Choose Your Bicycle!

What fun! Didn’t I tell you Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) were the way of the future?

Google has just released Chrome for Windows, a browser designed for the evolving Web. I’m not running Windows, so haven’t tried it myself, but the feature list makes such sense. The browser is designed to run Rich Internet Applications, such as Google Docs (well, Google championed AJAX, too), quickly and reliably. Chrome, according to Google, gets out of your way.

Anyway, they explain it better than I do, so jump on over and have a look. Don’t forget to check out their heraldic comic book, either.

This really is revolutionary: these guys have very big plans, you can bank on that. Already, people and businesses are switching from desktop office applications to Google Docs. If this takes off - if! who am I kidding - one can see the future looking quite bleak for those that actually SELL operating systems. Their products are destined to become thinner: the business will all be at the server side on the Web. There hasn’t ever been money in the browser.

It will be mighty interesting to see Microsoft’s reaction. Come to mention it, this is a fabulous opportunity for browser vendors and developers: no doubt we’ll see more innovations in this line.

Well, I must return to work, but let me end by saying that you can mark my words: a few years down the track from now, and well into the future, you will see “Google Releases Chrome” featuring on Internet and Web timelines. It’s a turning point.

coversheet_ll_as

And that’s all, folks. Thanks for the fun.

I’ve thought about the Internet for some time as a microcosm of society, and find the term “Information Ecology” a little interesting. The idea of the Internet providing a platform for evolving, and thus in some senses natural, communications is certainly becoming quite justifiable, given the increasingly large numbers of people who actively participate in and contribute to the online environment and the raft of social, email and messaging utilities that proliferate.

I find the term “ecology” too obscure in this context, however. Although a noun, ecology usually refers to the study of relationships, rather than the actual system of relationships. My mind can far more easily grasp the idea that the Internet provides an Information Ecosystem than that it gives us an Information Ecology. So, if it isn’t too presumptuous, I’d like to complete this task by referring to an Information Ecosystem.

The Internet primarily exists as a technological system to support human communications. That is, there is a symbiotic relationship between Man and the machines: Man relies on the machine-based tools to transfer and to process data that forms the information building blocks of human communications online, and the machine-based tools exist only because Man creates them with other types of data.

A further clarification is required: there is a fundamental difference between data and information. Data are facts, and in this case, the data can be as atomic as zeroes and ones. Information is the interpretation of that data into meaning. Computers deal only with data; however, programming can automate some data processing tasks so that machines can present the zeroes and ones as digestible information. But always remember that this processing has been controlled by the programmer, not the program of itself! This means that the machines and software comprising the Internet do play an important role in the Information Ecosystem, but it is always a mediated one.

This is a good distinction to keep in mind during communications. The fact reinforces that despite our reliance on machines to maintain and grow our Information Ecosystem, humans are actually still in the driver’s seat, so to speak. In this sense, the Ecosystem we are discussing is closer to being characterised by data exchange rather than communication - since machines can only compute one sand zeroes and have no ability to perceive meaning - yet “Information Ecosystem” is probably the most relevant description since computers are able, in the limited sense addressed above, to formulate data into consumable forms, or information. The upshot of this is that we need to take responsibility for how we communicate and for ensuring that communication is effective.

The paradox is that while we (or a subset of humankind) mediate the role that tools play, the software is still a heavy mediator of our information exchange experience. Our escape comes in the knowledge that when the mediation is detracting from, rather than enhancing, the experience, we are able to provide feedback to the software or network developers to gain incremental improvements in the tools and hence the experience. The tools have no such capacity: they exist and can only exist in the fashion in which we create them.

What excites me is the concurrent evolution that takes place as technologies develop and human communication needs, desires and abilities become more sophisticated. As more people come online, and communication between networks of people (rather than computers!) becomes more complex, advanced tools evolve to analyse, predict and facilitate these new uses of the Internet. Truly amazing possibilities open up: these are not driven by technology, but by the humans that recognise the potential of their technologies and adapt them to specific or general needs.

Annotation
“Basic Search Tips and Advanced Boolean Explained” is a guide - presumably for University of California, Berkeley, students - on conducting effective web searches. The resource, a PDF file, was found on the afore-mentioned University’s library website, and references a “course”. The author is a university librarian, and may be considered a very credible source of information, which is relevant to my purpose, since it provides objective information on how to use conditional operators in Web searches.

The guide does not detail all aspects of Web searching, eschewing information on advanced search engine options and the commonly implemented Site operators (such as “define”, “cache”, “site” and so on). But as the document only claims to cover basic searching and advanced Boolean, the credibility of the document is not diminished for this omission.

The guide unfortunately does not specify a publication date. One may assume that searching techniques would remain relatively constant, but this is not a given, and searching for additional material that provides surety of currency is recommended.

Google reports that 12 sites link directly to this document, including other educational institutions. This is a good indication of the guide’s perceived quality.

Discussion
I enjoyed conducting this evaluation and believe the Evaluating Web Sites tutorial to be a particularly helpful framework for considering the validity of published material.

In general, people - including me - find it easy to defer to Google: whose premise is that the more links a webpage has, the more authority it carries (there are other factors, too, but it is generally thought that a link counts as a vote for relevance). Naturally, Google’s calculation is automated, and there are many reasons a page may receive many links and a consequently high placing on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs), so a good heuristic for evaluating Web-sourced information is important, particularly in “mission-critical” applications.

Depending on the type of resource, I think that in most cases people would be happier to click on a link surrounded by good contextual data than to read my annotation. It would take less time to click the link and scan the first part of the document than to read through my thoughts on the matter.

Additional Resource:

Evaluating Web Sites

The Deep Web

The concept of the Deep Web is not surprising to me: I’ve had a bunch of pages up on the Web that I haven’t bothered or wanted to have indexed in crawler-based sites, and I’ve even used robots.txt and Sitemap files to restrict access to some of my content. But I had never actually thought about the value of “hidden” content, and I didn’t realise that Sitemaps were a sneaky tool (well, the Sitemap generators are!) for accessing more of the deep web, because they inform search engines of more URLs than their crawlers would be able to find.

Now, I’ll point out that as a Linux user, I didn’t have access to Copernic or Sherlock, so I used Web-based metasearch tools instead.

When I first read about the Deep Web in this course, I wondered about how the content was accessible to anyone other than the owner. In my researches, I came across Turbo10, a Deep Net search tool that returns Web content as well as other hidden Internet resources. Turbo10 is different to many other search engines because it causes the relevance ranking, topic clustering and result merging to occur in the client browser rather than on the server (this is done in the interests of speed and is achieved by way of asynchronous data transfer). It turns out that Turbo10 may use a technique called federated searching, whereby programmed “adapters” automatically connect to topical deep web search engines, searching and extracting results from the Deep Net. Turbo10 has provided a great paper that explains the mechanics of searching the Deep Net.

To the actual task:
Google Search for “project management methodologies”: top result - Project Management Methodologies

, about 3,600,000 results in total.

Turbo10 Search for “project management methodologies: top result - Project Management Methodologies, 20 results in total.

I personally don’t think either search produced great results: a project management body would have carried more authority than an individual project manager and would hold more relevance than a book review. Turbo10 was quite disappointing, actually, in the number of results it returned.

Another great paper on searching the Deep Web is Using the Deep Web: A How-To Guide For IT Professsionals.

Boolean Searching
To get the biggest result set, use OR between keywords. Note that this will return the entire result set for each keyword joined by this operator.

Google Search for “project management OR methodologies”: top result - Project Management - Wikipedia.

If you need all keywords in your results, you’re better off using the AND operator or no operator at all (since AND is the default operator). I think the most useful searching techniques are to use the minus (-) operator to remove results that include the phrases you specify (eg project management methodologies -agile). Another good technique is to quote phrases if you wish the exact phrase to appear in the result set (eg “I have of late, but wherefore I know not”).

To obtain result sets originating only from university sources, it is best to use the Advanced Search option. Yahoo allows you to set specific Top Level Domains to search within: this is the best approach. Simply enter the search phrase, then limit the search to .edu domains.

Further references:
Librarian Search Guide
Great Boolean search cheat sheet
Dogpile
Ask

Organising Search Information

I used OpenOffice Calc (a spreadsheet tool) and The Gimp to record my search information. These are great open source tools that I use regularly. I built a similar system to the one you see in the screenshot below for recording website bugs for CybaSumo.com.

Here’s where being a Linux user has some disadvantages: standard plugins and programs are little behind the main game. The Flash Player, which is essentially necessary for browsing the Web, is a bit buggy, or at least not as fully featured as the Windows version. This means I sometimes encounter problems, for instance in pausing YouTube videos or doing various other things. In fact, this is the only real problem I face as a result of choosing Linux over the commercial operating systems.

Many Linux users are supporters of Free Software (”free as in speech, not beer”: “because the user is free”) . Many advocate only using free software, which would preclude the use of the Flash plugin, Adobe Reader and other proprietary software, including Opera (my favourite browser). As such, you’ll find free (usually released under the GNU Public Licence) software as substitutes: eg Gnash for Flash Player and Evince for Adobe Reader. I actually think it’s practical to use the proprietary standard versions in many cases.

For this task, I downloaded and installed RealPlayer, which is based on the OpenSource Helix Player. Since then, I’ve enjoyed the relaxing sounds of ABC’s Dig Radio.

There  is a lot of noise these days about Web 2.0. Initially, it sounds a little scary, is this some kind of evolution? What’s happening to the current Web?

It is a kind of evolution, quite market-driven. Web 2.0 apps proliferate now, with companies falling over each other to provide users with better ways to collaborate and interact, but more than that, Web 2.0 apps give people more power to place their lives online.

Google is your quintessential Web 2.0 company: it’s all about using the power of Internet technologies to make the online experience more customised and tailored to the individual user. More relevant to their online self, their habits and their interests. Google has incredible banks of information with which to create these customising applications, and of course it is all a part of the business model: targeted advertising.

You’ll see this trend all over the place: Facebook, iGoogle, eBay. So that’s the first characteristic of Web 2.0: offering powerful customisations of experience in exchange for data about preferences (to be used in determining which ads are most likely to elicit a click from you and thus cash for them).

Another major step in the Web 2.0 evolution is the emergence of Rich Internet Applications. These are usually created using AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) or Flash/Flex and allow users to obtain a similar experience within their browser to  using a desktop application. My favourite examples are Google Docs and MindMeister, a mind mapping tool. A great advantage of these applications is that they allow collaboration and portability: one may invite people anywhere around the world to view or edit documents. These often operate on a subscription basis: providing a basic service for free, but charging fees in exchange for really useful features.

Thirdly, Web 2.0 applications are characterised by user control. Users are given unprecedented power to manage their own data and choose how applications work for them. So, Web 2.0 apps - I like IWantSandy.com - are responsive.

Fourthly, Web 2.0 is about interactivity. Largely due to the popularity of social networking, Web 2.0 apps work with each other to deliver content and experiences that are appealing to users. For example, Google has built OpenSocial, an Application Programmer’s Interface (API) for social networking sites. OpenSocial allows developers to write applications or widgets that work across all social networking sites that implement the API. This opens up wonderful possibilities for applications to operate across these normally-closed social networking platforms. A similar idea (although with different implementation - long story) is Widgetbox, which allows you to create a widget(s) that operate almost anywhere on the Net.

Not that Web 2.0 is a utopia: read this blog post about what occurs when there is trouble in interactivity-paradise.

So, Web 2.0 is characterised by:

• customised online experiences;
• rich internet applications;
• unprecedented user control; and
• application interactivity.

Good Resources:

Web 2.0 Apps…

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Don’t Fight The Internet

Web 2.0 Domain Name Generator

As mentioned, I created my web page for module 3 by editing a file directly on the server via SSH. To complete this task, I uploaded my Concepts Project Coversheet to my server instead.

You can find the file here.

Nice and easy.

It’s an interesting fact, but it took me a very long time to even look at blogs because I dislike the word “blog”. There’s something about it that repulses me, I think because I am reminded of bogs, yuck. Nevertheless, I feel that I am over my prejudice against the name, which I now largely ignore.

I remember first hearing about blogs during the Iraq war. The ABC’s AM program ran a story about a blogger in Iraq who developed a large following by reporting on developments as he saw them. Clearly, this blogging thing has the potential to be powerful, thought I.

I didn’t have direct experience with blogs until much later when I started my freelance business. Having just had a baby, and knowing little about the Internet, I started my freelance career at the bottom, writing articles and doing bits and pieces development work through GetAFreelancer.com. Here, I encountered blogging as a means for making pennies through Google Adsense. While some of the blogs I saw were legitimate businesses, providing decent content to an audience (see Consejos de Salud for an example), I also encountered some very seedy practices (Blue Hat SEO, Black Hat SEO (”let your greed meet your imagination”) that scared me considerably until I realised that the Internet is just a microcosm of society. No one forces me to go to Kings Cross, and the same principle applies here: just stay away from bad neighbourhoods.

So, onto more savoury uses of blogs. In my travels, I see them used mainly for business: as means of building a brand, keeping search engines interested, attracting links from other websites and for providing information to customers. None of that is particularly exciting, unless you actually run a business.

I personally enjoy blogs that are written by people who know what they are talking about and who enjoy it themselves. Food blogs are usually good for this reason, I like Have Cake Will Travel and Anthony Bourdain’s Blog.

Last year, when the Haneef business was playing out in the media, I discovered that blogs can give you a voice. I had some things I wanted to say, and found that plenty of other people did, too. By reading and commenting on other people’s blogs, I was able to develop my perspective on the matter and make more informed commentary myself. And checking my logs, it appears the government was keeping an eye on the blogosphere. Andrew Bartlett, who actually has a real blog and not just a Facebook profile, had very many interesting things to say on the Haneef matter.

This poses an interesting question about “democratization” of Web content and the influence that the blogosphere can exert on public events. According to Andrew Bartlett, Australia lags behind the US in accepting citizen journalism through blogs, and frankly, I think there is some basis to this slowness. As Andrew mentions, the crux of the matter is the quality of content: Australians tend towards apathy (at least, we don’t get quite as excited as our U.S. counterparts) when it comes to politics, and perhaps we don’t have a sufficient number of quality political commentators in the blogosphere. It is likely, however, that journalists do consume political blogs to some extent.

For an interesting analysis of how the blogosphere exerts influence on the political domain, I recommend reading The Power and Politics of Blogs, by Drezner and Farrell (2004).

Overall, I’ve enjoyed writing my blog for this subject, although I’ve found it very time consuming and I’ve not participated in other students’ blogs as much as I would have liked. It’s been a great learning tool, to be frank, and I’ve spent many hours consuming material to help me develop and present my ideas. As such, I’ve found the blog format for the learning journal actually far more rewarding that simply writing in a book.

Below is my NET11 Concepts and Reflections Project.

Coversheet

Concept 1: Asynchronicity

Concept 17: The impact of text-based real-time chat

Concept 27: The persistence of history

Concept 28: The paradox of the World Wide Web

Concept 1: Asynchronicity

1. Asynchronicity

Asynchronous communication means that the sender and receiver deal with the communication between them at different times. We are familiar with asynchronous communication, for we use it regularly with letters, faxes and similar media. However, email often appears to be more similar to the conventions of real-time (or synchronous) communication and thus the particular nature of asynchronicity is different. People often expect a response to email in faster time than a letter (perhaps because they themselves respond rapidly to email). People expect to be able, through email, to conduct a conversation, with much back and forth, similar to an oral conversation.

In other words, asynchronous communication does not render time and schedules unimportant (as is sometimes claimed). Rather it requires us to think up new rules to assist us in managing communications that, from one perspective are ‘instant’ and, from another, are ‘lagged’ and that, standing back, are about the differences in temporal location of the people communicating.

Asynchronous electronic communication is not the opposite of real-time, synchronous communication: rather it describes forms of communication that appear differently ‘located in time’ depending on the perspective of the sender and receiver.

This concept applies equally, of course, to the other forms of asynchronous communication that are very similar to email, or use email (newsgroups and lists). What is perhaps less obvious is that FTP and the World Wide Web can also enable asynchronicity: indeed they depend on it, by allowing individuals to access material in many different personal ‘time zones’. For example, teaching online is predominantly effective where students cannot gather together in class to hear lectures but need to access them individually, at their own time. (Allen, n.d.)

The Internet fundamentally assumes asynchronous communication. This means, firstly, that the computers transferring data don’t need to be synchronised with clock signals; it also means that the communicating humans don’t need to be synchronised; communication does not need to be continuous.

If “asynchronous communication” is taken to mean communication able to occur across different time periods, whatever those time periods may be, we have a starting point for this discussion. We are able to see that Internet communications have varying degrees of asynchronicity, and although communication is not technically time-bound, social sensibility often provides a framework for what is considered an acceptable communication delay.

A good example of this social sensibility in action is with email in various contexts. Although answering an email is not like answering a telephone call, there are instances when the sender of an email might expect a very rapid response. It’s a general rule with online businesses that email correspondence by answered within 12 hours: any longer and people tend to think you aren’t serious. Other contexts for email correspondence have similar unwritten rules: consider that you’ve sent an email to a real estate agent, enquiring about a property in their portfolio. You’d generally expect to receive a reply within 1 - 2 business days, after all, you are approaching their business. There are plenty of other examples, too. So, while email correspondence is not technically time-bound, it is certainly socially time-bound.

A popular form of online communication that approaches synchronicity is instant messaging. In a similar way to sending SMS messages, instant messaging can be almost synchronous or quite asynchronous, and this is one of the more appealing elements of this communication method. Research has found that this duality offers individuals greater control over an interaction: time can be taken to formulate a response (if one even chooses to respond), or the quick, conversational style can be maintained.

Interestingly, IM offers another feature of synchronous conversation: the ability to see whether or not it is likely you’ll receive a response if you were to attempt communication. IM clients offer status notifications, displaying whether a user is available for messaging, whether they are busy, or away from their desk. Many offer users the ability to customise the way the status is displayed, for example, with something like “I’m at lunch, back at 1430″. This allows buddies to determine whether now is a good time to send a message, or whether to choose a more opportune moment, which is actually a good deal more information than one would receive in making a phone call.

Websites, particularly blogs, fairly regularly incorporate communication tools for visitors. Formerly considered to be means for broadcasting information, the advent of Web 2.0 has seen more and more websites become platforms for dialogue and collaboration. If, for instance, you are commenting on a blog article, you would reasonably expect to a) receive a response to your comment, and b) receive that comment in a timely fashion, especially when the article you are commenting on is fresh.

The Internet provides numerous communication channels, and although they are technically asynchronous, near synchonicity can be achieved. The choice of response timing is up to individuals, although social conventions certainly still apply to online communications.

Resources:

1. EmailReplies.com, (2006), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.emailreplies.com.

   This site provides an assortment of email etiquette advice. The authors advocate replying to emails swiftly, at least within 24 hours, and they make the additional suggestion that if the email query is complicated, a brief “I’ll get back to you in full ASAP” email will put the enquirer’s mind at ease.

   EmailReplies.com addresses several more issues relating to the asynchronicity of email communication, including delivery and read receipts, the use of email priority options and message recall requests.

2. Patil, S & Kobsa, A, (n.d) Instant Messaging and Privacy accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/papers/2004-HCI-kobsa.pdf.

   The researchers of this paper found that IM users have concerns over privacy regarding their availability. Participants in the study behaved differently when working as opposed to when they were not working. For instance, some set custom “away” status messages, even when leaving their desk briefly, and one respondent disabled the auto-idle feature in order to remain responsive. Various other behaviours were noted that displayed a willingness to manipulate the asynchronous-yet-approaching synchronicity nature of IM communications.

Bibliography:

1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
2. EmailReplies.com, (2006), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.emailreplies.com.
3. Patil, S & Kobsa, A, Instant Messaging and Privacy accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.ics.uci.edu/~kobsa/papers/2004-HCI-kobsa.pdf.
4. Internet and Web Essentials Glossary, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.webliminal.com/essentials/glossary.htm.
5. Envato, Freelance Advice and Freelance Jobs - Freelance Switch (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://freelanceswitch.com.
6. Kallos, J, Business Email Etiquette Discussions, Tips and Proper Practices (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.businessemailetiquette.com/.
7. Dominic E. Madell, Steven J. Muncer. CyberPsychology & Behavior. February 1, 2007, 10(1): 137-140. doi:10.1089/cpb.2006.9980. Accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.liebertonline.com/doi/abs/10.1089/cpb.2006.9980

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Concept 17: The impact of text-based real-time chat

You might think that, with the widespread availability of telephones, an internet-based system of real-time communication involving the typing of text messages would be hardly used, or at least, of little relevance. You would be wrong. Real-time internet-based text chat is a significant part of contemporary internet use. The question then to be asked is: what is the difference here that makes this mode of communication popular; and then what impact does it have of the kinds of communication and social interaction that take place?
Setting aside cost the main differences are
1.that you can imagine yourself with others in a public space
2.that your use of text provides a different form of communication, more ‘fictive’, more controlled, and still very expressive, but also one that enables you to monitor and reflect on the forms and meanings of communication, including your own
3.you can have multiple conversations without apparently being rude (including both public and private ones)
Communicating in real-time with text enables a form of ‘authoring of the self’ that is similar to the processes of face-to-face speech but which is much more amenable to authorial control, experimentation and reflection. Further, text-based communication carries with it the possibility for multiple, differing conversations occurring simultaneously, relying on the ability of the human brain to deal with text much better than speech.
Whether this effect of real-time communication will survive the rush towards AV conferencing is a moot point. However, a skilled Internet user will appreciate that text is, in some circumstances, a highly effective mechanism for communication. In particular, because text can be captured so much more easily than speech, it provides a mechanism for preserving and reflecting on conversations. (Allen, M, n.d.)

Text-based, real-time chat, or instant messaging (IM), is a flourishing phenomenon of current-day Internet usage. The technology is relevant to very many different user groups, from teenagers, to business users, to friends in far-off places. For its use to be so widespread, it must possess elements that make fundamental sense to human communication sensibilities.

Assumptions are generally made that instant messaging is primarily good for quick discussions or for making arrangements to meet elsewhere. In fact, research has shown that, particularly in the work context, people use instant messaging for complex and prolonged discussions. My own experience confirms this: I’ve regularly held long IM and group chat discussions to discuss project requirements and to solve work-related problems, and I’ve also participated in extended personal conversations.

The Concept above states that whether IM will survive the rush towards AV conferencing or not is a moot point. I disagree with this: instant messaging *has* survived the advent of free and easy VoIP and AV conferencing - see the integration of IM and chat into Skype’s client as evidence – and there must be a reason why this is the case. Certainly, many of my own discussions mentioned above could have taken place using the free VoIP client Skype, but didn’t. This hints that IM has a value for human communications in its own right.

I propose the following reasons for the success of IM:

1. The computing context: users are accustomed to using computers for a variety of purposes in the same time period. It’s not unusual for people to have upwards of ten applications open at once. At the moment, for instance, I am running seven different programs, and within each, I have a number of different things I am looking at. Instant messaging fits very comfortably into the multi-tasking atmosphere of the current day computer user, allowing them to hold conversations while doing other things without seeming rude. Importantly, these “other things” may actually pertain to the conversation: looking up reference documents, conducting Google searches, linking to pertinent Web resources or checking emails.
2. Provision for adaptive communication: humans naturally adapt their communication style to the context they find themselves in.

   Instant messaging supports such adaptations of style: informal shorthand and emoticon-enriched messages proliferate among friends, particularly teenagers, and this has been commented on extensively, but this form is by no means forced upon all conversations. Formal style can be quite appropriate when meeting a business colleague or client online, and conventions are fairly quickly established for communication between individuals, even when the relationship exists purely in the online space.

   Research has shown that the use of instant messaging is an effective method of building relationships and a sense of community. Of course, it has been noted that online personas are more easily contrived, and there is a certain lack of verification that comes from visual communication cues in other contexts, but generally speaking, the communication style that has evolved, including the use of emoticons as parallels to nonverbal cues, can provide a sufficiently rich communication mechanism.

3. Perceived synchronicity and communication context: the provision for almost synchronous communication satisfies an intrinsic desire for feedback in the communication context. Additionally, many IM clients provide additional context by way of user-defined buddy grouping, user status updates and display, and offline messaging.

The success of IM points to the fact that this method of communication is a practical and effective tool for human interaction.

Resources:

1. Wikipedia: Instant messaging and messengers (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging.

   This resource describes instant messaging and features of various instant messaging protocols and clients. The article provides a good description of the communication-facilitating features of instant messaging, a history, a discussion of proprietary protocols and an introduction to the language used by instant messaging users, along with other instant messaging usage information. Read this article for a comprehensive look at instant messaging.

2. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (2005),
   7 Things You Should Know About Instant Messaging | EDUCAUSE CONNECT, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39385.

   Although focussed on the learning context, this resource provides an excellent background to instant messaging, covering what it is; who’s doing it; how does it work?; why is it significant?; what are the downsides?; and where is it going?. Of particular interest is the note about the technology facilitating the creation of “communication back-channels”: secondary conversations operating around a more formal context, like note-passing in class. This is a very good introduction to instant messaging, providing practical examples to illustrate points. Although it is written for the education context, many general principles are elucidated and the document actually has a wide application.

Bibliography

1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
2. Wikipedia: Instant messaging and messengers (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant_messaging.
3. Isaacs, E, Walandowski, A, Whitaker, S, Schiano, D, Kamm, C (2002),
   The character, functions, and styles of instant messaging in the workplace, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/587078.587081.
4. EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative (2005),
   7 Things You Should Know About Instant Messaging | EDUCAUSE CONNECT, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://connect.educause.edu/Library/ELI/7ThingsYouShouldKnowAbout/39385.
5. Nicholson, S (2002),
   Socialization in the “virtual hallway” Instant messaging in the asynchronous Web-based distance education classroom, accesssed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6W4X-46V4TGM-1&_user=10&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_sort=d&view=c&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=2282e4dd07dae05912e708b84b41cf6d
6. Krohn, F (2004), A GENERATIONAL APPROACH TO USING EMOTICONS AS NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://baywood.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&eissn=1541-3780&volume=34&issue=4&spage=321
7. Schirber, M (2005) Study: Instant Messaging is Surprisingly Formal, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.livescience.com/technology/050301_internet_language.html

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Concept 27: The persistence of history

27. The persistence of history

When we consider certain applications, such as telnet, ftp and some of the more arcane ‘management’ tools such as the ability to finger, lookup and so on (so-called net tools), it may appear that, in the age of the World Wide Web, internet telephony, AV conferencing online and so on, these are old-fashioned irrelevancies. However, they are not. These early applications continue to have value, directly, and moreover, advanced Internet users understand them because they provide a sense of history and context which can assist in developing new capabilities for Internet use. Furthermore, the ideas that underlie these technologies are critical and continue to govern the fundamentals of Internet use.
Advanced Internet users inquire into and analyse the kinds of applications available over the Internet, even if they do not regularly use them, so as to learn lessons about past developments and to anticipate potential new developments, based on the meaning of those applications.

Moreover, while new systems ‘appear’ different, they often use or include much older, traditional applications. For example, various identifier commands (ping, traceroute etc) can be used within IRC; telnet and ftp are tightly interlinked with http for web browsing. (Allen, M, n.d.)

The study of history is an important cultural activity in any context. Humans have consistently shown a desire to review and understand past events, not only to learn from mistakes, but to gain an understanding of who we are.

By understanding a little of the course of history, we are given a perspective on our place and purpose, along with hints at the direction of the future. This is true of all human endeavours, and is certainly true of our creation and use of the Internet. Where history is ignored, a vast body of culturally significant knowledge, value and impetus is lost.

Although the Internet is not yet 50 years old, there has been a fantastic growth in the number of uses and the purposes for which the Internet is used. In this brief space, I want to look at a simple concept, present at the Internet’s conception; clothed, but still present today; and bound to be a driver for the iterative developments we will see with the Internet and the World Wide Web in coming days. I want to look at the concept of information sharing between people.

The Internet was not developed for the sake of machines or simply as a technological achievement. The Internet developed for the visionary purpose of facilitating the sharing of information amongst scientific and military researchers. ARPANET was devised to create open channels of communication between people with similar goals and purposes.

The World Wide Web was similarly conceived. Tim Berners-Lee formulated a system to run on the Internet, based on hyperlinks, to aid high-energy physicists worldwide to share data, news and documentation. He created the first Web browser/WYSIWYG editor, Web server and Web pages.

In April of 1993, CERN decided that Internet code and protocols could be accessed, royalty free. This contrasted with the University of Minnesota’s decision to charge for implementations of it’s Gopher protocol, and paved the way for widespread use and growth of the World Wide Web. Thus, the World Wide Web continued the Internet’s existence as a free and open information-sharing platform.

As the Web became commercialised, more and more people had reasons to use it. Applications were created that improved not only information sharing, but general interactions, and specifically commercial interactions. The Internet became more and more a microcosm of human activity. New applications developed - especially after Google made advertising, and thus online business, viable - to promote sharing of media online. People increasingly took advantage of Internet infrastructure to develop communication and media-sharing tools and even protocols for specific purposes.

Peer-to-peer file sharing flourished with Napster and Bittorrent - harking back to the early days of peer-to-peer Internet interactions, but with a twist provided by the rather larger pool of participants and increased bandwidth. Likewise, communication protocols such as IRC, ICQ and other chat applications blossomed. Further reductions in hardware prices and growing understandings of how to do business online made it possible for companies to provide World Wide Web users with facilities to create their own content with blogs, relatively cheap hosting, and social spaces.

It can be seen, then, that the history of the Internet is driven by the development of technologies to serve particular, rather than general, information sharing and communication needs and markets. It is true that technologies are often found to have a wider application than what was originally conceived, and this is paralleled by a similar phenomenon with inventions in the “real world”.

Many tout the Semantic Web as the next iteration of the World Wide Web. It is Tim Berners-Lee’s vision of a new form of web content, meaningful to computers, and enabling vast possibilities. Such a Semantic Web would see people sharing information on a boundless scale.

Resources

1. Berners-Lee, T, Hendler, J, Lassila, (2001),
   The Semantic Web, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web.

   “The Semantic Web will bring structure to the meaningful content of Web pages, creating an environment where software agents roaming from page to page can readily carry out sophisticated tasks for users.”

   This resource describes Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the future of the World Wide Web: a very specific development of technology to facilitate the boundless sharing of information. This is indeed an evolution of process as well, permitted in the context of the Internet because of our growing understanding of current use and the potential for future use.

   This is a fascinating document from the creator of the World Wide Web. It identifies technical issues and provides a context for understanding the difficulties of reconciling human and computer communications.

2. Crabtree, D (1993) The Importance of History, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://www.mckenziestudycenter.org/society/articles/history.html.

   While this is not an Internet-related resource, I’ve chosen to include it as it formed the basis of my conceptions about Internet history as a specific case. The author, David Crabtree, states that history is important because it gives form to the way we view the present and to our formulation of solutions to current problems. This prompted me to think of the essence of the Internet as a tool for sharing and dispersing information right from its inception. The current buzz about the Web “democritizing” news, content and knowledge seems to me simply an extension of this process, rather than something surprising.

Bibliography

1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
2. Berners-Lee, T, Hendler, J, Lassila, (2001),
   The Semantic Web, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=the-semantic-web
3. Crabtree, D (1993) The Importance of History, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://www.mckenziestudycenter.org/society/articles/history.html.
4. Aaron, L (2005) The Internet, A Microcosm of Society?, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at /http://lesaaron.blogspot.com/2005/11/internet-microcosm-of-society.html
5. CERN (2008)Welcome to info.cern.ch, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://info.cern.ch
6. World Wide Web, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Wide_Web
7. History of the Internet, accessed online on 07/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Internet.
8. Hinchcliffe, D (2006) Democratization of Content with Web 2.0: The Emergent vs. Deliberate Debate, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://web2.wsj2.com/democratization_of_content_with_web_20_the_emergent_vs_delib.htm.

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Concept 28: The paradox of the World Wide Web

28. The paradox of the World Wide Web

“The Web embodies a fundamental paradox:

it is designed to be user-friendly information environment, fun to use and unthreatening;

BUT

it is the exemplification of a community/industry/technology which by its very nature is innovative, constantly changing and growing in complexity.

It therefore tends to be easy to use on the surface but is, at a deeper level, difficult to understand and use” (M.Exon, 1998).

Moreover, simply understanding and coming to terms with this complexity is not sufficient. We must see through it to the conceptual basis of the web: a system that encourages decentralised participation, exploratory and entrepreneurial behaviour in a manner that bypasses traditional government and corporate systems. What makes the Internet ‘work’ is this level of decentralisation, which drives innovation and empowers the individual; what makes the Internet ‘fail to work’ is the extraordinary demands it places on users to cope with many complex facets and more decisions than normal. Furthermore, complexity can disempower those who lack the skills, time and opportunity to learn.
Advanced Internet users recognise the character of the Web, seek to utilise its advantages, ameliorate its deficiencies and understand that not all users have the same abilities as themselves in reconciling the paradox of the WWW.

The World Wide Web is also beginning to encompass more and more of what we do on the Internet, at some cost. People tend to assume that the Internet is the WWW: it’s not; on the other hand, we can see the cultural forces at work to make the WWW do all the things we want to on the Internet – it’s more effective for large companies to profit from, and creates a sense that using the Internet is ‘easy’ (useful to convince reluctant customers). (Allen, M, n.d.)

The point is made with this concept that the World Wide Web has two faces: a fun and easy presentation interface, and a complex and evolving technical underpinning. While this may be a paradox, it isn’t surprising.

In his book In the Beginning was the Command Line, Neal Stephenson [http://www.nealstephenson.com/] proposes that contempory culture is a two-tiered system, similar to that found in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. He creates a parallel between Wells’s Eloi and Morlocks and the two elements of our society thus:

“In The Time Machine the Eloi were an effete upper class, supported by lots of subterranean Morlocks who kept the technological wheels turning. But in our world it’s the other way round. The Morlocks are in the minority, and they are running the show, because they understand how everything works. The much more numerous Eloi learn everything they know from being steeped from birth in electronic media directed and controlled by book-reading Morlocks.” [ITBWTCL, The Interface Culture].

In Stephenson’s thesis, society hankers for mediated experiences across the spectrum of existence: from reproduced - and sanitary - cultural artifacts, to Facebook politics, to Disney recreations of classic tales, to graphical computer interfaces. Stephenson describes the creators of all these “interfaces” as energetic, intelligent and industrious Morlocks: the Eloi are happy to pay for these interfaces because they “like to be dazzled”.

This may seem a harsh assessment of reality, but I think there is some general truth to the conception. Constituents of modern society are swamped with information and things to do: we must rely on others to make much of the current technologically-accelerated life digestible, while we work away at our own area of expertise.

In fact, this is true of all human knowledge: it is very rare that a human actually deduces facts entirely by himself, he must rely on the researches of many other humans when coming to knowledge. As such, epistemologists have generally defined knowledge not as “true belief” but as “justified, true belief” (although - and exceedingly interestingly - the Gettier cases prove that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge because the existence of interfaces intermingled with real objects may mean that a justified true belief is in some instances actually pure luck: see http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#JTB for a good explanation). But I digress.

Stephenson makes the distinction between the Eloi and Morlocks of this world to understand the popularity of the computer Graphical User Interface (GUI) in general, and our fascination with Microsoft products in particular. GUIs are not as powerful as the commandline, but they offer convenient “metaphors”, an easy environment to help the user make choices. Now, it is apparent that the World Wide Web is becoming more and more like a desktop – with layers of abstraction built over the underlying technologies to make life easy and fun for users. Some strong examples are:

• Cpanel and other web hosting control panels: these allow web hosts to operate their server from a convenient web-based interface, without ever needing to touch the commandline. This is telling development, because it allows the “Eloi” to propagate the Web;
• Webmail and intra-web portal messaging, ala Facebook[http://facebook.com]: these technologies blur over email protocols and smudge the distinction between real email (using SMTP and the access protocols of IMAP and POP3) and HTTP (Web) based messaging;
• Rich Internet Applications: these use technologies such as AJAX to create a desktop “look and feel” on a web page, particularly through asynchronous communication with the server, meaning the page doesn’t need to be reloaded to achieve a displayed response to user actions. The user is generally none the wiser as to how this occurs.

The evolution of the Web into a richer and more responsive environment for users does gloss over all manner of technical implementation details, and it certainly blurs the distinction between the Internet and the WWW for most users, who increasingly inhabit the Interweb. But we should be generous, we sometimes like to live there, too!

Resources

1. Allen, M (n.d.) Concepts Document accessed online on 23/06/08 at http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/student/button_bar/305033_b/concepts.html.
2. Stephenson, N (1999) In the Beginning was the Command Line, accessed online on 03/07/2008 at http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml.

   This is an essay investigating the rise and rise of the Graphical User Interface (GUI), and in particular, the Windows variants of the GUI. Stephenson’s thesis is that society’s fascination with Microsoft products cannot be explained in purely economic terms (since there are better operating system products available – for free – and this information is widely available). Instead, he looks to a cultural explanation, and I have drawn on this in my discussion of the paradox of the World Wide Web.

3. Wikipedia: The Interweb (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interweb.

   This resource explains the ironic term “Interweb” as a joke about inexperienced users of the Internet and the World Wide Web. The term mingles the names in imitation of the way these inexperienced users access content from both without understanding the distinction between them.

Bibliography

1. Stephenson, N (1999) In the Beginning was the Command Line, accessed online on 03/07/2008 at http://artlung.com/smorgasborg/C_R_Y_P_T_O_N_O_M_I_C_O_N.shtml
2. Wikipedia: The Interweb (2008), accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interweb
3. Steup, M (2005)Epistemology: Knowledge As Justified True Belief, accessed online on 08/08/2008 at http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/#JTB.

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