The impact of the internet on American society

Learn the basics of the Net

2006-06-26T20:19:00.000+02:00

For everyone of you who still feels unsure sometimes about how to use the Net I have a very helpful side, which explains the basics pretty well.
Here is the link:

http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/03future.htm

Interesting predictions about the Internet´s future

2006-06-26T20:08:00.000+02:00

In our presentation and here in this blog I used to write about the history of the Internet, its origins and the most crucial stages.
To my mind it is also important to think about the Internet´s future, how development will continue, which branches will survive, maybe even extend, or will die and which branches will be newly created. An interesting aspect about this is how this will influence our everyday life, if for example an online school system will become reality or just visions or if going shopping will work in the way that your digital fridge is connected via Internet to a supermarket and sends information about lacking food to that. Then it is brought home to you by transport service.
Some more more or less probable visions about the Internet´s future can be read on the following side:

http://www.elon.edu/predictions/RecentSubmissions.aspx

How evil is google?

2006-05-28T15:46:00.000+02:00

In the latest Neon magazine I recently read an interesting article about the google company, how it works and to what extent it breaks its own rule "Don´t be evil".
At first the article describes the huge company area in Mountain View, a town in Silicon Valley/California, which offers everything to its employees, from cosy catering places, various fitness and relaxing zones to a kindergarten for the employees´ children.
Then the unbelievably successful story about the history of the company from its beginnings up til now is narrated.
An interesting fact is the company´s motto for its employees "70-20-10", which means employees should be concerned 70 % with their actual stuff to do, 20 % with similar topics and there should always be 10% time left for creative thinking and new ideas.
First big trouble that google got into was its email service "gmail", launched in 2004. Google scanned the private mails to get information about the sender and to send him appropriate advertisements, which caused big anger of course.
A second interesting point mentioned in the article is that google recently launched its search engine also in China, but not before it conceded to Chinese government in that way, that for example "democracy" is a term you could not search for with this engine. Additionally, if you search for the "Platz des himmlischen Friedens", you get lots of tourism information but nothing about the massacre of 1989...by this you can on the one hand see how much power these seemingly harmless search engines have on people and their point of view about topics and on the other hand it shows that despite any moral company rules, making money finally counts more in decisions about expansion!
Having read this article has made me more thoughtful and much more discerning in using search engines in general. What do you think about that?

Dictionary for Computer Terms

2006-05-14T18:39:00.000+02:00

According to my own confusion I sometimes have when being confronted with too many technical terms I searched for a good help in those cases...and can now advise you the following link : http://www.webopedia.com/
Whenever a question arises I type in the unknown term and it is explained to me in an understandable manner. ;-)

Informative & Funny View on the Internet

2006-05-07T13:46:00.000+02:00

I just found a webpage which uses an informative but also funny way to introduce young people to the history of the internet. It´s also useful to get a quick overview about the most essential stages. The authors of this page pay attention not only to traditional technical terms but also to popular inventions like napster, real audio player, the ambivalent influence of the internet on employers ;-) and our topic: blogs which they comment by saying:
2001-Blogging invented. Promises to change the way people bore strangers with banal anecdotes about their pets.

http://www.bordergatewayprotocol.net/jon/humor/internet_history/

Timeline of the development of the internet

2006-04-08T16:49:00.000+02:00

During my research I found a comprehensive and informative timeline which gives a quick overview about important stages in the history of the internet.

http://www.netvalley.com/archives/mirrors/davemarsh-timeline-1.htm

A brief history of the internet

2006-04-06T21:13:00.001+02:00

Today nearly everyone uses it, some of you only sometimes and some of you every single day and night (!) ;-) : the internet.
But nearly no one really knows how the internet actually developed. Especially questions like when, where and why it was invented at all arise in mind.
These questions and some more I will answer in an upcoming oral presentation in an American studies seminar of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg in Saxony-Anhalt/Germany called "The impact of the internet on American society" together with my fellow student Peter Grube.
Until then I will collect a couple of interesting links concerning the topic you may read to get a first overview. At the end I´d like to encourage you to make comments!

A very useful link for the beginning is the following one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_internet (English)

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschichte_des_Internets (German)