Welcome to the Internet and Us blog created for members of this PLATO SDG.
This follows session#2, Social intercourse and senior oriented websites.
As Coordinator I am interested in the most effective use of interactive tools such as this blog and pehaps an inline archive one day. I would also like to experiment with SKYPE, linking members who are physicaly unable to be in the the room. I have some questions;
What is the unique property of a blog?
What effect do you think a distance connection (SKYPE) would have on the dynamics of a discussion group?
Is there a distance audience for PLATO?
12 comments:
First, congratulations to Bill Clarkson for getting this PLATO S/DG Blog up in such short order, as yesterday he said that he would.
This blog, as discussed yesterday, was created as an experiment for our "The Internet and Us" S/DG. It will serve as a test case for the proposition that a PLATO Blog for the entire PLATO community will be good for PLATO, both internally and as an outreach tool to prospective members. The following short summary of my presentation yesterday can serve as a model of the summaries I will submit after the presentations each week, for the benefit of our own S/DG members, plus any other PLATO member or prospective member who may be interested in knowing more about our topic.
After recounting a short history of the development of email, I focused on the usage of the Internet by seniors. It turns out there are thousands of websites and blogs which claim to primarily target people over age 65. Yet, although everyone in our S/DG uses the internet, none use any senior websites. Nor, after a short examination of a half dozen or so such websites, did anyone in the class indicate they now would be accessing them on any regular basis.
Also, when asked to guess the percentage of seniors who use the Internet, virtually everyone's guess was lower than the 37-40 percent given by two recent surveys. But a recent Pew survey also noted that those with some college education have an 84 percent usage of the Internet, while those with at least one college degree have a 93 percent usage. This seems to coincide with PLATO's own numbers, where the roster indicates that about 85 percent of the members have email addresses. It would seem, then, that education trumps age. This idea is strengthened by class members reporting that most of the people they socialize with also use the Internet.
S/DG members are invited to comment on this summary, and/or add additional observations. We hope you will do so, and will continue to do so during the coming weeks.
Jerry Beigel
there is an interesting interview about the future of the internet on the Charlie Rose website with Jonathan Zittrain, dated May 13, 2008
Interesting indeed, and a little scary. You can watch it all at http://www.charlierose.com/schedule/
click on May 13, the day the show was aired. the interview is with Jonathan Zittrain, whose new book, "The future of the internet and how to stop it" is avalable from amazon.com.
The following will briefly summarize yesterday's presentation on Commerce and the Net by Murray Spector for our The Internet and Us S/DG.
The internet came into being when Congress authorized the private commercial use of the Defense Department's Arpanet in 1991.
Spector made the point that an enormous computer hardware business is the foundation of the glitzier software applications of the internet. For example, he noted that Cisco led the way in demonstrating the unprecedented speed in which wealth could be accumulated via the internet, with sales of $100 million in 1996 and $3.2 billion in 1997 with its unique "router" hardware.
Great wealth from the internet often has been accomplished by entrepreneurs identifying a niche and then focusing on one idea to fill that niche. Examples include Amazon/books (at first), Dell/customized computers, Ebay/auction site and service, etc.
Spector said that in the early days, the pattern seemed to be engineering and computer science people coming up with technical innovations, and then combining with venture capitalists who would help design the applications which would be commercially feasible. More recently, the technical people have become sophisticated enough to develop applications on their own.
The one word that might describe the reason for the phenomenal success of the internet might be "convenience," with the understanding that speed and cost-savings are incorporated into that word. However, there also was some discussion as to whether this elimination of the retailer/middle man has been an entirely good thing as it has diminished the face-to-face accessibility between merchant and customer.
A new term for most of the class was "Long Tail" retailing, which describes how--for example--an individually produced film or book could be posted in some form on Google for a monthly fee, and could be sold in multiples or one at a time for an indefinite period. This contrasts with similar commercial products, whereby most sales are accomplished in a few weeks, and the product often then disappears from sight.
Again, S/DG members and, of course, Murray Spector, are invited to comment on and add to the above summary.
Jerry Beigel
The following editorial appeared in this Sunday's NYTimes Online Edition:
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May 25, 2008
Editorial
Joe Lieberman, Would-Be Censor
The Internet is simply a means of communication, like the telephone, but that has not prevented attempts to demonize it — the latest being the ludicrous claim that the Internet promotes terrorism.
Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut is trying to pressure YouTube to pull down videos he does not like, and a recent Senate report and a bill pending in Congress also raise the specter of censorship. It is important for online speech to be protected against these assaults.
Mr. Lieberman recently demanded that YouTube take down hundreds of videos produced by Islamist terrorist organizations or their supporters. YouTube reviewed the videos to determine whether they violated its guidelines, which prohibit hate speech and graphic or gratuitous violence. It took down 80 videos, but left others up. Mr. Lieberman said that was “not enough,” and demanded that more come down.
Earlier this month, the Senate homeland security committee, which is led by Mr. Lieberman, issued a report titled “Violent Islamist Extremism, the Internet, and the Homegrown Terrorist Threat.” The report identified the Internet as “one of the primary drivers” of the terrorist threat to the United States.
All of this comes against the backdrop of a troubling Congressional antiterrorism bill that also focuses on the Internet. The Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act, which passed the House last year by a 404-to-6 vote, would establish a commission to study the terrorist threat and propose legislation. The bill, which the Senate has not acted on, has a finding that the Internet promotes radicalization and terrorism.
Although the report by the homeland security committee stopped short of making recommendations for reining in online speech, it did ask “what, if any, new laws” were needed. The answer is that no new laws are needed — or justifiable — any more than it would be tolerable to enact laws restricting speech over the telephone, in a newspaper or a book, on a street corner, or in a church, mosque or synagogue.
While it is fortunate that Mr. Lieberman does not have the power to tell YouTube that it must remove videos, it is profoundly disturbing that an influential senator would even consider telling a media company to shut down constitutionally protected speech. The American Civil Liberties Union has warned that the “Homegrown Terrorism” bill and related efforts “could be a precursor to proposals to censor and regulate speech on the Internet.”
Not only do these efforts contradict fundamental American values, it is not clear if they would help fight terrorism. Even if YouTube pulled down every video Mr. Lieberman did not like, radical groups could post the same videos on their own Web sites. Trying to restrain the Internet is a game of “whack-a-mole” that cannot be won, says John Morris of the Center for Democracy and Technology. Having the videos on YouTube may even be a good thing, because it makes it easier for law enforcement officials, the media and the public to monitor the groups and their messages.
Terrorism is a real concern. All Americans know that. They also know that if we give up our fundamental rights, the terrorists win. If people use speech to engage in criminal acts, they should be prosecuted. Cutting off free speech is never the right answer.
Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company
I would like to do a brief summary on my presentation this morning about how the impact of the Internet on Travel and Leisure. Before the Internet existed, we planned our vacations through travel agency. We got the information of the destinations through travel books, magazines or television. Sometimes we might depend totally onto the travel agent to plan for our vacations when we were reluctant to go to a bookstore to purchase a travel guide book. Travel agency thus became the mainstream in the travel industry.
Even before the Internet or the world wide web comes to our life, internet existed within the airline industry and that is the Computer Reservation System. The Computer Reservation System is operated and designed by airlines. It is used to store and retrieve information regarding the availabilities of tickets. The first automated system was designed by American Airlines. Other airlines started to build and design their own system following the successful system launched by American Airlines. The system first only allowed airlines to operate and later in around 1976 they were distributed to the travel agents.
As the Internet comes to our life, the whole thing about travel has a significant change. Many people no longer go to a travel agency to book a flight. They can go either directly to the airline web site or some travel sites such as Expedia, Travelocity. The travel sites operate using a system called the Global Distribution System which is an extensive form of the Computer Reservation System. The system allows consumers to get up to the minute result on the availabilities. People no longer need to depend on the travel agents on the information regarding the destination. They can now search every detail in every country through the Internet. One of the very useful and efficient site is the Wikitravel site.
Internet has a significant impact on how we define leisure today. We used to define leisure as free time, maybe going to cinema for a movie and doing outdoor activities with friends and families. Today, people define leisure through the Internet since people spend most of their time surfing on the Internet. The virtual world called the Second life gives people the opportunity to do anything they would like to do but impossible in the real world. There are around 13 million users inside the virtual world. It is very amazing that this large amount of people spend their leisure time in the virtual world instead of the real world.
Although the Internet has improved our life in the form of technology, it affects the way how we socialize with people. Imagine that we can only talk to our family and friends through the Internet, we will never get a hug from them. Therefore, although the Internet is important in our life, we should never live in our own basement with our computer but to get out and have a life!
The cover story in the July-August issue of the Atlantic monthly is titled- Is Google making us Stoopid?
Currently it is only avaiable in the printed version(ironic). The thesis of the piece is that while human beings are readily adaptable to various communication forms; oral history,epic poems, great novels, etc we are now losing the capbility to hold a large complex and detailed ideas/narratives in our conciousness. This is being replaced by our new skills in sampling information via the web.
There is much more to it then that, as I found by googling the title. There is another article by the same name
(http://www.themonthly.com.au/tm/node/170 ) that was published in the Monthly Journal in Feb,06 discussing academic issues with the"new scholarship" (my term) and it's problems.
Bring something to the table.
This is my first effort as a co-ordinator and I am enjoying the challenges of running/guiding/facillitating an SDG.
The subject is new to Plato and there is no core book, just the un-measurable world-wide-web. So the challenge is to bring something,a point of view,worry,hope or an interesting tidbit recently gleaned from the net that changes your thinking.
Whether you are presenting or not our weekly experience will be the richer for it
For this presentation about the Environment and the Internet, I decided to try and find an environmental organization and get its input on how it uses the Internet and how that use has evolved during the past decade or two.
I contacted several environmental organizations, and finally received a positive response from the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). Their experience probably is as good a model as any in understanding the progressive and increasing utilization of the internet of most such organizations.
The NRDC started its website in 1995. At the time, the agency had no particular goals in mind and had no expectations as to what a website might accomplish for them. They just sort of knew they had to have their name out there, and this was another way to accomplish it. Interestingly, for the first couple years, they did not use the website for any advocacy actions, but just to provide broad environmental information to whoever happened to log on.
Then in the year 2000, two things happened that began to transform NRDC’s use of the Internet. They won a long fight against Mitsubishi, Industries, which finally abandoned an effort to start a salt mine near the San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California. That is a prime winter migratory destination for large numbers of gray whales. The salt mine apparently would have provided some jobs in that region, but at the expense of the whales and the tourist business and jobs that relied on the whales. This victory brought new visibility and prestige to the NRDC. At around the same time, NRDC brought on to its board of directors some business-minded people, including one person who prodded the agency to start thinking more strategically and to use their website to engage activists. To use public input in its campaigns against corporate actions that were harming the environment.
It was at that point that a redesign and additional resources were used to create NRDC’s Biogems website. Robert Redford was utilized to to attract new members and get everyone excited about the Wildlife Refuge in Alaska, which the Bush administration was trying to open up to oil drilling. This was in 2001.
Largely as a result of their new website and pitch, NRDC’s membership went from 17,000 to 150,000 in one month, and to 450,000 in six months. Right now, the organization says it has 1.2 million members, about two-thirds of whom are considered to be activists, meaning that they often can be counted on to write members of Congress, corporate ceo’s or others where the agency wants public pressure brought against. And by and large, they do it by using the Internet to get rapid action by its members.
By the way, if you’ll recall, it was around 2001 and 2002 that the dot.com bust happened, but not at NRDC. Which should remind us that the headlines in the news almost always deal with negative happenings. But as we know, the Internet today probably is even a bigger part of our lives than was envisioned in the early days...and the early days were just about a decade ago. Surely, lots of companies at that time learned how to use the Internet to their advantage and experienced the same kind of positive results. NRDC started with one part-time internet person in late 1995/early 1996, then went to one fulltime internet person. They added a second fulltime person in 1999, and have had a dozen full time people for the past four years
I was told that they take a lot of time to make it as easy for people to become activists on various issues. NRDC normally will provide boilerplate information on any issue, which an activist can utilize in a letter to Congress. But the information is designed to allow the activist to write his or her own letter, using their own words.
The NRDC spokesperson said that they were the leading US environmental group, but acknowledged that others might do a better job on the internet. She said that Greenpeace is more on the cutting edge using new tools and techniques, and the Environmental Defense Fund was the quickest to invest in the Internet. But she added that NRDC is the biggest environmental group in terms of getting people to engage in advocacy on the Internet. She also said that Human Rights groups and Animal Rights groups are the overall leaders in online advocacy, that is, using the Internet to get people to take action on specific and immediate issues. Greenpeace and PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), she said, are leaders in using film and animation to spur action online by their members.
NRDC and the other groups are under no illusion that members of Congress actually read their emails, which is why they usually provide some boilerplate language for their members. Usually, she said, aides to the congressional members simply put the emails in the “for” and “against” files. Which is why ,she added, that personal letters still are the most effective way to communnicate.
Yet, the immediacy and massiveness of internet advocacy often is effective. As an example, she said that, not long ago, a proposed plan by the Federal Bureau of Land Management to allow oil drilling in Utah, brought an immediate protest by NRDC in the form of some 700 emails. The manager was persuaded that his plan probably needed more work, and he withdrew it, at least for the time being.
With all the attention being paid to communicating with members and prospective members via the Internet, the NRDC says it still raises most of its money from the public the old-fashioned way...by means of regular mailings. At the same time, the agency is continually looking for ways to increase its utilization of the Internet. For instance, it has begun its own blog, and claims to be the first of the environmental agencies to set up a blog. During the recent climate change conference in Bali, its staffers who attended the conference blogged their own insights into what was going on. This in turn led to some news stories by the mainstream press about the NRDC blog commentary on the conference. At any given timel, as many as 40 NRDC staffers are blogging on projects they are working on, providing those in the public as well as other interested governmental and ngo officials with continuing continuous updates on environmental issues.
Just to wrap it up with the NRDC, to show you how such agencies will be using the Internet in the future, in addition to its blog, they have begun offering information to business as to how to make their operations more “green,” both in their operations and their facilities. This is a follow up to something they’ve done with major corporations such as Bank of America, in terms of how to incorporate energy-efficient methods into “green buildings.” This new program will be more generic in nature and will be put out there to businesses generally so that they can make use of the information even if they don’t support the NRDC. They’re doing the same thing with the major entertainment events, such as the NBA playoffs, the Oscar Awards, the Tony Awards and other such events. By the same token, for those members and others who may not be comfortable being activists and writing letters to congress or corporations, they are offering “green” tips on every day living which people can incorporate into their own lives.
Will Jan or someone please let me know when to expect info about fall class descriptions are available? And the other date in which I'm interested is the Skirball presentation about the classes. Thanks Joy N
PLEASE forget my last posting. I found the date info, and will wait to hear class descriptions. JN
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