Developer.com Click here to support our advertisers
Click here to support our advertisers
SOFTWARE
FOR SALE
BOOKS
FOR SALE
SEARCH CENTRAL
* JOB BANK
* CLASSIFIED ADS
* DIRECTORIES
* REFERENCE
Online Library Reports
* TRAINING CENTER
* JOURNAL
* NEWS CENTRAL
* DOWNLOADS
* DISCUSSIONS
* CALENDAR
* ABOUT US
----- Journal:

Get the weekly email highlights from the most popular online Journal for developers!
Current issue -----
developer.com
developerdirect.com
htmlgoodies.com
javagoodies.com
jars.com
intranetjournal.com
javascripts.com

REFERENCE

All Categories : Web General


3

How Does the Internet Make the World a Better Place?

Read this chapter to satisfy your curiosity about good things the Internet fosters. The answers include these:

  • It supports scientific discovery.

  • It saves trees (maybe).

  • It exposes the truth.

  • It gives away free stuff.

  • It creates new business opportunities.

  • It accommodates the disabled.

  • It brings people and nations together.

  • It plays Cupid.

  • It prevents pointless walks to the Coke machine.

  • It makes people laugh.

  • It turns people on.

As someone who's curious about the Internet, you're going to notice a lot of discussion about it in the media and perhaps among your friends and acquaintances. Two extremes will frame the discussions you encounter:

  1. The Internet is the best thing since sliced bread.

  2. The Internet is Big Brother waiting to happen, a sinister conspiracy that destroys our privacy, steals our freedoms, and reduces us all to electronic ink.

As with most debates, the truth lies somewhere in-between. To help you develop your own perspective on the debate, this chapter and the next present a sort of point-counterpoint. Here, you'll get a wholly partisan look at what's good about the Internet. In Chapter 4, you'll get a tough dose of unalloyed Internet paranoia. My hope is that by examining the two extremes separately, you'll equip yourself to find your own middle ground on this complex—and ongoing—controversy.

Now, I have to point out that this chapter is only about half as long as Chapter 4, which would tend to create the impression that I think the "cons" of the Internet outweigh the "pros." Well, I'm not telling what I think — I don't want to influence your judgment. But I will explain that Chapter 4 is longer because it is the only chapter that really covers the potential downside of the Internet. The chapter you're reading, on the other hand, has help. By showing you all the wonderful things people can do on the Internet, Chapters 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, and 8 are all pro-Internet, in effect.

With that in mind, here we go. I will now put on my "I © the Internet" hat, and take inspiration from the Internet's biggest booster, the Vice President.


Did You Know. . .

"The Global Information Infrastructure offers instant communication to the great human family.

"It can provide us the information we need to dramatically improve the quality of our lives. By linking clinics and hospitals together, it will ensure that doctors treating patients have access to the best possible information on diseases and treatments. By providing early warning on natural disasters like volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, or typhoons, it can save the lives of thousands of people.

"By linking villages and towns, it can help people organize and work together to solve local and regional problems ranging from improving water supplies to preventing deforestation. . .

"Let us build a global community in which the people of neighboring countries view each other not as potential enemies, but as potential partners, as members of the same family in the vast, increasingly connected human family."

U.S. Vice President Al Gore in a speech to promote the Global Information Infrastructure presented at a conference of the International Telecommunications Union, March 1994.

It Supports Scientific Discovery

As discussed in Chapter 2, the Internet helps scientists and researchers do their jobs more effectively by giving them access to exhaustive, up-to-date information compiled by other scientists and researchers.

The Internet also gives scientists access to equipment that they do not have at their own institutions. For example, an observatory in New Mexico has a telescope that scientists in other countries can actually aim and look through (by looking at computer graphics sent to their computers) by way of the Internet.

Also made possible by the Internet are parallel, or collaborative, research projects. Teams of scientists located all over the country or over the world can work individually on portions of a larger research project, using the Internet to share and consolidate their findings. Major projects that would exceed the resources (staff, equipment, and computing power) of the largest institutions in the world can be undertaken this way, with each partipating institution performing the part that it is best equipped to handle.

A good example of parallel research is the Humane Genome Project (see Figure 3.1). Funded in part by the Federal Government and involving the world's best genetics labs, the project is a massive 15-year plan to identify all 100,000 or more human genes, possibly unlocking the secrets to preventing many birth defects and genetically influenced diseases, such as cancer. Fifteen years is a long time, but scientists have commented that such a project conducted by a single research lab could take a century. That's another 85 years of preventable human suffering.


Figure 3.1. An Internet resource for learning about the Human Genome project.

Other cooperative initiatives that use the Internet are the initiatives for curing AIDS and other infectious diseases, developing alternative fuels, predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and saving species from extinction—and all that's just the beginning.

It Saves Trees (Maybe)

In theory, every message exchanged by computer saves the paper that would otherwise have been used, plus the energy used and the pollution produced to make the paper. Ditto books and lengthy research materials available electronically over the Internet.

The only catch is, nobody really knows if it's working that way. For one thing, people have a funny habit of printing stuff that they could just as easily read on a computer screen. For another, the manufacture of computers, the generating of the electricity required by the computers and the network, and the radiation produced by computers and power lines may also be sources of pollution. So it's difficult to say for sure whether the Internet helps make the world a greener place. It is known that the amount of paper used worldwide has continued to rise every year, even as use of computers and the Internet expands.

But then again, nobody's proved that the Internet doesn't save trees. So if you want to see the Internet as an environmentally progressive development, be my guest. Nobody can prove you wrong, at least not yet.

It Exposes the Truth

There's a stubborn freedom-of-information tenet to Internet culture. Many Internet users believe (correctly, if you ask me and Thomas Jefferson) that secrets are anathema to freedom and democracy. These folks sometimes make themselves into investigative reporters who keep an eye out for important, unreported information and then spill the truth out onto the Internet. In particular, they're opposed to gag orders that prevent the media from reporting about certain stories. When the print and broadcast media's hands are tied, the Internet community kicks into high gear.

A good example involved the trials of Karla Homolka and her husband Paul Bernardo in Ontario, as reported in The Nation. In her trial, Homolka pled guilty to two gruesome murders, and while she was at it, she said Bernardo—who was scheduled to be tried later—made her do it. To prevent potential jurors for Bernardo's trial from learning too much about the case, the Canadian court forbade the media from reporting the details of Homolka's trial.

Offended that their government would dare to censor coverage of a public court proceeding, Internet users in Toronto created an Internet resource to which they posted daily updates about the trial, which were read the world over.

The Canadian Government went to great lengths to stop the Internet users. The police left threatening messages on the bulletin board (the mounted police, no less; presumably they use the Internet from saddle-mounted PCs), and the resource had to be renamed after all the Canadian universities switched off local access to it under pressure from the government. (The universities couldn't prevent Internet access to it, though, because to do so, they would have had to sever the university from the Internet entirely.) Ultimately, the Internet users were able to continue funneling information while successfully eluding the Canadian police.


Did You Know. . .

"There's a Dutch relief worker, Wam Kat, who has been broadcasting an electronic diary from Zagreb for more than a year and a half on the Internet, sharing his observations of life in Croatia.

"After reading Kat's Croatian Diary, people around the world began to send money for relief efforts. The result: 25 houses have been rebuilt in a town destroyed by war."

U.S. Vice President Al Gore

Another example is the smuggling of information out of Russia during the 1991 coup attempt. From the beginning of the fighting, the pro-coup KGB blacked out the print and broadcast media, preventing any news from circulating around the country or reaching the Western media, and also preventing any international news from reaching the Soviet people.

A small Russian e-mail company collected news from the banned newspapers and radio stations, local reports from its subscribers and even communiqués from Boris Yeltsin himself, and published it all on the Internet through a link in Finland. The Western media, including CNN and the Associated Press, culled the news from the Internet and spread it to the world beyond. The company also collected world news from the Internet and distributed it to Soviet citizens through its e-mail subscribers.

If the truth shall make you free, the Internet can indeed be a carrier for freedom.

It Gives Away Free Stuff

As you'll learn in Chapter 5, using the Internet is free, but not really.

Be that as it may, there's stuff users can get from the Internet that they don't have to pay for. So although the Internet isn't really free, the stuff really is. A few favorites are in Table 3.1.

    Table 3.1. Free stuff on the Internet.
Stuff




Sources




Books (in electronic form, of course)

The Online Book Project and Project Gutenberg.

Software

Software companies that provide customer service on the Internet, the Free Software Foundation, hundreds of Internet resources that have software for copying, including files of sound and video clips.

Advice

Newsgroups, e-mail.

Fine art

The WebLouvre, a facility that provides full-color computer files of masterworks. A growing number of museums and galleries also offer a peek at their holdings through the Internet.

Rare/historical photographs

The Smithsonian Institution, several universities.

General reference information

CIA World Fact Book, Concise Oxford Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of Familiar Quotations, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Roget's Thesaurus.

Periodicals

Electronic Newsstand, which offers on-screen access to the text of The New Yorker, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, National Review, Eating Well, and others. Also available are veteran progressive mag Mother Jones, a technology magazine called Wired, and many more.

It Creates New Business Opportunities

Business use of the Internet is controversial. Still, there's no doubt people are making money on, through, and around the Internet.

For example, a company called the Internet Shopping Network makes its database of information about the computers and software it sells available on the Internet. Customers can get their answers without costing the Shopping Network a printed catalog or live sales associate. Customers can also place orders through the Internet. The company uses the savings to underprice its competitors. There will be a steady growth in the number of such services, and they'll be joined by new ventures such as electronic banking, magazine subscriptions and classified advertising (see Figure 3.2). Visionary entrepreneurs will use the resources and community of the Internet to open new markets, design new products, and stimulate the economy.


Figure 3.2. Classified advertising, a recent arrival on the Internet.

An emerging new business model, called the Virtual Corporation (VC), may depend heavily on the Internet. In the VC, the large company staffed with permanent workers is replaced by a small team of executives who manage an ever-changing field of freelancers who are hired and let go as needed. The VC can respond more rapidly to changing business needs than can a traditional corporation, and it can operate more efficiently by only paying workers when there's a specific project for which they're required.

Advocates say the VC will make businesses more competitive, and will also bring about a huge upswing in self-employment, which many people find more satisfying than traditional employment. The Internet will help make the the VC possible by making it easy for managers to find, hire, and communicate with the best freelancers, wherever they may be located.

It Accommodates the Disabled

People with certain disabilities can find traditional written communication difficult. For example, the blind can't read written paper mail, and those with motor impairments sometimes have trouble with letters and envelopes.

There are dozens of products that enable the disabled to use computers: Braille keyboards and finger-readers for the blind, and mouth sticks and other gadgets for the motor-impaired. For both the blind and the motor-impaired, there are voice-response systems that enable the computer to respond to voice commands and also enable it to speak words that appear on the computer screen. These tools empower disabled people to do anything that can be done with a computer. (Of course, typewritten communication by computer has obvious benefits for the deaf and hearing impaired— with no special accessories required.)


Really Curious?

Telecommuting, the practice wherein employees do their jobs at home with computers, can be an especially attractive option to people whose disabilities make getting around difficult or impossible. To learn more about telecommuting, see Chapter 9.

Given appropriate accommodations, most disabled people can use a computer— and thus the Internet. The Internet offers them a way to communicate with the world, perhaps even more easily than they do in person. There are also many Internet resources that serve the specific needs and interests of disabled people and enable them to exchange advice and ideas.


Did You Know. . .

Visually impaired people can get e-mail over the telephone. International Discount Communications in New Jersey receives Internet e-mail for its clients and converts the messages to spoken words. The company's computer then calls the recipient on the phone and plays the message aloud, or saves it in voice-mail for the recipient to hear later.

It Brings People and Nations Together

Through e-mail and other resources, the Internet provides an easy way for 30 million people, from everywhere in the world, to discover each other and to communicate on equal terms across a place with no borders, boundaries, or class distinctions (language, though, remains a barrier). Other potential cultural divisions—such as race and religion—can be left out of the Internet discussion, or made an important part of them, at the user's discretion.

Because they are built around a specific topic, Internet newsgroups and mailing lists (see Chapter 7) make a natural meeting place for people with common interests to come together. There are also Internet resources dedicated to the idea that the Internet's ability to bring people together can make a better world. For example, PeaceNet is a cooperative project that distributes information and facilitates interaction among peace advocates worldwide (see Figure 3.3).


Figure 3.3. PeaceNet.

Some also promote the idea of Virtual Communities, subsets of Internet users who form their own little collective network with its own rules, membership requirements, and security.

That sounds like a step backward from the "everybody's welcome" spirit of the whole Internet, and it can be. But don't forget that the Virtual Communities are founded from people who discovered one another—and their commonalties—on the Internet.


Did You Know. . .

"A person on the Internet sees the world in a different light. He or she views the world as decidedly decentralized, every far-flung member a producer as well as a consumer, all parts of it equidistant from all others, no matter how large it gets, and every participant responsible for manufacturing truth out of a noisy cacophony of ideas, opinions and facts. There is no central meaning, no official canon, no manufactured consent rippling through the wires from which one can borrow a viewpoint. Instead, every idea has a backer, and every backer has an idea, while contradiction, paradox, irony, and multifaceted truth rise up in a flood."

From Kevin Kelly, Out of Control: The Rise of Neo-Biological Civilization (Addison-Wesley).

It Plays Cupid

Let's see, ways to meet potential life-mates_bars_adult education classes_singles retreats_community theatre_ the produce aisle. Telephone party lines. The Internet.

Yes, people meet and fall in love on the Internet, though I've heard it's rare. They can meet anywhere on the Internet, but a few resources are specifically set aside for posting "personals" to help people find one another. I suppose it's a pretty big step when the relationship moves past the personals and to the e-mail stage.

It Prevents Pointless Walks to the Coke Machine

This may seem like a very small way to make the world a better place, but not if you've recently had the misfortune to walk all the way to the Coke machine for nothing. People have started riots for less.

Having both access to computers and way too much time on their hands, enterprising folks at several universities have connected their cola machines to the school computer system so they could make sure the machine wasn't empty before trudging down the hall. (Refer to "It Separates and Isolates People" in Chapter 4.) Because these university computers are on the Internet, other Internet users around the world can find out whether there's enough Coke at Columbia or U. Wisconsin. While the early, groundbreaking work in this field was done on Coke machines, visionaries have also hooked a hot tub and a coffee maker to the Internet. (And you wondered why tuition was so high?)

Fig 3.4 A program that monitors the coffe pot at the University of Cambridge, accessed through the Internet

What Internet users get out of that I'm not sure. Maybe two colleges competing for a research grant can monitor each other's caffeine and sugar consumption, to be sure to keep the playing field level.


Really Curious?

Although hooking devices like vending machines and coffee pots to the Internet is an entertaining experiment today, it actually foreshadows tomorrow. Plans for the "Information Superhighway" include the development of electronic devices—including a new generation of TV sets, VCRs, telephones and more—that will be connected to high-speed, two-way communications lines. The lines will deliver information and programming to the devices, and you'll be able to use the devices to communicate with service providers.

For more, see Chapter 9.

It Makes People Laugh

Did you hear the one about the Internet user who took a job on a fishing boat because he liked the net work? ("Net work!" Get it?)

Plenty of yuks can be had on the Internet. As in any conversation, Internet messages are often punctuated with jokes. Because the messages are written rather than spoken, however, the users have time to try to be clever and to polish their material before sending it out. This results in more bad jokes than good, but it's the thought that counts.

Several newsgroups (see Chapter 7) are dedicated to humor. Internet users can visit these when they need a quick shot of silliness, but unfortunately, these newsgroups are not reliable sources of humor for most people's tastes. For reasons I do not know, the majority of jokes in these resources are of the Beavis & Butthead level. By that I don't mean the sly, satirical humor sometimes served up by the Beavis & Butthead show. I mean the kind of jokes Beavis and Butthead themselves would snicker at— adolescent, tasteless, crude, sick, dumb. Worse yet, many are also sexist or racist. Efforts have been made to clean up these resources by putting them under the supervision of a moderator, but they've not improved much.


Did You Know. . .

I had originally intended to offer a few genuine jokes from Internet newsgroups in this section. However, after several attempts over several weeks, I was unable to find anything that was both funny and fit to print.

The better humor on the Internet is found elsewhere: in the everyday exchanges between Internet users and in the odd resource that serves up humor with a little smarts. For example, I came across "Hamlet was a College Student" in a recent edition of Gonzo, an electronic publication of Georgetown University and heir to the subversive style of Gonzo journalist Hunter S. Thompson. The article uses accurate, verbatim quotes from Shakespeare's Hamlet to support its thesis.

Fig. 3.5"Hamlet was a College Student," and article in Gonzo.

When injecting humor into their correspondence and other Internet message writing, Internet users are not unaware that written jokes lack the benefits of inflection and timing that often make spoken jokes funny. Over time, they've adopted an elaborate code of little typed symbols, called smileys, to expand the expressive range of written communication. Among the symbols used in the smiley language are those shown in the following list. To see the little faces of the smileys, you have to tilt your head to the left.

:-)

A basic smile, denoting happiness or sarcasm

:)

Also a smile

;-)

Wink

:-D

Laughing

:-}

Grin

:-P

Plbbbt!

:-(

Sad face

8-)

Wide-eyed

B-)

Wearing glasses

:-X

Close mouthed

The first five smileys are often typed adjacent to jokes, just so the reader can tell they're jokes even if they fail to be funny. (If Jay Leno's monologue was on the Internet, he'd have to use lots of them.)

It Turns People On

This is one of those issues that's good or bad (the bad perspective is covered in Chapter 4) depending on your own, private value system.

If you're among those who believe that looking at nudie pictures or reading erotic poetry and fiction is a positive—or simply harmless—pastime and promoter of a healthy libido, the Internet makes your world a better place. Through resources dedicated to the sexy side of life, users can read or copy erotic writing. They can also copy full-color, detailed, anatomically correct, photo-realistic graphics files of naked people and sexual acts. The pictures can be displayed on a computer screen (see Chapter 7), or even printed on a printer capable of handling high-resolution graphics.

Given the traditional demographics of both the Internet and pornography, the overwhelming majority of this type of material caters to the tastes of heterosexual men. But all genders, tastes, and preferences are served somewhere on the Internet.


Did You Know. . .

All jokes aside, there have been cases of pedophiles using public computer networks to cruise for victims. The pedophiles use network communications facilities such as e-mail to converse with young people and, after gaining their trust, arrange a meeting. Fortunately, undercover cops use the same networks to trap the abusers, sometimes by posing as potential victims and then arresting the pedophiles at the arranged meeting. Two such cases—one in San Jose and another in Chelmsford, Massachusetts—have made the press, but there have been others.

The well-known cases took place not on the Internet but on local computer bulletin board systems, where most or all of the potential victims lived near the criminal. Because it's so large and spread out, the Internet makes a poor tool for this purpose, and I'm not aware of any such case involving the Internet. That doesn't mean it hasn't happened, however, or can't happen.

So Now You Know. . .

The world is made better in part by the Internet and the people who use it. There are the big reasons, such as the free exchange of news and information and the support of science, and the little reasons, like laughs and love.

In any case, 20 million people can't be wrong. There's a lure to the depth of resources available on the Internet. And once people get hooked on knowing, they don't give up easily.

HomeAbout UsSearchSubscribeAdvertising InfoContact UsFAQs
Use of this site is subject to certain Terms & Conditions.
Copyright (c) 1996-1998 EarthWeb, Inc.. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of EarthWeb is prohibited.
Please read the Acceptable Usage Statement.
Contact reference@developer.com with questions or comments.
Copyright 1998 Macmillan Computer Publishing. All rights reserved.

Click here for more info

Click here for more info