Internet & World Wide Web
i. history & the original idea behind creation
In the 1960s the possibility of sharing information without geographic and time limitations became real. The 1960s is when the technological revolution brings us to the event of the Internet. According to Warf and Grimes the Internet was the outcome of the “vast expansion of telecommunications” and “largely unintended outcome of the microelectronic revolution” (1997, 259). Also Rheingold writes: …the most important parts of the Net piggybacked on technologies that were created for very different purposes,” (1993, Chapter 3).
Internet is by Warf and Grimes labeled as “the world’s largest electronic network” (1997, 259). In September 2009 there were counted near to 1, 774 million users of the Internet world wide (Internet Worlds Stats 2009). Hafner and Lyon place the beginnings of the Internet to the year 1969 – the creation of Arpanet (1996) and Briggs and Burke in the turn of the year 1968 and 1969 (2005).
The Internet origins are directly linked to the power of a nation – state. The Internet started as the state founded network. It was the ARPA, the United States Department of Defense’s Advanced Project Administration, which have been founded to stand out as response to the USSR activities and high-tech development represented by Sputnik. The first network leading to the Internet we know today was part of the struggle between the two nuclear forces – the USA and USSR – during the Cold war. Rheingold also sees the crucial development after the year 1957 when Soviet launched the first artificial satellite called Sputnik (1993). According to Rheingold this “shifted some funding paradigms in Washington, D.C.; two direct side effects of that shift were personal computer revolution and computer-mediated communications,” (1993, Chapter3). The introduction of the Internet can be without question attributed to the struggle to keep “the pace of technical development” (Rheingold 1993, Chapter 3).
The inter-computer communication was designed firstly to cater military needs and later evolved to cater also needs of academics and the industry (Helland 2004). At the beginnings it was truly only several people who were part of this new communication tool (Helland 2004). Arpanet was connection designed to link several computers within the United States and this was done through telecommunication lines (Helland 2004).
The Rheingold’s description of the Internet beginnings sounds quite poetic:
While driving to work one day in 1950, Douglas Engelbart started to thinking about how complicated civilization had become [...] Engelbart asked himself what kinds of tools we use to help us think. ‘Symbols’ was the answer that came to him, the answer he had been taught as an engineer. Could we use machines to help us deal with symbols? Why not computers? Could computers automate symbol-handling task, and thus help people think faster, better, about more complex problems?
(1993, Chapter 3)
In fact Rheingold labels the beginnings of the Internet as “accidental” (1993). It seems that Rheingold believes that the Internet is in fact an outcome of “snapshots” projected in front of the eyes of Engelbart, man who was during the World War II radar operator (1993).
A big step in the Internet advancement was the development of an e-mail. Firstly, there were add-ons – the possibility to attach a personal note to the data you were sending. By 1970’s the e-mails were the most popular function of the computer mediated communication (Helland 2004). Sterling writes about the e-mails as about creation of the “most expansive post office in history” (1993). E-mails also stands behind the transformation of the computer mediated communication to social network. The computer mediated communication was right from the start very interactive medium.
Also Rheingold in his description of this truly turning technological advancement underlines the interactivity (1993). Rheingold writes about the ARPA funded “small group of unorthodox computer programmers and electronic engineers” who “felt their virtuosity required the kinds of computers that a good mind could play like musical instrument, in real time,” (1993, Chapter 3). Rheingold continues: “They called their crusade ‘interactive computing’ and still speaks in terms of the ‘conversion experience’,” (1993, Chapter 3; italics mine). It is very clear that from beginning the computers great advantage could be and should be in their function as communication device.
The network of the Arpanet was designed so it could have parts – communication units represented by each computer – absent and still the network would function. By Pentagon this was viewed as the solution for the nuclear destruction but for the universities using Arpanet it represented the “free access to academic and research users” because they were the interactive communicators (Briggs and Burke 2005, 244). Briggs and Burke write about the “architecture of the system” which was so much different from the telephone network (2005, 245). It is the system of “message blocks” – breaking information to smaller parts which are again reconstructed within the receiver. This system is called “packet switching” (Rheingold 1993). Rheingold quotes Baran from the Research and Development global non-profit think tank partly funded by US government: “the threat of the unreliability of any communications network under nuclear combat conditions could be dealt with by decentralizing authority for keeping communications flowing,” (1993, Chapter 3).
The decentralization within the “architecture of the system” has also symbolic value to it. This is what is and could be the very big advantage while considering the Internet. The decentralization is in fact also an important element in the Western multicultural environment and can be crucial for creation sub-cultures. Such sub-cultures could be within the virtual world but also sub-cultures within and growing outside the nation-state.
In the 1990s the computer mediated communication became even more interactive due to the creation of the World Wide Web. This development opened doors to those who wanted to be even more active while communicating through computers. Anyone could post what they wished on the Net and anyone could learn about it by searching the World Wide Web (Helland 2004). According to Helland the hardware also became cheaper and software more easy to use and therefore more accessible to larger population (2004). Although, we have to admit that this was mainly concerning the Western audience.
In 1996 Kraut writes: “The dramatic changes now occurring in household computing have potential to transform the lives of average citizens as much as telephone did in the early part of the 20th century and the television did in the 1950s and 1960s” (35). Kraut adds that in 1994 33% of US households had a personal computer (1996) which is directly linked with the growth of the computer based telecommunication.
Agre claims: “In the mid-1990s, the Internet moved from experimental status and became a full-blown public network” (2002, 149). Agre believes that the Internet was “cultural and economic phenomenon” (2002, 149) and eight years later we could just agree. Agre carry on in his paper by describing the 1990’s enthusiasm. This was linked specifically to the cyberspace – a world separated from the “real” or the offline world. Also, Agre seems to have some distain for such an idea we could observe on our own that an extra space for discussion, information dissolution or also from economical point of view emerged. Maybe it is not a world in its full but the cyberspace could be to certain degree considered as an extra addendum to the world offline.
The point about the cyberspace or the cyberworld seems to be that it should not be separated from the offline space or world. Already the name “cyberspace” comes from the science fiction novel – Gibson’s Neuromancer (Agre, 2002) In the Gibson’s 1984 novel the word “cyberspace” meant “consensual hallucination” (Zaleski 1998). As Agre describes the notion of cyberspace was by ideologists often understood as a place to escape (2002). Agre writes: “The concept of cyberspace offered an escape, with all of the positive and negative connotations that the idea of escape suggest: from limits, from oppression, from institutions, from responsibility, from reality” (2002, 149). We may not fully agree with such an idea. It is space to be used by people and thus it is a question of time when people create rules and authorities or limitations, such which are based on present outnumbered forceful ideologies. Further, for example religion online has the same fundamentals as religion in the offline mode. This is at least applicable while discussing the three “classic religions” (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) whereas with the “new religions” created just as the cyberspace religions we could have doubts. “Classic religions” have limits, “classic religions” are real and “classic religions” are about responsibility.
Warf and Grimes see the Internet as a support to the antiestablishment rules: “We see cyberactivism as a necessary, but not sufficient, complement to real-world struggles on behalf of the disempowered” (1997, 259). Warf and Grimes describe the use of the Internet to admit that most of it is centred on entertainment or personal communication. Here we just have to come and touch to ideas linked to for example Appadurai and these are the homogenization tendencies, when the bigger orders are absorbing the smaller orders (1990). Such homogenization seems to be in general linked to the political or economical rules. Warf and Grimes writes: “Hegemonic uses of the Net include commercial applications, particularly advertising and shopping but also purchasing and marketing, in addition to uses by public agencies that legitimate and sustain existing ideologies and politics as ’normal’, ‘necessary’, or ‘natural” (1997, 160). Nevertheless, it is exactly the Internet which has counter-hegemonic potentials. It is a tool or an environment which from its characteristics offers an extra discussion and gives a voice to the marginalised. Also, this can be observed while examining the Generation X and Y whom are the typical users of the Internet but are also more and more linked to religion (Helland 2004). Perhaps it is the Internet which offers the useful alternative or at least stand behind the arousal of interest? Campbell writes: “New Media technologies offer an opportunity for experimentation with methods for interconnection and communication. While many of these explorations have been fuelled by commercial motivations, some innovations have at their heart very different social even spiritual aims” (2004b, 108)
Yet not all are as optimistic about the Internet. Dahlberg on one hand sees the Internet as possible extension to the public sphere but on the other hand he offers some quite pessimistic scenarios (2005 and 2007). Dahlberg bases his thoughts on the Frankfurt School – the “ever-increasing corporate control of media systems through the global convergence of media industries and technologies” (2005, 93). In fact, Dahlberg describes two aspects which could be debilitating for the “extension of public sphere” and “power relations to be contested” potentials of the Internet (2005, 93). Firstly, it is the “attention economy” or the large media corporations’ successful use of their “massive resources” by drawing attention to their “mega portals” (Dahlberg 2005, 94). This includes also intentional situating of critical voices as marginalized (Dahlberg 2005, 94). Secondly, it is the “increasing private ownership and control of the Internet content, software, bandwidth, and management” (Dahlberg 2005, 94).
Rheingold definition of online community says that these are “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on [...] public discussion long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace,” (1993, Chapter 3). In fact Rheingold is the one to first describe such a community. He writes about his experiences on one of the first virtual communities called WELL – Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link. Cowan enumerates six elements of such online communities: interactivity, stability of membership, stability of identity, netizenship and social control, personal concern, and occurrence in a public space (2004).
Moriarty specifically argues that Christian circles online are very much same as any other online community (2005). We can suppose that any online community is based on the principle that people incline to those with similar interests, understanding of life and similar or same values. Moriarty writes: “This online coming together is interesting because it is influenced by larger societal trends that affect Christian community online and offline,” (2005, 2).
