[Air-l] Re: Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life

Denise N. Rall denrall at yahoo.com
Wed Nov 27 21:55:55 PST 2002


Re: Maren Hartmann's comment - "And yes, there
therefore seems to be both - a) a change somewhere in
the late 1990s (but not necessairly related to the 
dot.com crash only)"

I have to add that, unless we are simply discussing
the Internet as accessed through the WWW then there
are two distinct phases to the Internet based on the
most logical component - how we see at the level of
the user interface.

To compare my days on the Internet as a unix-driven
text-based device of "vi" "rn" and "ftp" is hardly the
same internet that I access and view today through
http and html.

To me, (I've written one unpublished paper called
"The Internet, the WWW and Cyberspace") these are not
at all the same locations --  because how I experience
it, subjectively, cognitively, aesthetically, it's not
the same place at all. 

(I won't address cyberspace, a really ugly thing as
Phil Agre points out in his recent book, "the limits
of cyberspace"). To me the Internet is before the WWW
and what we have now is, really a bastardization of
the Internet as viewed through the WWW, or the Web.
Both the Internet and the Web appeared WAY before the
dot.com crash, if that's significant, fine, but I
can't see it as an epistemological moment, more like
an obvious result of advanced capitalism that worked
its way through to the obvious conclusion.

I'm sure someone here will put me straight on this ;-)

Denise







=====
"it's easier to use your mouse than your brain"
Denise Rall, Sustainable Forestry Mentoring Coordinator &
PhD student, School of Education, Southern Cross University,
PO Box 157, Lismore, NSW, 2480 Australia
Phone +61-2-6624-8627 Fax +61-2-6624-8637
Office (Tuesdays) (02) 6620 3577 Mob 0438 233 344
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/edu/research/deniserall/index.html

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