Week 2 Notes

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Welcome to the Internet!
"Have a Look Around! Anything that brain of yours can think of can be found. There are Mountains of Content (Some Better, Some Worst) If none of that is of interest, then you would be the first."

Just for you Mark <3 Mark's Special Request

= The Creation of the Public Internet = "The net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it" - John Gilmore
 * Started in 1985
 * Majority of people could start affording Computers
 * Computer became commercialized
 * Increased availability of computers due to the fact that you no longer had to be technically informed/knowledgable to use one
 * Expansion of availability was largely due to the adoption of TCP/IP, universal protocols, and military usage
 * Large controversy surrounding the censorship of information on the internet
 * Censorship was very little, considered damaging and counterintuitive to the internet’s very purpose; very different from today’s internet and cyberspace
 * Compared to today, censorship is a much more prevalent feature on the internet. It involves the removal and suppressing of certain content found on the internet for a plethora of reasons.
 * Link to understand more about censorship and its ramifications: https://www.security.org/vpn/internet-censorship/

= CMC = Common Forms of communication include:
 * Also known as Computer Mediated Communication
 * The act of two or more people communicating through electronic device, Started with just computers
 * any form of human communication that occurs through 2 or more interconnected computers/computational systems
 * One to One
 * One to Many
 * Many to Many

BBS
The BBS (also known as the Bulletin Board System.) system is well know to be the start of the Public Internet. Back in 1978 it was first created and it changed the internet as we know it. BBS was a system that allowed user to post to an online bulletin, it is considered to be the first messaging system. To use the Bulletin Board; your computer needed to be connected via Telephone line, which connected to the host's modem. Through the telephone line, you were able to send and receive information. Being on any BBS cost money, very much like making a call on a telephone line. Users were only allowed a certain amount of time on a BBS before getting kicked off. It was entirely citizen-operated in the sense that every user paid for their level of usage in the same way which they paid their phone bill.
 * BBS was considered a "grassroots internet"
 * could be organized and connected to through a shared "theme" or concept; think myspace, facebook group, etc.
 * Centered around some core concept that is a shared interest; this shared interest is what people would say once they dial in to be connected to others with the SAME similar interest
 * BBS’s were cheap, easy to set-up, and an upgraded form of oversight or censorship was experienced in other forms of communication up to the 80s

FidoNet
FidoNet was the closest to the public internet that we had with the technology available. It allowed multiple BBS systems to connected to each other. The biggest impact FidoNet had for the Public Internet was the amount of users "One" BBS gained. Before a BBS may only get a few hundred or thousands for users, but with the introduction of BBS interconnection, that number grew to Millions
 * connected all of the various BBS’s into a unified network (single to thousands)
 * Fidonet: first network to gateway BBS’s into a unified network

The BBS experiment (Volunteer Activity)
 * A student tries to navigate through a BBS program, identical settings to those of the original program.
 * Student thoughts: slow, hard to navigate, tons of words, very disorganized and confusing, hard to understand and keep up, got bored pretty quickly, volunteer showed visible confusion but made everyone laugh multiple times - maintained through the human aspect of it and everyone actually participating and pitching ideas

Virtual Communities

 * Virtual communities developed wherever people congregated

Usenet and NNTP
Usenet (also known as User Groups) The Usenet was a newsgroup that was built on a custom application protocol called Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP). Usenet started with point-to-point like MUDs and BBS, but eventually adopted a local client interface.
 * Method of packaging and transporting information
 * Example of Usenet interface: E-mail (much more complex), anything “news.[insert]” - archives relatively available online still
 * Valuable information uploaded to Usenets were left unattended following switch to larger platforms

MUDs
MUD (also known as Multiple User Dungeon)

IRC
IRC (also known as Internet Relay Chat)

The Technological Frontier

 * 1960s-90s, steady expansion and growth
 * remained a self-governed space with little to no rules
 * existing conventions forced conformity
 * lack of conformity drew attention from the originals, pressures continued to enforce a sense of conformity among those who posed threat to breaking it
 * technical barriers put in place to avoid randoms from interacting and restrict access
 * Curiosity fueled development and user interaction - informal modes of achievement and expansion based on new protocol development and speed efficiency/optimization

The WELL
The WELL, also known as the Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, originated as a BBS which then advanced into a dial-up ISP (Internet Service Provider). It fostered a massive cyber community of individuals all over the world who built relationships and friendships. The community helped one another by sharing expertise, supporting them both emotionally and financially, and by providing a relatively safe and comfortable space where each individual had a voice. The WELL gave everyone the chance to speak regardless of their physical restrictions, whether that be location, anxiety, or any other reason. People managed to find "an immense inner sense of security" (CH.1: The Heart of The Well) through their computer screens.
 * Communities that evolved online eventually found themselves engaging in real life
 * Highlighted the strength of community (namely those self-governing and built by the people)
 * Had major implications on how people interacted and learned
 * Provided a space where everyone could interact and have a voice regardless of varying restrictions
 * Members built relationships by self-selecting on self-interests and goals
 * Helped each other by sharing collective experiences and expertise
 * Supported the needs of one another through the community both emotionally and financially
 * Collectively shared grief and supported one another in times of need

What are some examples of popular discourse on today’s Internet that we start to see emerge from the WELL?

 * Addiction to social media
 * Gate-Keeping information
 * Trust and Exploitation of that Trust
 * Targeted advertisements
 * Accuracy of expertise, what’s being shared, etc.
 * Censorship
 * Moderation of speech
 * Debating the right to delete information - i.e “scribbling”
 * Cyberbullying or shaming
 * Blair’s situation: excessive attacking by other individuals claiming that Blair was lying or needed to calm down; how this type of speech caused the mental issues he began to struggle with that ultimately caused him to take his own life
 * “In person is better” - ignorance of someone’s safe space, discrediting the things that make people unique or going against the traditional in-person interaction to engage with others and form relationships or have a voice in society
 * Echo Chamber
 * Rheingold’s position that the WELL is wonderful because it lets people self-select based on interests
 * Reinforcing beliefs to an extreme, stop listening to other perspectives or opinions - can be detrimental
 * "The WELL has never been an entirely mellow place"
 * "It's possible to get thrown out for being obnoxious, but only after weeks of "thrash," as WELLbeings call long, drawn-out, repetitive, and often nasty meta-conversations about how to go about deciding how to make decisions" -- Highlights the way speech affects individuals through the cyberspace
 * https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-the-wells-rise-and-fall-tell-us-about-online-community/259504/
 * Expenses
 * "If modest growth of new people becomes economically necessary, perhaps the atmosphere will change"
 * https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/07/what-the-wells-rise-and-fall-tell-us-about-online-community/259504/
 * Financial backings and support from a larger community
 * Compensation controversy
 * Reingold’s Perspective on CMC
 * Our thoughts, perceptions, and personalities are affected by the ways we use CMC and the way it uses us.
 * Many to many communication brought about by CMC force us to reconcile whether we can, and how we might, build a community.
 * The community, if built correctly, can inform all levels of society about issues of importance to the nation.

Commercialization

 * Virtual communities still relied on the backbone of interconnected computers maintained by the originating institutions (ARPAnet, Department of Defense, The Academy(us))
 * ARPA and DOD achieved what they wanted and no longer needed to fund the network
 * Major concerns over security arise
 * Various other networks and institutions (The Academy) would continue to support public networks financially
 * Use via The Academy spread outwards to more non-computer related science fields
 * Biological Sciences
 * Computer Science
 * Humanities
 * Campus computing centers became critical spaces of communication for everyone in the academy

What happens when you leave the academy?

 * Increasing need to maintain access outside of work
 * Dependency
 * The WELL, BBSs, IRC, Usenet, these resources were too technical and complex for the average citizen
 * American Online and Prodigy (dial-up cyber communities) were some of the first services to offer cheap, easy access to the internet that the average citizen COULD understand
 * Computers are small and efficient enough for people to be able to use - entry into virtual community with little to no technical knowledge
 * Dependency on technical skill to use computers diminishes thanks to this
 * People began paying a company for access to the internet however the ease of access caused internet culture (idea of existing in a community via cyberspace) to explode in popularity and expand all over
 * New players entered hoping to grab a piece of the market
 * Software companies
 * Media and entertainment
 * Telecom
 * Advertising

Proprietary Success

 * Superior performance shifts recognition from community supported goods to a “consuming public voting with their dollars”
 * Proprietary goods “borrow” knowledge extracted from the community to build for profit products
 * Community members pay for perceived improvements
 * Culture of the virtual spaces changes from community to consumption

What did we lose?

 * (In response to the culture shift)
 * Companies will monopolize on anything that they can - there was no way to keep the culture community oriented
 * We lost the opportunity to keep the internet geared towards maintaining a community and helping one another. Everything became about money and making a profit.
 * Loss of ownership/Loss of control/Loss of independence by and for the people. Changing from community powered goals to consumption driven ones.
 * Path-Dependency
 * Privacy - all of our information is stored by larger corporations rather than a community driven storage.
 * Lack of participation in creation of content and community building
 * Creativity
 * No longer community-led effort
 * Loss of innovation
 * No more incentive to advance or make things better
 * Idea theft
 * De-incentivies individuals from participating if they’re just going to have their ideas stolen or lose control over them
 * Loss of novelty

Two Futures

 * Reading centers around transition from community to consumption in the late 90’s
 * BoomTown and Ghost Town
 * Value is exploited
 * Virtual communities that were led by the communities will not replicate, they will die off or become a shell of what they once were

Socrative Questions

 * WHAT DID WE GAIN?
 * Friendships
 * Forming connections
 * Wide-spread dissemination of information and knowledge
 * Increased opportunity for people to speak up and be heard, overcoming physical restrictions and restraints


 * IS INSTANT ACCESS TO "FRIENDSHIPS" WITH OVER 1.4 BILLION PEOPLE THROUGH FACEBOOK POSSIBLE WITH COMMERCIALIZATION?
 * Majority votes NO


 * SHOULD THE EXCHANGE OF KNOWLEDGE BETWEEN 1.4 BILLION PEOPLE BE CONTROLLED BY ONE ORGANIZATION?
 * Majority votes NO
 * If one person were to be in control:
 * The internet "breaks" or is shut off https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20150310-how-to-break-the-internet
 * An interesting thread that contains a community led discussion revolving around who owns/controls the internet https://www.quora.com/Is-there-one-person-government-society-group-or-nation-that-has-complete-control-over-the-Internet-Is-there-a-way-for-any-of-these-to-stop-everybody-else-from-accessing-the-Internet

Facebook

 * For members, the value of the product is access to communities
 * 88% of users reported that they use it to connect with friends and family
 * For many, it's the sense of belonging and connection that is vital to success in their life
 * For the organization, the source of value is the community
 * Global access to any and every type of interest held by a community
 * Personal information easily modeled into buying profiles
 * Highly targeted advertising with a reach unlike any other available medium

Is it worth it?

 * We don’t really have a chance considering how much of our lives is forced online and run through cyber processes.
 * Pandemic quickened the transition to an almost entirely virtual lifestyle


 * More on how the pandemic made our lives more virtually inclined and dependent https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/10/covid-19-has-made-our-world-more-virtual-heres-why-that-could-be-a-good-thing/

Its optional, so what’s the harm?

 * Is optional use of a free service exploitive?
 * Examples:
 * Play this game using your SNS account
 * Pay your rent use “ZuckBucks”
 * Join our SNS group to receive notifications on upcoming events
 * VR platforms requiring a facebook account

Is disproportional transfer of benefits harmful?

 * Yes it is exploitative because users are not aware of the long-term details.
 * Misinformation
 * Transfer of benefits - sharing of information is not proportional or equal between the people and larger corporations/businesses/institutions

Should those that benefit from disproportional transfer also retain control?

 * Monopolizing
 * Rules and conditions
 * Terms of service
 * Addition or removal of features and services
 * Removal of information

Think
Do SNS’s have the right to modify community data or claim ownership of the data its members generate?

Link to Week 2 Student Notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1uiLWGESI3mOZXLglwefaIR-S9g5tIRY458sroJ7lgE4/edit?usp=sharing

Link to Week 2 Lecture Slides: Tuesday 4/5 Thursday 4/7