[Air-l] Internet as medium with different sub-media or channels?

[Nathaniel Poor]

On Mar 13, 2006, at 4:24 PM, Denise N. Rall wrote:

> People are still confounding the internet with the WWW.

Last term all of my freshmen bar one (a techie) thought the Internet  
and the web were the same thing. I thought they were supposed to be a  
wired generation, raised on gaming consoles and with cell phones and  
such.

I had a difficult time explaining it since it caught me off-guard.

Perhaps if "web browser" is a medium (with a BS in math/computer  
science, I disagree with myself there), and since they do so much  
through web browsers (but not all), they confound everything.

Really I think this is interesting, but moot: it just depends on your  
definition.

^_^  ndp...


On Mar 13, 2006, at 4:24 PM, Denise N. Rall wrote:

>
>
> --- "Christopher J. Richter" <crichter at hollins.edu>
> wrote:
>
>> media, as Anders suggests.  In fact, I would go so
>> far as to say that the internet taken broadly
>> shouldn't be considered as a medium at all, but a
>> domain or infrastructure for various media.  But as
>
> Thanks Christopher for stating the obvious. The
> internet IS the infrastructure and other things happen
> on it. The packet could care less. Its 'purpose in
> life' is to get from point A to point B, preferably
> without colliding with any other packet (if it does,
> ethernet constraints tell it what to do). It carries
> data not messages.  The messages, etc. are coded at
> one end and decoded at the other end. The internet is
> not a media! although I can see how it carries that
> burden today. People are still confounding the
> internet with the WWW. The web has expressive
> elements, the internet does not.
>
> A losing battle here, but that's me on record as a
> former IT technologist.
>
> Cheers, 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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---------------------------------------------
Nathaniel Poor, Ph.D.
www.umich.edu/~natpoor
Visiting Assistant Professor
Communication Studies Dept.
Albion College
http://www.albion.edu/commstudies