Technology, Internet, & Technology, Internet, & Social ChangeSocial Change

A compressed discussion of A compressed discussion of Internet Internet historyhistory, the , the Free Software Free Software

MovementMovement and the and the Internet Culture Internet Culture StudyStudy at Cal-State University, at Cal-State University,

BakersfieldBakersfield

Early NetworksEarly Networks

1957 USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial earth satellite. In response, US forms the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)

1965 ARPA sponsors study on "cooperative network of time-sharing computers" to form "The Experimental Network" connected by 1200 bps dedicated telephone line

1969 ARPANET commissioned to network 4 computer nodes of University Computers

Early Networks Continued

1970 ARPANET hosts start using Network Control Protocol (NCP), – Early beginnings of Compuserve – Telnet and BBS born – Most popular operating system is Unix followed by CP/M

1975 First Satellite Network connection experiment is successful

1979-80 USENET established and first MUD's (Multi-User Domains) appear—ARPANET shut down by email virus

1981-83 Networks begin to spring up all over the globe with the cooperation of Universities and Corporations. First international connections begin to form using TCP/IP and the early definition of Internet is born

Early InternetEarly Internet

1984-85 DNS (Domain Name Server) introduced to facilitate connections—allows connection without knowing the route of nodes—WELL (Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link) begins—Quantum Link (Commodore 64/128) and APPLELINK ISP now available

1987 Prodigy ISP comes online as joint Sears/IBM venture

Early Internet Continued

1989 AOL is now available to PC's after Applelink changes its name

1990 ARPANET terminated—all other networks continue to join together on the web—Windows 3.x is introduced—PC presence begins to grow

1991 Linus Torvalds produces Linux Kernal—by 1992 Linux users are online

Internet Growth

1994 NCSA Mosaic web browser introduced later to become known as Netscape

1995 Windows 95 is introduced with Dial-up networking feature

1998 Internet Tax Freedom Act signed into law by President Bill Clinton to promote and preserve commercial, educational, and informational potential of the Internet

Global Internet Issues

1999 First Cyberwar takes place (Serbia/Kosovo)--British MI6 agents are posted on the web—by late December Y2K bug scare infiltrates news and media—18-year old college dropout named Shawn Fanning changed the music industry forever with his file-sharing program called Napster. Windows CE release—net attracts PocketPC users

Corporate Internet Issues

2001 Lindows, Inc. is formed using a version of the Linux system with CNR download technology—Windows XP is released with IE 6.0—massive security flaws and privacy issues arise followed by continued updates online; Microsoft also releases the Xbox: a video game console that can connect online—Mac OS X released with IE and MS Office

Internet Commerce Issues

2002 Microsoft sued Lindows for copyright infringement and lost—then paid Lindows a reported $20 million to change its name to Linspire—eBay opens online stores that offer access to 200 million customers world wide—the cost to start your new business? $10

2003 Amazon.com boasts 10 million regular customers

Modern InternetModern Internet

2004 NASA BRINGS MARS ONLINE—the agency's home page, the Mars program Web and the Spaceflight Web, received 916 million hits, and users downloaded 154 million Web pages when it “webcast” the Mars mission. The server received 1 billion hits in less than four days

2006 Over 100 million web servers online (each server may have 1000's of sites) 5,340 Internet vulnerabilities in security recorded—MySpace.com boasts 154 million accounts and growing at 300,000 new accounts every day

The Free Software MovementThe Free Software Movement

● The free software movement began in 1983 when Richard Stallman announced the GNU Project.

● It is a social movement which aims to change the rights which software users have.

● In terms of social movements, it is classed as a new social movement.

Getting Started

Stallman founded the Free Software Foundation in 1985 to support the movement in order:

● To replace proprietary restrictive software with free software

● To achieve its ultimate goal to liberate everyone in cyberspace

The free software definition holds that it is immoral to prohibit or prevent these freedoms & that these freedoms are required to create a decent society where users can cooperate with control over their own computer.

Issues of the movement

Open Source is a form of software that allows community contribution

● participants do not necessarily consider propriety immoral

● some prefer to promote pragmatic values instead

Many programmers who enjoy supporting and using free software work developing proprietary software, & do not consider their actions immoral

Hence, Free Software & Open-Source licenses are slightly different

Related Issues

The free software movement also believes all software needs free documentationIf you have to pay for the instructions—it's not really

free

Members of the free software movement advocate works that serve a practical purpose should also be free.

Actions of the Movement

The first actions of the free software movement was to write software & rejects proprietary software, refusing to install software that does not give them the freedoms of free software.

Some supporters host a stall at software-related conferences to raise awareness of software freedom.

Political acts include campaigning against software patents and expansions of copyright law.

Internet Culture Study

Purpose of the study

To examine the effectiveness of a dichotomous survey design for gathering data on Internet behavior

To investigate the activities of men and women and their differences when communicating online

To investigate the use of emoticons and applied symbolic interaction among users

Methods

For the pilot study, 70 surveys were randomly distributed to male and female students at CSUB during the 2004-05 school year

Participants completed a survey consisting of 56 questions (most dichotomous—yes or no responses) with 4 qualitative questions and 6 non-dichotomous items to complete

Participants were from Psychology, Sociology and Anthropology courses ranging from daytime to evening classes

Age Range of Participants

Ethnic Distribution

Do you subscribe to an onlineservice?

Do you use AOL?

Can you tell if a user isexperienced on the Internet?

Are these friends or friendship?

Give you number/make a call?

Did you give your address?

Advice about sex?

Peak day Internet use by gender

Hours spent on the Internet

Do you lie about yourself?

Can you fall in love or haverelationships online?

Characters – Emoticons?

Findings

Of men and women surveyed, it was determined that when asked whether morning, afternoon or evening was the preferred Internet browsing period men and women differed slightly—men peaked Internet usage during the afternoon and women peaked in the evening. A significant interaction appeared on the line graph showing that men and women likely begin to logon at approximately the same time—different peaks suggest different levels of endurance for staying online

More Findings

It was suggested by responses that men tended to lie about their physical characteristics when communicating on the online

Women tended to have little faith in falling in love using the Internet, or believing in relationships or seeking advice online but did reveal an interest in meeting people online

Men tended to believe other end users to be actual friends, and have a slightly higher degree of expectation for falling in love online

Conclusion

● The hypothesis that the internet is being used as a way to meet people, establish relationships, and experience a social life was partially supported. Data in regard to access, usage, interaction and the norms of the Internet suggest that differences between men and women extend even to interactions online

The hypothesis that the use of Internet communication and its “emoticons” had penetrated offline society was supported. Note that qualitative answers indicated that at times the Internet was used as a tool to communicate with friends and family online but its use as a research tool was prevalent.

Discussion

Clearly, using a student population was a weakness of this kind of survey. It is difficult to examine the penetration of Internet behavior in offline society when a sample of participants known to be research oriented is used. Also, many students are living away from home while going to school and they will likely choose the least expensive way to communicate with family—especially foreign students.

On the upside, the survey's dichotomous item design provided massive data to analyze, making it a valued tool for future research.

Notes For This Presentation

This presentation was created entirely from “Free Software” by a program called OpenOffice 2.0 using its PowerPoint equivalent called Impress. It was a free download from Download.com

OpenOffice 2.0 was recently purchased by Sun Microsystems which has publically commited to continued development and support of free software. Sun is also giving away is Award Winning Unix Operating System SOLARIS 10 http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/get.jsp