overview

This profile offers perspectives for making sense of the internet, drawing together information from throughout this site and pointing to more extensive guides and notes dealing with network management, security, e-commerce, intellectual property, privacy and other matters.

     contents of this profile

The following pages cover -

cyberspaces - the shape of cyberspace, along with an introduction to the infrastructure on which it is based

emergence - a broader overview of the net, from studies of the first US academic and military computer networks to where the net becomes as ubiquitous and unremarkable as the telephone

millennium

web 2.0? - looks at what has been characterised as 'web 2.0', variously praised as the second generation of the web and dismissed as commercial hype or babble. It also considers potential futures, including metanets and ubiquitous data clouds.

Australia - an overview of the net in Australia, complemented by our profiles on auDA (the dot-au domain administrator), on the dot-nz space and on Australian and New Zealand telecommunications.

management - a map of the major bodies, such as the IETF, W3C and ICANN

cheerleaders - digerati such as Nicholas Negroponte, George Gilder, Esther Dyson, Dorothy Denning and other gurus of 'being digital'. It includes some accounts of how they've fared in practice

conflicts

commercials - pointers to some of the literature on the dot coms and the internet bubble

people - highlights works about some people associated with development of the net.

The profile supplements profiles on networking and the GII, the information economy, security and governance.

It is complemented by notes on the ICT industry and specific aspects such as browsers and search behaviour. It is also complemented by a separate multi-part media and communications timeline.

     the big picture

Christine Borgman's From Gutenberg to the Global Information Infrastructure: Access To Information in the Networked World (Cambridge: MIT Press 00) - strongly recommended - is an incisive overview of 'access' issues: standards, identification techniques, censorship, the 'digital divide', intellectual property, archiving etc.

The US National Information Infrastructure (NII) Virtual Library offers information about the information superhighway, in particular as part of the Global Inventory Project (GIP). 

In identifying resources relating to the Web and the information economy the Harvard Information Infrastructure Project (HIIP) is of particular value.  

We commend the following HIIP volumes from MIT Press: 

• The First 100 Feet: Options for Internet and Broadband Access (99) edited by Deborah Hurley & James Keller - looking at opportunities for business, government and communities rather than the 'last 100 feet' problem 

• Coordinating the Internet (97) edited by Brian Kahin & James Keller - governance, domain naming, trademarks, traffic management and pricing 

• National Information Infrastructure Initiatives (97) edited by Brian Kahin & Ernest Wilson - national policy, the information society versus the welfare society, NII initiatives 

• Borders In Cyberspace (97) edited by Brian Kahin & Charles Nesson - privacy, global rule-making, jurisdictions and other issues 

• Public Access to the Internet (95) edited by Brian Kahin & James Keller - pricing, the 'digital divide', national infrastructures, indigenous culture and communities online 

• Standards Policy For The Information Infrastructure (95) edited by Brian Kahin & Janet Abbate - papers on tying the networks together 

 


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