Internet and Society

Internet and Society

Society and the Internet

In the four years after Netscape Navigator was introduced to the public (between 1994 and 1998), the number of Americans using the Internet increased from five million to sixty-two million, with traffic on the Internet doubling every one hundred days. By 1999 there were more than eleven million domain names registered on the Web, with more than seventy million websites, "www," "@," and "dot com" had become new icons of the so-called Information Age, The Internet was only thirty years old. No other invention had grown so fast to reach so many people. The Internet was a revolution in communications. With e-mail, people could share ideas and information faster and cheaper than through telephones or letters. "Virtual communities" proliferated, with far-flung groups of people with shared interests connecting in chatrooms and newsgroups. Internet users had access to websites all over the world, and with the proliferation of commercial websites, they could shop for virtually anything on-line. By the end of the decade more e-mail was being exchanged than first-class letters delivered by the U.S. postal system. The Internet was responsible for one-third of the total U.S. economic growth in 1998, generating $301 billion in business. Yet, no one really controlled it.

ECOTOURISM LINKS

Two trends of the 1990s were the increased use of the Internet and the desire to see the world in an environ-mentally friendly manner. Listed below are some websites and links that allowed one to see parts of the United States that most people did not usually have the opportunity to visit.

Action Whitewater Adventures —raft down the Salmon and Middle Fork rivers in Idaho:riverguide.com

Adventure Alaska Tours —wildlife viewing and wilderness travel in Alaska:AdvenAlaska.com

Austin's Alaska Adventure —dog-team trips and fishing from Golsovia River Lodge, Alaska:alaskaadventures.net

Calusa Coast Outfitters —excursions in Estero Bay, Florida:Calusacoast.Com

Desert Adventures —Jeep tours in the desert of Southern California:red-jeep.com

Hawaii Forest and Trail —full-and half-day nature adventures:hawaii-forest.com

Honey Island Swamp Tours, Inc. —tours of wetlands of Louisiana:honeyislandswamp.com

Kodiak-Katmai Outdoors, Inc. —Brown Bear viewing and wilderness camping in Alaska'sKatmaiNationalPark:kodiak-katmai.com

Off the Beaten Path —hiking, river rafting, Nordic skiing, horseback riding, nature tours, bear watching, and more from Alaska to the American Southwest:offbeatenpath.com

Orchids and Egrets —general interest and customized group tours into the ecosystem of the Everglades:naturetour.com

Walk Softly Tours —educational Jeep trips and ecotours of the Sonoran Desert of Arizona:walksoftlytours.com

Telepresence

One of the key social effects of the Internet was "telepresence," or the idea that people could communicate, work, shop, or find information all over the world just by logging onto the Internet. The Internet erased traditional barriers of space, time, and distance, and allowed for a whole new world of information and idea sharing. Telecommuting, whereby people could do their jobs over the Internet without having to go to a central office, became a widespread phenomenon. By 1999, for example, 29 percent of the management force of AT&T telecommuted. This translated into less reliance on cars and a decrease in the need for centralized office space. Many predicted that telecommuting would change the character of U.S. cities, as more and more people could choose where to live without concern for being close to a company office.

Decentralization

The new Internet technology decentralized power and allowed anyone to be a publisher or pundit, immediately sending information and ideas into a globally accessible forum. The idea that anyone with an Internet connection could publish information and have it immediately available to anyone else in the world was a major revolution that, some argued, rivaled the printing press in importance. One reporter noted that the symbol of the atomic age, which tended to centralize power, was a nucleus with electrons held in tight orbit; by contrast, the symbol of the digital age was the Web, with countless centers of power, all equally networked. Many saw the Internet as a sure foe to government censorship or totalitarianism, even in times of war.

The Dark Side

While the Internet was heralded as a tool for advancing the cause of freedom and democracy, many people feared the darker side of its instantaneous information sharing. The Internet, as an open, unregulated medium, had equal potential for good and evil. It could unite people across distances, but it was indifferent to whether they were chess-players, crusading environmentalists, or neo-Nazis. Parents feared that their children could access hate speech and pornography, especially when the generation gap between users meant that children were often much more Internet-savvy than their elders. Many also worried that the Internet was alienating, that people were plugged in to their computers, subordinated to the technology that was supposed to be liberating them, at the expense of real social interaction.

Spam

One unfortunate side effect of the global network was "spam," or Internet junk mail. As the Internet grew more sophisticated, and more people conducted business on-line, it was inevitable that the same kind of mass marketing and commercialism that infused life outside of the Web should make its way into the Web, filling e-mail boxes with offers from people or businesses the recipient might never have heard of, and colonizing websites with marketing "banners" that ran across the tops and bottoms of pages.

Sources:

Ivan Amato, "Can We Make Garbage Disappear?," Time, 154 (8 November 1999): 116+.

"Best of 1997," Time, 150 (29 December 1997).

Walter Isaacson, "The Passions of Andrea Grore," Time, 150 (29 December 1997): 46-53.

"Modern Marvels: The Internet: Behind the Web," television, The History Channel, 2000.

Stephen Segaller, Nerds 2.0.1: A Brief History of the Internet (New York: TV Books, 1998).

Robert Wright, "The Web We Weave," Time, 154 (31 December 1999): 197+.