ( vertical community)

3. Buy and sell academic related products and services (Commerce) .

(Horizontal Community)ERODES

• Belonging can come from a place, from a family, from an ethnic groups or community organization,

• Loss of Traditional Community

…(Vertical Community Expands

• Specialized interest groups or from a virtual community)

• Ie. Teachers association, sports and rec. associations, specified interest association.

Functional Concerns:

• a.    Cultural lag How technological change affects community-W.F Ogburn of the Chicago School.…

• b.    Erosion of community Others (Wellman, 1988) any element of industrialization, urbanization and capitalism,

• C. Erosion of primary relationships=people become disconnected, weakly supportive relationships superficial, secondary relationship replace primary group ties….

Sociological Concern II

 

• D  Presentist Orientation….presentdriented ethos---an on-going fast-moving, conversation with people regardless of their location, schedule and other constraints.

• ”

Statistics Canada

• Statistics Canada reported that in 1998, about 36 per cent of Canadian households were connected (Dickinson and Ellison, 1999).

• Private sector surveys put this figure over 50 per cent in 1999.

II. Symbolic Interactionist-

• Symbolic Interactionist-interested in new forms of meaning, new symbols ie. @ sign, dot.com etc.

• Symbols construct meaning

• Symbol such as Logo affect consciousness

• Ideas vs. Ideology

Interactionist:

. Youth discourse and Meaning

• ”

Symbolic Interactionist

. Ideology replaces ideas…Logo culture

• Ideology of the Internet- “get with the program” “join us geeks” “turn your back on the ugly world out there” “ we have the reality of your choosing” ????

•  

III CONFLICT THEORY

• THE INTERNET PERPETUATES CAPITALISTIC IDEOLOGY

• COMMERISM IS GOD

• COMMODITY FETISHISM PREVAILS>

IICAPITALISM and Commodification

OBJECTIFICATION

• i. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, kiddie porn, music, conversation, history, genealogy?

Internet & American Imperialism

• Globalization has been called Americanism.

• Standardization of culture under corporate control.  

• See D. Korten, When Corporations Rule the World (1991)

Nation states

• Nation states are undermined by multinational corporations and a standard way of doing things become prevailent throughout the world.

• Globalization has been linked to the exploitation of third world countries by the first world.

 I.V  Post Modernism

• b.     M. McLuhan-the global village…on the one hand, it refer to the world coming together  

Formation of the Broad Community

• The Internet is as much a collection of communities as a collection of technologies…

• FRAGMENTED DISCOURSES…

Internet and Social Change

• Is the glass half empty of half full?

• The prophet Jeremiah, say that the more immediate reward in praising the future than denouncing it.

Continuity in change….

• a.      E. Litwak-modified extended family-cars, planes, and phones help maintain ties over long distances..…geography not as significant as emotional bonding….

Summary

• Internet an illustration of a dramatic change in material culture leads to change in non-material culture…cultural lag

Summary

1. Internet changes community (SF)

2. Internet is ideological (Conflict)

3. Internet affect consciousness and construction of meaning..(SI)