Sociology
of the Internet
Bill Moninger
OAR/Forecast Systems Laboratory
The internet and the world wide web grew out of, reflect, and
amplify a trend in late 20th century culture toward self-organizing,
organic systems that "grow", and away from structured, mechanized
systems that are "built." We will justify this viewpoint by
looking at the history of the internet, the motivations that
led to its birth, its architecture, and its patterns of use,
and we will explore the implications of this view. The internet
appears to encourage - temporary, single-purpose liaisons rather
than long-term relationships, - constantly changing objects,
rather than static (dependable) objects, - continuous revision
of documents, rather than individual "issues" and "versions."
Viewing the internet in this way implies that - the initial
design of objects such as documents or web sites is not as important
as strategies for their continual revision, - relationships
between providers and recipients of information become more
important than the information itself, - protection of intellectual
property such as scientific papers or computer programs becomes
more difficult... - ... and less important than building relationships
based upon reputation and trust. We can conclude that as the
internet pervades more and more activities, those people, organizations,
and nations that can most easily change--younger, newer, more
educated--will be at an advantage over those that are older,
more established and less flexible, even when the latter control
more (traditional) resources.
BIO
-Bill Moninger
Bill is chair of FSL's World Wide Web Working Group, which
has been responsible for developing FSL's top-level web
pages since 1995. Bill has developed numerous web applications
in perl, javascript, and java. Bill has taught university
courses on the social and ethical issues around the internet,
and has lectured widely on this subject, and on topics in
web development and security. For a full biography, see
http://www-frd.fsl.noaa.gov/~moninger/.
|
|
Auditorium
- Paper
Thursday, 8:40 - 9:20 A.M
|
|
|
