What is the internet?

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Transcript What is the internet?

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What is the internet?
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Is it the same as the world wide web?
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Privacy
 All Manner of Personal Information is Online:
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Patterns of credit card purchases.
Secret contents of personal e-mails.
Spyware tracks user activities and reports them back to advertisers.
Sites place cookies on the hard drives of visitors and track their movement
through other sites.
▪ Sites say tracking enables them to personalize advertising and other services
▪ Privacy advocates say few consumers realize they are monitored.
▪ Others users find it difficult to opt out.
 Do you think it would be easy or difficult to stop these things from happening?
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Social media have become so prominent
 Many people experience Fear of Missing Out (FOMO).
▪ Studies show more social media may lead to less happiness.
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Entrepreneurial stage
 Early 1970s to late 1980s
 Microprocessors
▪ Signaled the Net’s marketability
▪ Allowed for the first personal computers
 Fiber-optic cable
▪ Became the standard for transmitting communication data rapidly
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ARPAnet - (Advanced Research Projects Agency)
 Created by the Department of Defense
▪ Allowed researchers to share data
▪ In response to the Cuban missile crisis
▪ Each hub had similar status & power.
▪ No master switch to shut it down
 E-mail improved communication.
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Going Digital
 Scientists suggested computers could be for digital communication
▪ Digital messages were more accurate & could be sent without distortion.
 Programmers developed protocols,
▪ Codes that allow one machine to communicate with another,
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The First Commercial Online Services
 1st successful general online service was Compuserve,
▪ Early users had to master codes & commands to retrieve simple info.
 Microsoft & Apple
▪ Led to equip business & education institutions w/computers,
▪ Those who used them at work purchased units for home.
 AOL appeared in 1989 with software that was easier to use.
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Internet Service Providers (ISP)
 Connect users to their proprietary Web system
▪ Broadband connections replaced dial-up ISP services.
 Major ISPs
▪ Verizon, Time Warner Cable, Charter, and Cox
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World Wide Web
▪ Developed by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN in the late 1980s
▪ Based on the use of hypertext links (hyperlinks),
 Highlighted words and images within the Web page
 Allow movement to another site by clicking
▪ By 1995 internet moved to the public sector.
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Browsers
 Web browsers such as Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc
▪ Decodes web language so users can click & jump through dense data fields
 Users can navigate through sites by using
▪ hyperlinks,
▪ icons (small symbols),
▪ pull-down menus
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We have moved from a “Read/Only” online culture
 “Read/Write” culture.
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Social media
 Encourage users to create content & interact with other people.
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Blogs
Collaborative projects
Wiki Web sites
Content communities
Social networking sites
Virtual game worlds and virtual social worlds
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Global Dimensions
 The Internet has made the world a “global village”
▪ Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, China, and Myanmar permit limited or no
Internet access
 There is more cultural diversity on the Web than other mediums.
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Women
African Americans
Hispanics
Native Americans
Asians
Gays & Lesbians
▪ Have their own portals
▪ What makes it possible for the web to be so diverse?
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Search Engines
 A traditional search engine sends out “spiders” or “crawlers”
▪ What do these things do?
 All major search engines are hybrid search engines
▪ Which have both robots and human editors.
 Metacrawlers, such as Dogpile and Hotbot, combine results from
more than one search engine at a time.
 Newsgroups
▪ Forum where users read messages/replies between members.
 Thread
▪ Connected series of messages.
 Lurking
▪ Reading messages without responding.
 List servers
▪ Use e-mail addresses
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Media converges on computers
 Services like Skype & iChat can replace phones
▪ Internet-ready TVs
▪ Video game consoles
▪ Users can access:
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Movies (Netflix & Hulu)
Music (iTunes & Spotify)
Books (Amazon & Google)
Games
Newspapers magazines
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Revenue Sources
 Online commerce, or e-commerce
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(What is your top online source for purchases)
 Successful companies utilize the Nets unique capabilities:
▪ Interactivity
▪ Ability to target specific customers
▪ Ability to offer inventories that couldn’t exist in physical space.
▪ Walmart.com carries six times as many items as the largest Wal-mart store.
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Paid Content
 Users seem willing to pay for
▪ Online education in form of distance learning courses,
▪ Web based information services such as Lexis/Nexis,
▪ Online pornography.
 Millions of Americans visit at least one online dating site
▪ Yahoo Personals,
▪ Match.com,
▪ eHarmony.com every month.
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Online Dangers: Hacker Attacks
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Worms
Trojan horses
Phishing
Spam,
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Digital divide
▪ The gap between “info haves” & “info have-nots.”
▪ Smartphones are helping to narrow the gap.
▪ Still a gap between the U.S. & parts of the world
▪ Some countries permit limited or zero access to the Internet.
▪ Unlimited freedoms have caused problems
▪ Propagation of Viruses, Fraud, Spam
▪ Copyright infringement, inappropriate content, Identity theft
▪ Children’s Internet Protection Act of 2003
▪ Requires schools/libraries to use filters
▪ Limits minors exposure to inappropriate content
▪ Many want the Web to be completely unregulated
▪ Do you think the internet can be controlled?
▪ Why/Why Not