All purpose page ;)

27. The persistence of history

When we consider certain applications, such as telnet, ftp and some of the more arcane ‘management’ tools such as the ability to finger, lookup and so on (so-called net tools), it may appear that, in the age of the World Wide Web, internet telephony, AV conferencing online and so on, these are old-fashioned irrelevancies. However, they are not. These early applications continue to have value, directly, and moreover, advanced Internet users understand them because they provide a sense of history and context which can assist in developing new capabilities for Internet use. Furthermore, the ideas that underlie these technologies are critical and continue to govern the fundamentals of Internet use.

Advanced Internet users inquire into and analyse the kinds of applications available over the Internet, even if they do not regularly use them, so as to learn lessons about past developments and to anticipate potential new developments, based on the meaning of those applications.

Moreover, while new systems ‘appear’ different, they often use or include much older, traditional applications. For example, various identifier commands (ping, traceroute etc) can be used within IRC; telnet and ftp are tightly interlinked with http for web browsing.

23. Human-computer interfaces

The Internet was originally designed to enable humans to instruct computers to act at a distance. The Internet still has this capacity; thus, we begin to see the emergence of a cultural sensibility in which the hard and fast distinctions between humans and computers as different kinds of ‘communicating devices’ breaks down. Telnet and similar functions on the Internet are different to programming and interacting with a computer on your desktop because you can’t physically see the computer at the other end of the connection.

This phenomenon has been exploited, for fun and research, by artificial intelligence programmers and language program developers. In one famous case, a ‘bot’ (robot) called Julia was developed (essentially a sophisticated program) that could, via IRC, fool people for at least a little while into believing it was a real human. It has been said that this example proves more about the lack of communication skills of humans than the abilities of computers.

The Internet lessens the recognition of difference between humans and computers because, at a distance, it is often feels similar to communicate and act on the Internet regardless of whether one is speaking with a human or a machine.

Interacting with websites feels similarly impersonal or, more subtly, further indicates the extent to which humans readily accept the presence of machine-like ‘intelligence’ in their lives.

17. The impact of text-based real-time chat

You might think that, with the widespread availability of telephones, an internet-based system of real-time communication involving the typing of text messages would be hardly used, or at least, of little relevance. You would be wrong. Real-time internet-based text chat is a significant part of contemporary internet use. The question then to be asked is: what is the difference here that makes this mode of communication popular; and then what impact does it have of the kinds of communication and social interaction that take place?

Setting aside cost the main differences are

1. that you can imagine yourself with others in a public space
2. that your use of text provides a different form of communication, more 'fictive', more controlled, and still very expressive, but also one that enables you to monitor and reflect on the forms and meanings of communication, including your own
3. you can have multiple conversations without apparently being rude (including both public and private ones)

Communicating in real-time with text enables a form of 'authoring of the self' that is similar to the processes of face-to-face speech but which is much more amenable to authorial control, experimentation and reflection. Further, text-based communication carries with it the possibility for multiple, differing conversations occurring simultaneously, relying on the ability of the human brain to deal with text much better than speech.

Whether this effect of real-time communication will survive the rush towards AV conferencing is a moot point. However, a skilled Internet user will appreciate that text is, in some circumstances, a highly effective mechanism for communication. In particular, because text can be captured so much more easily than speech, it provides a mechanism for preserving and reflecting on conversations.

9 Permanent ephemerality

It's been said that the flow of electrons to a phosphorised screen (much like the one on which you are reading this now, assuming you have not printed it on paper) provides an illusion of impermanence, even though - as demonstrated mainly in legal cases – electronic information is actually very hard to eliminate from computer systems (especially those involving networks). Hence, electronic communication is marked by an uneasy tension between its permanence and its ephemerality. Electronic communication (especially email) is likened to a cross between the written and oral forms with which we are most familiar and which tend to mark out our practical perspectives on what is ephemeral and what is permanent. While true in part, this perspective ignores the fact that electronic communication's similarity or otherwise to written or oral communication is dependent on the perspective of the users.

Advanced Internet users do not confuse the electronically generated 'ephemerality' of their communication with a real emphemerality: they take seriously the requirement to communicate with clear vision of the consequences of what they are doing.

Web ephemerality is equally prominent, but works in reverse: websites that appear permanent, fixed, solid have a tendency of disappearing, changing or otherwise blurring back into the endless stream of pixels and electronic signals of the Internet. While communication appears ephemeral, but is not; websites appear certain, but are indeed often ephemeral. Perhaps this suggests that Internet users need to emphasise the use of communication more than information-seeking.

25. Identity and location

The absolute, fundamental foundation of the Internet – one which must be maintained at all costs – is a system of identification and location, the creation of fixed, known ‘end points’ at either end of the complex routes taken by packets of data carrying all the information makes up the Internet. Without this fixed system, which must be managed in such a way as to be both usable and expandable (a technical term for this is ‘scalability’), the Internet would not work.

At a technical level, the identity and location system that enables data packets to be routed to and from computers (usually via servers, thence routers, to other servers, thence to personal machines) can assist users in understanding why the Internet seems ‘slow’ or ‘fast’ at certain times and in certain conditions. It could, in some cases, assist users to choose between one or other ISP, or web server. This kind of knowledge, allied to a reading of the ‘names’ in the system, can help users to understand the ownership and control of the Internet and the way it functions as a business system. But more profoundly, the ‘system’ of Internet identity and location suggests a growing change in people’s understandings of the themselves – marked, for example, by the difference between a ‘dynamic’ IP address that changes every time one is online and a ‘static’ address, available to people who run web servers or more expensive fixed, permanent Internet connections.

Advanced Internet users understand the technical system of the Internet, principally its numerical addressing and word-based naming overlay and the way data passes between points in this system. They also understand that this knowledge can assist them in managing their Internet use, and in recognising new cultural developments around the creation of identities that exist in part in physical life and in part in the virtual world.

Since communication via email or chat or ICQ can occasionally involve unwanted attentions, or misdirected messages, or outright harassment, advanced users learn how to recover key information about location and identity from their communications programs to assist in preventing these activities.