[Air-l] not wishing to start a war . . .

Denise N. Rall denrall at yahoo.com
Mon Mar 13 14:04:35 PST 2006


Ah, Bob -

In my book the packet doesn't care what it is
carrying. Carrying a bit of binary code or a text
message is all the same. Doesn't make the packet a
container of expressive content.  That content appears
to the reader on the other end.

It's like saying a printing press includes expressive
elements. It's just the messenger. The byproduct
appears to the reader as content. The printing press
is not a medium, it is not even the producer (that's
the author, right?). It's just a piece of the
infrastructure.

But you're right in that meanings for the internet
have been confounded by semantics over the time. I
hear people say all kinds of stuff about 'the
internet' today that would suprise those of us working
in computing centers in the 1980s. At the packet
level, none of this matters much. It's just getting
the bits out.

FWIW, Denise







Denise N. Rall, Ph.D. submitted, School of Environ. Science,
Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA
Tuesdays: Room T2.12, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0438 233 344
http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html
Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK
http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html



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