[Air-l] Internet as merely a tool

[Matthew Jason Eliot]

Charles wrote:

>Their summary judgment: especially the more radical visions of the Internet
>and the Web (ala Barlow and many others) leading to a new Renaissance,
>etc. just seemed "so '90s"!

>For them, it appears that these technologies are utilitarian in the most
>boring of senses; precisely because they have grown up with them, they seem
>no more "revolutionary" than cars or telephones - even cellphones.  Rather,
>these technologies are really, merely tools for them.

I think there are two basic reasons for the current view of many students
that the Internet is merely another communication device: Clinton-Gore and
the dotcom bust, the mainstreaming of the Internet and personal media into
people's lives.

Clinton-Gore and the dotcom bust: Students today have grown up along with
the Internet. These students have lived through the various stages of
Internet hype--the utopian "information superhighway" days, the "We are all
going to make a ton of money" days, the Internet as "place for wierdo's"
days. I suggest that the dotcom bust has had a major influence on current
students and their relationship with the Web.  They see the Internet as
something that has been over-hyped, and perhaps confuse the revolutionary
aspects of the Internet with the failed media rhetoric.

Mainstreaming of the Internet: I would be greatly interested in how many of
our current students actually do anything online beyond e-mail, gaming,
IMing and music. (Okay, maybe looking for homework sources too ;)  Do they
really experience themselves as participating in distributed community? Are
they engaging that much in identity play? It would be interesting to begin
to develop a working profile for a mainstream user, one for whom the
Internet is merely an extension of their personal computing experience
rather than a dynamic realm in itself.

Mainstreaming of personal media: With pocket computers and Web-enabled
phones, when does an individual decide that they have enough Internet access
already? When the Web becomes ubiquitous, the user has to choose what
features they will use on a regular basis, and what features they will
ignore. Perhaps the many access choices have lead users to devalue the
potentialities of the Web and focus on those aspects which are most
immediately available/useful.

A few thoughts,

Matt Eliot
PhD Student
Department of Technical Communications
University of Washington