[Air-l] A definition of the internet

[John Veitch]

Not a trivial question at all. Highly important. Let us take off our own 
blindfolds.
A study by the Ministry of Economic Development in NZ concludes with 
this comment:
"However, the cases also illustrate that *the country is a very long way 
still from having a vibrant information economy*."

http://www.med.govt.nz/pbt/infotech/case-studies/conclusion/conclusion.html
Sadly the study was so badly constructed, (full of wrong assumptions) it 
entirely missed discovering "Why this is so".

Let me try and make up a definition of the Internet:

The Internet: A massive array of perfectly capable computers, each one 
with peer status at the end of a communication line. Each of those 
computers is controlled by a person who usually has no idea how the 
system works, who to contact, what to search for or how to use the 
system to do anything useful. The Internet is the "superhighway" 
populated by people who prefer to walk with blindfolds on.

(My research suggests that most "connections" get less than 10 emails a 
week, and used less than once a week to search on Google. The content of 
an email is usually a joke, sometimes a video link. Occasionally people 
send photos to each other. People DON'T join lists, or social networks 
or groups of any kind. This sort of behaviour was typical for +80% of my 
small sample. (3 yrs ago) I've been talking to 50+ people recently on 
another study. Nothing there suggests anything has changed.)

John

Sam Tilden wrote:
> I know this is a trivial question! Does anyone have a really good definition of the Internet.
>    
>   The only ones I have speaks only to the technology.
>    
>   Sam
>