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10th birthday of the internet http://www.bbfans.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=21404	Page 1 of 1

Author:	Madeline [ 09 Aug 05, 12:14 ]
Post subject:	10th birthday of the internet
Worldwide wonder The 10th birthday of the internet as a mass phenomenon is rightly being celebrated this week to mark a decade since the explosive stock market debut of Netscape, which triggered the dot.com boom and unleashed a friendly browser to navigate the web. To understand the extraordinary revolution that swept the world so quickly, existing users need simply to imagine what life would now be like without email (on which corporate life depends), search engines such as Google, web companies such as Amazon, eBay and Yahoo, the ongoing explosion of online commerce, not to mention the burgeoning world of personal journals (blogs), downloaded music and films, free newspapers, web cameras, internet telephony (now the hottest thing on the web) and the growing convergence of the net and mobile phones. Already the internet has become a virtual library of Alexandria, a repository for practically everything one could want to inquire about - as long as the motivation is there. Francis Bacon said "Knowledge is power". These days we would say knowledge is empowerment, and for the first time whatever you want to know about is out there somewhere, and mainly for free. In theory, the billion or so users in the world can link up with each other to share interests or join forces to counteract the global power the web has bestowed on international corporations. There are, of course, downsides, from the hurricane of spam emails that hurtles across the web to the channels opened for terrorists, criminals and paedophiles. It has undoubtedly created a growing gulf between those with access to the web's treasure trove of knowledge and the excluded digitariat who have to add a digital divide to all the others they have to endure. But at least the new technology, as it becomes ever cheaper and more powerful, offers the prospect of bridging the divide and, by using services - such as free internet telephony, satellites and wireless connections - could leapfrog over existing obstacles. Parts of Africa will experience a technological revolution even before the industrial revolution has reached them. Overall, the web has proved itself to be a huge liberating and enabling force, even though it is still only in its infancy. Although, contrary to the instincts of its early protagonists, the web has long since been colonised by commerce, it still nurtures its founding community spirit. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the startling success of the open source movement which enables enthusiasts and professionals all over the world to work together from remote locations to produce services that are freely available for anyone with a computer linked to the internet. The thousands of products so far released include the Linux operating system (a free alternative to Microsoft's pervasive Windows), OpenOffice (an alternative to Microsoft's Word and Excel) and Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, with well over a million entries written entirely by its readers. Most recently, the open source movement has launched its own browser, the widely acclaimed Firefox, which is taking serious market share from Microsoft. There is an element of natural justice in this because it was Microsoft's move to incorporate its own browser into its Windows operating system - which sits in 95% of all personal computers - that snuffed out Netscape's early success in the 1990s. The new owners of Netscape decide to turn it over to the open source movement and out of the ashes came Firefox to open up a new front in the browser wars. What will happen during the next 10 years can, literally, only be guessed at, since hardly any of the web's world-beating products were predicted to be successes a decade ago, even by their inventors. But, since the pace of innovation is showing no signs of slowing down, we are assured of an exciting ride. mediaguardian

Author:	Spawn of Blagman [ 09 Aug 05, 12:14 ]
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Eh the internet will never catch on

Author:	Madeline [ 09 Aug 05, 12:16 ]
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Seen it, shot it, sold it A website has been set up to help the new 'snaparazzis' sell their pictures to mainstream media. Is this ethical journalism, asks Roy Greenslade Journalism is easy, is it not? Surely anyone can do it. After all, what is so special about writing down what you see and hear? How difficult is it to take a photograph of what is in front of you? There is a growing conviction that nothing is beyond the "ordinary person in the street", itself a meretricious description that is becoming increasingly irrelevant. People can become overnight stars, courtesy of reality TV, and instant millionaires, courtesy of the lottery. They can make their own films, courtesy of cheap video cameras. They can travel the world dressed in clothes designed by couturiers while enjoying meals in the finest restaurants. A combination of education, affluence and technology has allowed people to hurdle the traditional barriers erected by an elite that previously insulated itself from the masses at both work and play. One restriction under persistent attack is "professionalism", the notion that a job (a profession) entails lengthy and sophisticated training that closes it off to "ordinary" mortals. This may well continue to be true of medicine and the law - though both have had to adapt in the face of the modern democratic spirit - but it has never carried much weight in journalism. It has long been the case, especially since the National Union of Journalists lost its 1970s battle for a closed shop, that untrained people have walked into jobs in newspapers and broadcasting. Now, with the internet, there has been a further step-change in what it means to be a journalist because the old media organisations, especially newspapers, cannot regulate entry. Indeed, they are now desperately playing catch-up, trying to cope with the net's apparently limitless possibilities. First, there was the blogging phenomenon, with people offering first-person, eye-witness accounts of events that either contradicted reporters' accounts or, more usually, offered a more penetrating, if limited, insight. Running more or less in parallel came the photographic bloggers, people putting their pictures on line for everyone to see. The success of this new journalism was illustrated by videos of the Boxing Day tsunami and was even more notable during London's July 7 bombing ordeal when dramatic mobile phone images - still and video - appeared on the net within minutes of being taken. Then, following the aborted bombings two weeks later came video footage of the arrest of an alleged bomber. Suddenly, everyone was talking about "citizen journalists", arguing that the uncommercialised net, free from elite professional control and vested interests, offered an unrivalled way of people both transmitting and receiving the unvarnished truth. It is not as simple as that, of course. The detached journalistic professional is still necessary, whether to add all-important context to explain the blogs and the thousands of images, or simply to edit the material so that readers and viewers can speedily absorb what has happened. There are other important considerations, too, not least resolving knotty contradictions between freedom and commercialism, and between citizenship and consumerism. The spirit of freedom is characterised by flickr.com, a website used by hundreds of people on July 7 to upload their pictures of commuters struggling through smoke-filled tube tunnels in the aftermath of the suicide bombings. Stewart Butterfield, an executive at the Canadian-based site, says: "We are committed to helping people to give their stuff away for free." But last week, a Scottish-based website, scoopt.com, was launched with a very different ambition: to act as a middleman to negotiate deals with newspapers and magazines on behalf of people who take pictures. One of its founders, Kyle MacRae, says: "I realised that amateurs who take newsworthy pictures needed help in dealing with the mainstream media. They should be able to make money for their photographs and videos." MacRae wants people to register and, should they take a picture in future that is saleable, scoopt will negotiate fees with picture editors at newspapers and magazines, taking 50% for its trouble. It probably helps that one of MacRae's partners ispicture editor on a Scottish national paper, though he does not wish to be identified. Does MacRae not feel this commercial activity betrays the internet's original anti-corporate concept of freedom? "That's a fine and noble philosophical ideal", he says. "And, if that's your bag, fine. If people want to share their pictures for free, that's OK. But we're acting for people who think otherwise." Butterfield is equally untroubled by the scoopt initiative. "We are not philosophically opposed to people making money from their photos," he says. "We don't feel that people who want to sell their 'work' are morally inferior. The bottom line is that we're libertarian." Gareth Potter, who uploaded 76 pictures to flickr after the London bombings, says the scoopt idea "looks rather tempting. It would be great to have one's photo published in the mainstream media." But there are ethical questions about the growth of what scoopt calls "the snaparazzi" (an interesting variation on the more high-minded label of citizen journalists). The Chartered Institute of Journalists (CIoJ) believes the media's use of amateur pictures borders on irresponsible and that people may place themselves at risk by training their cameras on news events, for example by rushing towards fires. It is especially exercised by ITV's London Tonight, which has appealed to viewers take part in what it calls "the exciting world of newsgathering". But, asks the CioJ, "what happens if a viewer is seriously injured while taking part? Will ITV be there to pick up the pieces and pay the medical bills?" It also points out that broadcasters appear to want footage without paying for the rights, a situation that scoopt is obviously ready to remedy. MacRea is equally concerned about people putting themselves in danger. "It's a genuine worry", he says, and he raises yet another concern, given the heavy use of celebrity pictures in popular papers and magazines. "We don't want to see people stalking celebrities," he says. "We'd be uncomfortable with that, and we make it clear to people that they shouldn't do it." Scoopt's members, who numbered around 500 after three days, get advice on how to act legally and morally, although MacRae concedes that it will be a matter of personal responsibility. What all this suggests is that despite the net providing people with a revolutionary way of becoming journalists, it does not answer the central dilemma of journalism itself: what is it for? Democratisation has burgeoned alongside the "free" market economy that encourages people to believe that everything, including information, has a price. Is that really so great an advance? guardian

Author:	tastyfish [ 09 Aug 05, 14:32 ]
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Honestly, what do the Guardian know?! The internet was born in 1969, and was known as ARPAnet (it was a US military exercise to link mainframe computers). The internet as we know it emerged in 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee created the World Wide Web. Even the first web browser, Mosaic (which became Netscape, who then sold it to Microshaft, who turned it into Internet Explorer) was released in 1993. Flippin 'eck, even in 1991 I was surfing bulletin boards (albeit on a green-screen dumb terminal with no graphics!) and had my own email account. The net is not new, it's been round donkeys years 10 years old my ar$e

Author:	larry [ 09 Aug 05, 22:08 ]
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I have to say that since I first went on-line in either 95/96 things have changed drastically. I think my first website was with FreeUK who had one modem that always refused to connect and sometimes you could waste a small fortune trying to get on-line and always getting that damn modem. I did get a refund out of MSN after spending months trying to cancel the account before they updated their site with their contact details. Think they gave me something like £130 back. And just like the early days we are still talking bandwidth limits. At least back then Compuserve wouldn't let you out onto the WWW when you reached your limit unless to paid them first and lets not forget it was expensive back then. Had access to a bulletin board locally which because we were both in NTL lines was free of call charges. back in the early days I was banned from the even getting a modem because my parents feared I'd take my program hacking a stage further and get into trouble.

Author:	tastyfish [ 09 Aug 05, 22:52 ]
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the web has got much better. when I started re-surfing in 1998 every bloke and his dog was creating web sites - and boy they were rubbish!! all in Times New Roman with cheap clip-art graphics and counters. I do miss the crrrrr...whrrrr....click click.. doing-doing noise my ole dial-up modem used to make when it attempted to connect (about 6 times before you could get on). the only people laughing during the dot-com boom were 'net programmers and techie insiders. all the businessmen were jumping on the dot-com bandwagon but the technology wasn't widespread enough for anyone to make money out of it. everyone with sense knew that so it was absolutely no surprise that the bubble burst. big time. things are different now - the biggest impact came from the ability to pay online. without that you're stuffed. everyone in the late 1990s thought income could only be generated from advertising. how naive they were. now internet shopping and services have really taken off, you'd be a fool not to have a net presence.

Author:	Westy [ 10 Aug 05, 1:06 ]
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My first venture onto the net was usenet way back in the early 90's at a massive speed of 9k6 First proper taste of the www was mid 90's with mosaic at 14k4 woo! I'm now on 2mb which in a few years will no doubt seem as slow as 9k6 does now. Tim Burners-Lee invented the www as we know it now and didn't make a penny out of it- he doesn't complain about that either.

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