[Air-l] Web Science a Field of Study

[Nancy Baym]

>I think we know enough by now (whether from a
>social-shaping-of-technology base [1] or indeed from one of the
>excellent Web histories [2]) to drop the idea of the deus ex machina 
>meets Eureka model of studying the Internet!

>This is not to criticise TBL in any way - he is certainly an important
>figure and his writings are useful - but it is work *in context* that
>interests academic researchers, right?


And let us not forget the fact that there was an internet for many 
years before there was a World Wide Web, and although most of us use 
the rest of the net through a WWW interface most of the time now, 
there are still significant portions of the internet that are not the 
WWW. Some of us on this list were in fact studying the internet 
before there was a WWW.