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

Vassilys Fourkas vfourkas at estia.arch.auth.gr
Tue Nov 26 03:40:42 PST 2002


you may find useful the following timeline
http://estia.arch.auth.gr/cyberspace/cyberspace_timeline.htm

Vassilys


----- Original Message -----
From: "david silver" <dsilver at u.washington.edu>
To: <air-l at aoir.org>
Sent: Tuesday, November 26, 2002 2:12 AM
Subject: [Air-l] Internet History/Stages, was Internet in Everyday Life


> Hi Folks,
>
> i just returned after giving a class lecture which featured an abbreviated
> history of the internet and found barry's post quite interesting.  besides
> information about his and caroline haythornthwaite's book, he included the
> following excerpt from the introduction:
>
> ***
>
> Excerpts from the Editors' Introduction,
> Barry Wellman and Caroline Haythornthwaite:
>
> _The Internet in Everyday Life_ is about the second age of the Internet as
> it descends from the firmament and becomes embedded in everyday life. The
> first age of the Internet was a bright light shining above everyday
> concerns. In the euphoria, many analysts lost their perspective. The rapid
> contraction of the dot.com economy has brought down to earth the
> once-euphoric belief in the infinite possibility of Internet life.
>
> ***
>
> i'm curious about this notion of two stages of the internet.  if i'm
> reading the paragraph correctly, the authors suggest the net has had two
> stages: before and after the dot.com crash.  i'm interested in hearing
> what others think about this concept of a two-staged internet history.
>
> in my own lecture this morning, i tracked a number of stages, all of which
> contain, i believe, significant differences between them.  for example
> (and this is the abridged version):
>
> 1960s/early 1970s - ARPANET
>
> 1975 - a more social internet with lists like SF-Lovers
>
> 1979 - a more public internet (here i'm defining the internet more
> expansively) with the introduction of usenet groups
>
> late 1980s/early 1990s - mass influx of users via prodigy/compuserve/aol
>
> 1991 - a more distributive (and later graphical) turn with berners-lee's
> world wide web, followed by mosaic (1993), and netscape (1994)
>
> 1995 - netscape goes public, wall street goes crazy, dot.com daze begins
>
> etc etc etc.
>
> (like all historical stages, these are complex and reflect an interesting
> intersection among social and cultural contexts, technological
> developments, economic conditions, etc.)
>
> thoughts?
>
> david silver
> http://faculty.washington.edu/dsilver/
>
>
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==========================================
Dr. Vassilys Fourkas
Research Associate
Spatial Development Research Unit (SDRU)
Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Development
School of Architecture
PO BOX 491
Aristotle University of Thessalonica
Thessalonica, 54124
Greece

Tel: 0030 310 995584
Fax: 0030 310 995592
Email: vfourkas at estia.arch.auth.gr
URL: http://estia.arch.auth.gr





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