Internet and Society

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Internet and Society

• Orville Leverne Clubb

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Introduction

• 50 minutes is a very short time to compress what
  I wish to say about the internet and todays
  society. I will try and bring up the important
  events, people and technology to give you a
  sampling of the development of the Internet and
  in particular, the WWW and it effects on Society.
  Hopefully, during the talk we will use the WWW
  for reference.

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Objectives and style of talk

• Objectives
• Give audience the feel for how modern computer
  technology, political and economic events have
  lead to todays Internet world
• Show that there are many different views of how
  thing took place and the importance of each.
• Style
• Chronological look at events and technological
  developments, may go back when look at different
  aspects of the talk
• Present different points of view (not necessarily
  the view of the speaker).

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The development of the modern Internet and its WWW

• What was needed to develop Internet technology?
• Needed a political and economical environment
  that motivates key people to develop concepts
  that use technological enablers that in turn
  leads to and, sometimes can, facilitate a
  technology that produces new and original uses of
  the technologies.

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Society - Global digital divide

• The global digital divide is a term used to
  describe
• great disparities in opportunity to access the
  Internet and the information and
  educational/business opportunities tied to this
  access between developed and developing
  countries
• Lu, Ming-te (2001). Digital divide in
  developing countries. Journal of Global
  Information Technology Management (43), pp.
  1-4.
• Retrieved from http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globa
  l_digital_divide

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• The World Is Flat A Brief History of the
  Twenty-first Century
• Thomas L. Friedman (an Economist) looks at
  globalization with a special emphasis on the
  early 21st century. It was first released in 2005
  and was later released as an new edition in 2006.
  
• Friedman examples explains that companies in
  India and China are becoming part of large global
  complex supply chains that extend across national
  boundaries through a process called outsourcing
  providing everything from call centers to X-ray
  interpretation by overseas medical staff to
  component manufacturing.
• Friedman defines ten "flatteners" that have
  leveled the global playing field and allowed the
  world to become flat.

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Friedmans ten "flatteners"

• Friedman feels that his first three flatteners
  have become a crude foundation of a whole new
  global platform for collaboration.
• 1 Collapse of Berlin Wall-(11/09/1989) The
  collapse of the Berlin wall which ended the cold
  war Friedman sees as the starting point for
  leveling the global playing field. Friedman
  believes that this event not only marked the end
  of the Cold war, it has allowed people from other
  side of the wall to join the economic
  mainstream.
• 2 Netscape - (8/9/1995) with their Web
  Browser broadened the audience for the Internet.
  Expanding the role from its roots as a
  communications medium used primarily by
  scientists.
• 3 Workflow software The ability of machines to
  talk to other machines with no humans involved.
• 4 Open sourcing Communities uploading and
  collaborating on online projects. Friedmans
  examples include open source software, Blogs, and
  Wikipedia. Friedman considers Open sourcing "the
  most disruptive force of all to the old order.
• 5 Outsourcing Friedman postulates that
  outsourcing has allowed companies to split
  service and manufacturing activities into
  components, where each component performed in
  most efficient, cost-effective way.

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Friedman lists ten "flatteners" that have leveled
the global playing field

• 6 Offshoring Offshoring, the manufacturing
  equivalent of outsourcing.
• 7 Supply chaining Friedman compares the modern
  retail supply chain to a river, and uses Wal-Mart
  as the best example of a company using technology
  to streamline item sales, distribution, and
  shipping.
• 8 Insourcing Friedman uses UPS as a prime
  example for insourcing, where the company's
  employees perform services--beyond shipping--on
  behalf of another company. For example, UPS
  itself repairs Toshiba computers on behalf of
  Toshiba. The work is done at the UPS hub, by UPS
  employees.
• 9 In-forming Google and other search engines
  are the prime example. "Never before in the
  history of the planet have so many people-on
  their own-had the ability to find so much
  information about so many things and about so
  many other people", writes Friedman.
• 10 "The Steroids" Personal digital equipment
  like mobile phones, iPods, personal digital
  assistants, instant messaging, and voice over IP
  or VOIP

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Flattener 1 Collapse of Berlin
Wall-(11/09/1989)

• After WW II a cold war was in place causing a
  bi-polar world order between communism vs.
  liberal democracy with capitalism meant that a
  technology race was still on.
• The end of the cold war following the break up of
  the Soviet Union Left the world with one super
  power and the end of the Bi-polar world order.

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Flattener 1 Search for new World Order

• Francis Fukuyama
• The End of History and the Last Man (1989)
• "What we may be witnessing is not just the end of
  the Cold War, or the passing of a particular
  period of post-war history, but the end of
  history as such that is, the end point of
  mankind's ideological evolution and the
  universalization of Western liberal democracy as
  the final form of human government."

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Flattener 1 Search for new World Order

• Samuel Phillips Huntington Countered Fukuyama
  with The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking
  of World Order
• It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source
  of conflict in this new world will not be
  primarily ideological or primarily economic. The
  great divisions among humankind and the
  dominating source of conflict will be cultural.
  Nation states will remain the most powerful
  actors in world affairs, but the principal
  conflicts of global politics will occur between
  nations and groups of different civilizations.
  The clash of civilizations will dominate global
  politics. The fault lines between civilizations
  will be the battle lines of the future.

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Samuel Phillips Huntington

• His ideas LETS USE THE WWW TO LOOK AT HIS
  IDEAS!
• The clashes of civilizations

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2 Netscape - (8/9/1995)

• with their Web Browser broadened the audience
  for the Internet. Expanding the role from its
  roots as a communications medium used primarily
  by scientists.
• Why Netscape? Let us explore the start of the WWW
  (World Wide Web (or the Web)). The WWW was
  invented by Tim Berners-Lee but it was for
  Scientists to put their papers in a public
  domain.
• Definition of the WWW? The World Wide Web (or
  the "Web") is a system of interlinked, hypertext
  documents accessed via the Internet. From
  Wikipedia
• ALSO SEE CERN
• The 2 WWW components are hypertext and the
  Internet, lets look at these two technologies
• What influenced Berners-Lee?

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Hypertext

• A key person with a revolutionary idea 1945
  Vannevar Bush describes a memory extender device
  - memex - in an article in the Atlantic Monthly
  titled As We Think
• Bushs memex device, as defined in the article
  describes
• Storage of all records/articles/communications
• Items can be retrieved by indexing, keywords,
  cross
• references (now called hyperlinks)
• One of Bushs thoughts was that retrieval was to
  be Interactive and nonlinear

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Hypertext Supporting Technology at the time of
Bushs article

• Due to the technology of the time Bush envisioned
  the system on microfilm
• Computing Technology at the time of Bushs
  article! (See the web site Bad Predictions)
• Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
• "I think there is a world market for maybe five
  computers."
• Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with
  18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers
  in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes
  and weigh only 1.5 tons." -- Popular Mechanics,
  1949

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Hypertext Importance of Bush?

• Bush had defined concepts that could be called
  Hypertext and Browsing
• Bush did not have the technological enabling
  underpinning, he was thinking of microfilm as the
  enabling technology.

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Business and Computers

• Prediction The editor in charge of business books
  for Prentice Hall, 1957
• "I have traveled the length and breadth of this
  country and talked with the best people, and I
  can assure you that data processing is a fad that
  won't last out the year." --.

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Hypertext Key Person Ted Nelson Professor of
Sociology Vassar College

• 1965 Ted Nelson coins the term hypertext
• Think of information not as linear flow but as
  interconnected nodes
• Nelson stated that - Computers can help people,
  not just scientist and business
• Nelson was greatly influenced by Bushs MEMEX
• Non-linear browsing structure
• Project Xanadu was first attempt to use hypertext
  
• Original documents of the definition of hypertext
  are on http//xanadu.com/XUarchive/

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Hypertext Technology enablers

• Nelson was too early!
• The enabling technology of the time was not up to
  what was needed!
• 1960s was an interesting Decade - Computers
  still too expensive for individuals. However,
  computers were making major inroads into the
  business world.
• Computer hardware and computer programming
  languages made big advances

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Some additional work on Hypertext

• 1968 Van Dam others at Brown University
  develop a Hypertext Editing and File Retrieval
  Systems
• Basically, when Burners-Lee defined the Spec for
  the WWW a lot of work had been done before him.

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The second component of the WWW the Internet, the
method of data transmission

• ARPAnet
• Intended for Military and defense research
• Implemented in 1969 by ARPA (Advanced Research
  Projects Agency of DOD)
• Networked computer systems of a dozen
  universities and institutions with 56KB
  communications lines
• Grandparent of todays Internet
• Intended to allow computers to be shared
• Became clear that key benefit was allowing fast
  communication between researchers
  electronic-mail (email)
• Did not have hypertext documents!

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ARPAnets goals

• Allow multiple users to send and receive info at
  same time
• Network operated using a packet switching
  technique
• Digital data sent in small packages called
  packets
• Packets contained data, address info,
  error-control info and sequencing info
• Greatly reduced transmission costs of dedicated
  communications lines
• Network designed to be operated without
  centralized control
• If portion of network fails, remaining portions
  still able to route packets

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Design Philosophy (I have not verified, seen this
in textbooks and presentations)

• In case of a nuclear attack, if a section of the
  network disappeared, the entire network would not
  be destroyed. To that end, the network was
  decentralized, data was distributed among all the
  network computers, and data was transferred in
  small packets.
• The network design was based on observations of
  the human brain, since brain functions don't rely
  on a centralized set of cells. Brain circuitry
  can be rerouted around damaged cells and neural
  networks can be re-created over new pathways.

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More perditions (Personal Computer development)

• 1968 "But what...is it good for?" -- Engineer at
  the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM,
  commenting on the microchip.
• 1977 "There is no reason anyone would want a
  computer in their home."-
• Ken Olson, President, Chairman/Founder of
  Digital Equipment Corp.,

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Enabler Personal Computers (PC)

• PC were were originally Text and command-based
• Initially For businesses sold lots
• Performed lots of tasks the
• general public wanted done
• Major advance to allow home use was Graphics
  Users Interface (GUI) WYSIWYG or the
• WIMP environment
• Windows
• Icons
• Menus
• Pointers

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Moore's Law and PCs
Processor Year of Transistors 4004 1971
2,250 8008 1972 2,500 8080 1974 5,000
8086 1978 29,000 286 1982 120,000386
processor 1985 275,000 486 DX processor 1989
1,180,000 Pentium 1993 3,100,000 Pentium II
1997 7,500,000 Pentium III 1999 24,000,000
Pentium 4 2000 42,000,000
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Computer Operating Systems from Batch up to WIMP
interaction
?
WIMP (Windows)
User Adoption (not productivity!)
Command Line
Educated
Batch
Professionals
Experts
?
1940s 1950s
1980s - Present
1960s 1970s
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WWW

• Tim Burners-Lee gave the world the WWW.
• As we have seen most of the NEEDED components of
  the WWW were already defined independently. It
  need an organization to support it and the
  network.
• The network gained a public face in the 1990s.
  On August 6, 1991, CERN publicized the new
  World Wide Web project, two years after
  Burners-Lee had begun creating Hypertext markup
  Language (HTML), Hypertext transfer protocol
  (HTTP), Uniform Resource Locator (URL) and the
  first few Web pages at CERN very important.
• Right man in the right place at the right time!

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The bloom of the WWW

• Why did ARPAnet allow the use of the Internet to
  the public?
• Perhaps because of flattener 1 (the cold war is
  over)?
• Why did Friedman used Netscape as flattener 3
  instead of Tim Burners-Lee?
• CERN was still for scientist with static web
  pages displaying research papers
• Netscape became became aggressive with developing
  a browser that had dynamic web pages (good
  example is JavaScript) were attractive to
  businesses and individual users.

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Netscapes JavaScript

• Allowed program code to be executed in the users
  PC
• sandbox metaphor - web pages code could not
  alter the users computer outside of the web
  pages HTML
• Could keep history by storing cookies
• This put part of the processing in the users
  computer reliving the server of its great
  processing burden

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The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

• As a reaction to Netscapes domination of the WWW
  in the 1990s with its browser technology, the W3C
  was formed.
• W3C is the main international standards
  organization for the World Wide Web (W3).
• The Consortium is headed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee,
  the primary author of the original URL (Uniform
  Resource Locator), HTTP (HyperText Transfer
  Protocol) and HTML (HyperText Markup Language)
  specifications, the principal technologies that
  form the basis of the World Wide Web. Wikipedia

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Flattener 9 In-forming

• Search engines are the tools to find the
  information on the WWW. Google was a major
  pioneer of the search engine
• Google was co-founded by Larry Page and Sergey
  Brin while they were students at Stanford
  University, and the company was first
  incorporated as a privately held company on
  September 7, 1998. Google's IPO took place on
  August 19, 2004, raising US1.67 billion, making
  it worth 23 billion. Wikipedia

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New term, 1997, Extelligence

• Extelligence is a term coined by Ian Stewart and
  Jack Cohen in their 1997 book Figments of
  Reality.
• Definition - Extelligence is defined as all the
  cultural capital that is available to us in the
  form of tribal legends, folklore, nursery rhymes,
  books, videotapes, CD-ROMs, etc.
• Extelligence is in contrast with intelligence.
  Intelligence is the knowledge and cognitive
  processes within the brain.
• The WWW is the ultimate Extelligence source!

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The World is Spiky IS Freidman right? Just when
we were getting used to the World becoming Flat
now it is reported as spiky by another
academic.

• THE ATL ANTIC MONTHLY OCTOBER 2005 THE AGENDA THE
  ATL ANTIC MONTHLY
• Richard Florida, the author of The Flight of the
• Creative Class, is the Hirst Professor of Public
  Policy
• at George Mason University.
• Florida use indicators of which there is
• SCIENTIFIC CITATIONS
• The worlds most prolific and influential
• scientific researchers overwhelmingly
• reside in U.S. and European cities.
• PATENTS
• Just a few places produce most of the worlds
• innovations. Innovation remains difficult
  without
• a critical mass of financiers, entrepreneurs,
• and scientists, often nourished by world-class
• universities and flexible corporations.

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Florida's indicator 1 Population

• The most obvious challenge to the flat-world
  hypothesis is the explosive growth of cities
  worldwide.
• A shows the uneven distribution of the worlds
  population. Five megacities currently have more
  than 20 million inhabitants each. Twenty-four
  cities have more than 10 million inhabitants,
  sixty more than 5 million, and 150 more than 2.5
  million. Population density is of course a crude
  indicator of human and economic activity.
• Causing a divide between the urban and rural
  population of nations which is causing a friction
  in their societies

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1 Population - Stronger Economic Production

• New Yorks economy alone is about the size of
  Russias or Brazils, and Chicagos is on a par
  with Swedens. Together New York, Los Angeles,
  Chicago, and Boston have a bigger economy than
  all of China.

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The World is Spiky Population
Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland. From
Richard Florida, The World is Spiky, The
Atlantic Monthly, October 2005
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Light Emission as indicator 2 Stronger Economic
Production

• Unfortunately, no single, comprehensive
  information source exists for the economic
  production of all the worlds cities. A rough
  proxy is available, though is the widely
  circulated view of the world at night, with
  higher concentrations of lightindicating higher
  energy use and, presumably, stronger economic
  productionappearing in greater relief. U.S.

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The World is Spiky Light Emissions
Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland. From
Richard Florida, The World is Spiky, The
Atlantic Monthly, October 2005
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Indicator 3 Innovation theengine of economic
growth(WIPO Patents)

• The World Intellectual Property Organization
  recorded about 300,000 patents from resident
  inventors in more than a hundred nations in 2002
  (the most recent year for which statistics are
  available). Nearly two thirds of them went to
  American and Japanese inventors. Eighty-five
  percent went to the residents of just five
  countries (Japan, the United States, South Korea,
  Germany, and Russia).

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Innovation theengine of economic growth(U.S.
Patents)

• In 2003 India generated 341 U.S. patents and
  China 297. The University of California alone
  generated more than either country. IBM accounted
  for five times as many as the two combined.
• Nearly 90,000 of the 170,000 patents granted in
  the United States in 2002 went to Americans.
• The next ten most innovative countries including
  the usual suspects in Europe plus Taiwan, South
  Korea, Israel, and Canada produced roughly 25,000
  more (patents).

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The World is Spiky Patents
Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland. From
Richard Florida, The World is Spiky, The
Atlantic Monthly, October 2005
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Indicator 4, Scientific advances The residence
of the1,200 most heavily cited scientists

• Scientific advance is even more concentrated
  than patent production. Most occurs not just in a
  handful of countries but in a handful of cities
  primarily in the United States and Europe.
  Chinese and Indian cities do not even register.
  As far as global innovation is concerned, perhaps
  a few dozen places worldwide really compete at
  the cutting edge.

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The World is Spiky Scientific Citations
Map by Tim Gulden, University of Maryland. From
Richard Florida, The World is Spiky, The
Atlantic Monthly, October 2005
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Some of Florida's comments

• This is not to say that Indians and Chinese are
  not innovative. On the contrary, AnnaLee
  Saxenian, of the University of California at
  Berkeley, has shown that Indian and Chinese
  entrepreneurs founded or co-founded roughly 30
  percent of all Silicon Valley startups in the
  late 1990s. But these fundamentally creative
  people had to travel to Silicon Valley and be
  absorbed into its innovative ecosystem before
  their ideas became economically viable. Such
  ecosystems matter, and there arent many of
  them.
• Creative people cluster not simply because they
  like to be around one another or they prefer
  cosmopolitan centers with lots of amenities,
  though both those things count. They and their
  companies also cluster because of the powerful
  productivity advantages, economies of scale, and
  knowledge spillovers such density brings.
• So although one might not have to emigrate to
  innovate, it certainly appears that innovation,
  economic growth, and prosperity occur in those
  places that attract a critical mass of top
  creative talent.
• On Friedman - In his view (Friedmans) , for
  example, the emerging economies of India and
  China combine cost advantages, high-tech skills,
  and entrepreneurial energy, enabling those
  countries to compete effectively for industries
  and jobs. The tensions set in motion as the
  playing field is leveled affect mainly the
  advanced countries, which see not only
  manufacturing work but also higher end jobs, in
  fields such as software development and financial
  services, increasingly threatened by offshoring.

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Conclusions

• Ideas can have influence many years after their
  conception.
• Many new ideas need technological underpinnings
  that may not be available at the time of their
  conception.
• There is a debate about the future world order
  and the distribution of wealth is the world
  staying spiky or is it truly become flat.
• My view The world is an evolving place. Look at
  Japan in 1945, South Korea in mid-1950s and now!
  I feel that Florida only gave us a snapshot of
  today. Friedman could be right in that we are
  evolving towards a flat world.
• Things that are impeding this flatting process
  are the friction between nations and war!

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Conclusions

• It is up to developing countries to create their
  own versions of the environment of Silicon Valley
  (co-operation between Industry, government and
  academia).
• The world will again be different in another
  decade!
• There has been more scientific development in the
  last 50 years than all of human history prior.
• I often point out to my students that the paces
  of scientific discovery is in parallel with
  Moores law. This is greatly assisted by ICT
  development I use as an example how long did it
  take it took Henry Biggs to calculate the log
  tables.
• There is bound to be new centers of excellence in
  other countries in the future.