Transcript Internet - York University

Internet
Some questions include:
Does the Internet?
1.
Destroy in person contact-people so
caught in th.e virtual world they lose
contact with reality
2. Promote escapism-compartmentalized
sights lose touch with big picture
3. Is it `apolitical’?
Internet Defined• Defined-the internet is giant
network of computers located all
over the world that communicate
with each other.
Riding the Highway
From highway to web =
• compartmentalization,
• specialization,
• differentiation.
Commercialization of the Technology
1994
• Commercialization of the Internet
involved not only the development
of competitive, private network
services-
Dawn of the Information age.
• The 1980s involved the transition between
the industrial and information age.
• 1989-Tiannmen Square-
• 1994-Year of capitalism and the internet
Early Vendors
• Originally, commercial efforts mainly
vendors providing the basic networking
products, and service providers offering
the connectivity and basic Internet services.
• But the first Pizza was sold in 1994. Pizza
Hut.
Timeline of The Internet
1. 1939 First Television
2. 1945-War ends-domestic production and
consumerism begins
3. 1957-Sputnik
4. 1960-From military use to University
5. 1980-WWW
6. 1990’s and beyond –capitalism and
globalization.
SPUNIK & ARPA
• The USSR's launch of Sputnik
spurred the United States to create
the Advanced Research Projects
Agency (ARPA) 1957
J.C.R. Licklider
`Father of the Internet’
• In 1950, Licklider moved from
the Psycho-Acoustic Laboratory
at Harvard University
Galactic Network" concept.
• 1960 he envisioned a globally
interconnected set of computers through
which everyone could quickly access data
and programs from any site.
• In spirit, his concept was very
much like the Internet of today
– man and computersymbiosis…
Man-Computer Symbiosis.
• "A network of such [computers], connected to
one another by wide-band communication
lines" which provided "the functions of presentday libraries together with anticipated
advances in information storage and retrieval
and [other] symbiotic functions. "—
J.C.R. Licklider[1957
Internet ,Time and Fear
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Space Race and the Cold War created fear
Fear led to innovation in the US
Telephones could be broken
What happens if a missile attack occurs?
How does The President `push the button’
How do we contact him on `The Red Phone?
Date of the First Connection
• 1965 working with Thomas Merrill,
connected the TX-2 computer in Mass. to
the Q-32 in California
• Connection: low speed dial-up telephone
line creating the first (however small) widearea computer network ever built.
•
The transition toward an
Internet
1974
• TCP –a key in linking remote
computers through a common `server’
• The term "Internet" was adopted in
the TCP protocol ( Internet
Transmission Control Program,
December 1974).
•
Jan 1983 Internet Birthday
• (This date is held by some to be technically
that of the birth of the Internet.)
• It was then followed by the opening of the
network:
"The Internet"
• "The Internet" came to mean a
global and large network using
TCP/IP.
Internet's technologies
• As interest in wide spread networking grew
and new applications for it arrived, the
Internet's technologies spread throughout
the rest of the world.
• Easy to use any existing network
infrastructure, to carry Internet traffic.
Internet
• The Internet has now become almost a
"commodity" service, and much of the
latest attention has been on the use of this
global information infrastructure for support
of other commercial services.
Sociological Theories
The Great Change
• For the sociologist, the internet raises a
number questions:
• Structural Functionalist-the quest for
community…New vertical communities
replaced horizontal…(see R.Warren)
THE GREAT CHANGE
• The Community in America
• by Roland L. Warren.
• Introduces Two key concepts in
understanding community and internet:
Internet Communities
• Internet provides an ideal platform to:
1. Disperse information and news
quickly, easily and cheaply (Content)
2. Interact and reach targeted
audiences ( vertical community)
3. Buy and sell academic related
products and services (Commerce) .
(Horizontal Community)
ERODES
• Belonging can come from a place, from a
family, from an ethnic groups or community
organization,
• Loss of Traditional Community
…(Vertical Community
Expands
• Specialized interest groups or from a
virtual community)
• Ie. Teachers association, sports and rec.
associations, specified interest association.
Functional Concerns:
• a. Cultural lag How technological
change affects community-W.F Ogburn of
the Chicago School.…
• b. Erosion of community Others
(Wellman, 1988) any element of
industrialization, urbanization and
capitalism,
• C. Erosion of primary
relationships=people become disconnected,
weakly supportive relationships superficial,
secondary relationship replace primary
group ties….
Sociological Concern II
• D Presentist
Orientation….presentdriented ethos---an
on-going fast-moving, conversation with
people regardless of their location, schedule
and other constraints.
• ”
Statistics Canada
• Statistics Canada reported that in 1998,
about 36 per cent of Canadian households
were connected (Dickinson and Ellison,
1999).
• Private sector surveys put this figure over
50 per cent in 1999.
II. Symbolic Interactionist• Symbolic Interactionist-interested in new
forms of meaning, new symbols ie. @ sign,
dot.com etc.
• Symbols construct meaning
• Symbol such as Logo affect consciousness
• Ideas vs. Ideology
Interactionist:
. Youth
• ”
discourse and Meaning
Symbolic Interactionist
. Ideology replaces ideas…Logo culture
• Ideology of the Internet- “get with the
program” “join us geeks” “turn your back
on the ugly world out there” “ we have the
reality of your choosing” ????
•
III CONFLICT THEORY
• THE INTERNET PERPETUATES
CAPITALISTIC IDEOLOGY
• COMMERISM IS GOD
• COMMODITY FETISHISM PREVAILS>
IICAPITALISM and
Commodification
OBJECTIFICATION
• i. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, kiddie porn,
music, conversation, history, genealogy?
Internet & American
Imperialism
• Globalization has been called
Americanism.
• Standardization of culture under corporate
control.
• See D. Korten, When Corporations Rule the
World (1991)
Nation states
• Nation states are undermined by
multinational corporations and a standard
way of doing things become prevailent
throughout the world.
• Globalization has been linked to the
exploitation of third world countries by the
first world.
I.V Post Modernism
• b. M. McLuhan-the global village…on
the one hand, it refer to the world coming
together
Formation of the Broad Community
• The Internet is as much a
collection of communities as a
collection of technologies…
• FRAGMENTED
DISCOURSES…
Internet and Social Change
• Is the glass half empty of half full?
• The prophet Jeremiah, say that the more
immediate reward in praising the future
than denouncing it.
Continuity in change….
• a. E. Litwak-modified extended familycars, planes, and phones help maintain ties
over long distances..…geography not as
significant as emotional bonding….
Summary
•
Internet an illustration of a dramatic
change in material culture leads to change
in non-material culture…cultural lag
Summary
1. Internet changes community (SF)
2. Internet is ideological (Conflict)
3. Internet affect consciousness and
construction of meaning..(SI)