Like almost all other media weve examined in this course, the Internet has been praised as a way to

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Like almost all other media weve examined in
this course, the Internet has been praised as a
way to bring humanity together across the globe
and condemned for instigating loose morals,
corrupting children and causing overall social
degeneration. The spontaneity, global reach, and
above all, the interactive nature of the Internet
make it unique amongst the other media weve
discussed, however. These characteristics of the
Internet also raise some perplexing social and
political issues. Lets begin with a history of
the Internet, followed by an analysis of the
Internets unique qualities.
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History (from Abbate in your text) ARPANET. As
Abbate points out, however, the Internet did not
expand globally by simply radiating out of the
United States. Instead, the Internet developed
when networks in various countries, some run
privately, some owned by the state, were
connected to one another. BITNET (Because Its
Time Network) Minitel CERN
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In the 1980s, CERN installed local area networks
(LANs) to transport data around its own
laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. It joined
various European and American wide area networks
so that it could transport data to other research
organizations. It was Tim Berners-Lee, a CERN
physicist, who created the first incarnation of
the World Wide Web by envisioning a system that
transported not only numbers and words, but
graphics and images as well. Berners-Lee sought
to create a pool of human knowledge by creating
a hypertext system that would link files located
on computers around the world, forming a world
wide web of information. (Hypertext is a text
that contains links to other documents.)
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HTML HTTP Browsers Server
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The first version of the Web began operating
within CERN in December 1990. By this time,
private networks had been developed across Europe
and North America. It was the interconnection of
these private networks with public ones created
by governments and educational institutions that
created the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web
differs from Frances Minitel system in that
users can create their own content. Another
major contribution was the ability to use
graphics and sound on the web, making the Web an
amalgam of almost every other form of media we
know.
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As Bolter and Grusin note, rather than just being
an amalgam of other media, the World Wide Web
remediates them. What is remedition? What
does the WWW remediate?
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In fact, one can date the beginning of the
concept of networking the world back to the
laying of the first trans-Atlantic cable in
1856. Prior to the WWW, the Internet was simply
email sending text messages, just like the
telegraph. The speed of its communication was
its only advantage. As we know, in 1990 CERN
developed the Internet, then in 1993 Marc
Andressen at the University of Illinois created
the first graphical browser (the forerunner of
Netscape). This permitted images to appear along
with text on the page. This is turn had two
consequences
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Remediation Strategies 1. Respectful printed
books, paintings and photographs, like the
digital Gutenberg bible we saw at the beginning
of the course. www.prodigi.bl.uk/treasures/gutenb
erg/record
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2. Aggressive 3. Dont acknowledge remediation
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Web rivals and supplements T.V. by creating media
events, turning the commonplace into an event
but cheaper. Therefore we can afford to
monitor daily events closer than ever. e.g. A
womans life was saved when people watching her
help deliver a foal on a web cam called for
help. www.KBHilltopstables.com The web is even
more private than T.V. the individual is alone
with the machine and conducts the
interaction. It is more transparent than T.V.
because it is unedited. It is designed only
because of the fascination with monitoring and
media. It has no other purpose. For example,
Guinea pig T.V. is the result of a consciousness
of the web cams as a remediating technology.
What other purpose could it have? www.guineapig.tv

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Postive and Negative Impact of the
Internet Relationship between reality t.v. and
internet. Does T.V. remediating the
internet? Virtual Reality the creation of 3
dimensional environments using digital
media. Derrick de Kerckhove the progress of
VR is relentless, and it will eventually take
over the economy just as television did
because it stimulates the convergence of market
pressures an growing psychological needs. VR is
the first technology ever that has hit the
popular imagination before it has even reached
anything close to maturity. Even as a concept,
VR is already powerful enough to help change the
thinking of mainstream industry and rejuvenate
our exhausted post-industrial economy. On page
328 of Communication in History, 3rd edition.