Net204: Internet Communities and Social Networks - Stage 2: Communities & Web 2.0

Stage 2 is about preparing for the 2000-2500 word paper for the Online Conference. There are 4 streams:

1. Communities and Web 2.0
2. Social Networks
3. Identity in Communities and Networks
4. Communities and Online Gaming

© Stiven | Dreamstime Stock Photos & Stock Free Images

Communities and Web 2.0

Personal Networks and the Personal Communication System
This paper by Jeffrey Boase discusses how social interactions are affected by online communication. Interesting points from this reader:

• Although it is true that individuals may sometimes form new social ties through one medium such as the Internet, as these ties become close they are often contacted through other means, either in person or by phone
• Social ties have two important dimensions - cognition and behaviour. The cognitive dimension includes the belief that a social tie exists as well as feelings of closeness, memory of past interaction and knowledge about that tie. The behavioural dimension is interaction that typically occurs by way of mediated and unmediated communication.

Web 2.0 Technologies and Community Building Online

This paper by Palloff and Pratt defines Web 2.0 as the second generation of the World Wide Web, offering higher levels of user interaction and collaboration. Much of Web 2.0 emerged from the desire of young people for self-expression through creation of content posted on the Web, easy communication with peers, and ways to stay connected to friends. However many adults are now using Web 2.0 technologies to also stay connected with their networks, as are businesses for marketing purposes.

The more common forms of Web 2.0 technology include, but are not limited to:

• blogs
• learner generated content (aka Collective Intelligence)
• wikis
• podcasts
• RSS
• social networking
• Skype
• Second Life

There are many pros and cons when using Web 2.0 technology. Some negatives include:

• copyright issues (ie Facebook owns whatever you share)
• people can wander into suspect areas or sites by accident
• archiving and loss of content with uploaded files
• social networking sites may blur the lines of formality

References:

Boase, J. (2008). Personal Networks and The Personal Communication System: Using Multiple Media to connect. Information, Communication & Society, 11.4, 490-508

Palloff, R. M. & Pratt, K. (2009). Web 2.0 Technologies and Community Building Online. Paper presented at the 25th Annual Conference on Distance Teaching and Learning

NED11: Module 1

Notes from Unit Outline
The internet is 43 years old and was originally called ARPA - the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The original computers that comprised ARPA were housed at Stanford University, UCLA, UCSB and the University of Utah. It was revolutionary because it was decentralised. Even now the internet is not owned by anybody or corporation. It was originally designed for communication between universities, however nowadays commercial users make up most of the internet.

This site traces the route the internet takes when you access your browser. It's quite interesting to see how far it travels once a command has left your computer.

The internet also revolutionised the cost of global communication and made it cheaper to communicate with people overseas via Skype for example. Distance is now irrelevant.

Exercise 1: Internet Timeline and milestones
This photo shows the number of websites that have been created since 1990...

Image courtesy of: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

Five milestones of the Internet Timeline most relevant to the world wide web, screen design and multimedia design issues:

1. 1990 - The World comes on-line (world.std.com), becoming the first commercial provider of Internet dial-up access; the first remotely operated machine is hooked up to the Internet
2. 1993 - Businesses and media begin taking notice of the Internet
3. 1994 - 1995 - Communities begin to be wired up directly to the Internet; A number of Net related companies go public, with Netscape leading the pack with the 3rd largest ever NASDAQ IPO share value
4. 2002 - 2003 - blogs become popular; The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues 261 individuals for allegedly distributing copyright music files over peer-to-peer networks
5. 2006 - Emerging Technology of 'Cloud' computing

Information courtesy of: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/

Exercise 2: Tim Berners-Lee FAQ

1) Tim Berners-Lee's role in the development of the internet: He invented the World Wide Web. The WWW is only one feature of the internet.

2) He talked about HTML, SVG, RDF and XML back in 2000. 

3) The very first website was extremely basic with a white background, black text and blue links. There were no graphics or animations. I consider it a static website. It differs from websites of today because of it's bland appearance and lack of interaction with viewers. It has limited HTML code with basic tags consisting of <header>, <title>, <body> and a basic table.

4) The W3C is the World Wide Web Consortium - the web police. They control coding regulations. They care about standards because it's important that all browsers are capable of reading common coding so webpages can display correctly.

5) As the // has become unnecessary in URL's the Curtin domain could be entered as http:students.curtin.edu.au/administration/admissions and the browser would assume the double slash is present. 

6) The most popular browsers nowadays are Internet Explorer 9, Safari, FireFox, Google Chrome and Opera. I believe they are so because they have the fastest load times. Internet users are getting more impatient and want webpages to load as fast as we blink! These browsers open the fastest.

7) The 3 colours which were first used on webpages were blue for links which change to red when hovered over and purple when visited. 

Interesting facts:

• In the 1960s, J.C.R. Licklider published his ideas about the future role of multi access interactive computing. He looked beyond the existing limitations of punched cards and paper tape to a time when computers would interact in real time with the human user. By performing numerous routine tasks on demand, computers could contribute to a person's ability to formulate new insights and decisions. He saw man-computer interaction as enhancing both the quality and efficiency of human problem solving. Information courtesy of http://apotheca.hpl.hp.com/ftp/pub/DEC/SRC/research-reports/abstracts/src-rr-061.html