Critiquing the Internet 2003: Knowledge, language, culture and freedom © Raymond Archee, 2003

 

Introduction

The aim of this paper is to critically examine the usefulness of the[i] Internet as a potential vehicle for communication and education. Given the extraordinary popularity and widespread coverage of the Internet today, it ostensibly should be the perfect tool for the dissemination of knowledge to potential clients and students as we near the end of the century. The Internet’s history as a research collaboration facility also makes it a prime candidate for the creation of new ways of working. But as it will be shown, there is a range of problems which need to be overcome before professionals can fully embrace the Internet.

 

The seductive appeal of the Web

 

The World Wide Web began in March, 1989 when Tim Berners-Lee wrote the original Web proposal whilst working for CERN, the European Laboratory for Particle Physics. Berners-Lee had been enamoured with the idea of hypertext, which was previously conceptualised as a way of interacting with a document on a local computer, not a network. He wanted to develop a system which would allow researchers to collaborate with each other, and which would support data scattered across the globe.

 

Fifteen years later we have a system that has grown beyond Berners-Lee’s wildest dreams. The latest figures show there are 605 million users (NUA, 2002), over 171 million Internet hosts (Internet Software Consortium, 2003); with 70% of all Web traffic originating in the USA. The World Wide Web now links almost all the academic disciplines, as well as schools, government, military and corporate sectors. The Web also links world-wide hate groups, racist organisations and supposedly terrorist cells. It a system in which researchers and teachers play a minor role, and in which collaboration is minimal compared with the huge volume of commercial activity, and adult content.[ii]

 

Whilst the Web is appealing in its use of graphics and multimedia, it is most seductive in its utilisation of hypertext, often regarded as a metaphor for human cognition (Carmel, 1992; Rouet, Levonen, Dillon & Spiro, 1996). Contrary to popular belief, I contend that much of what passes on the Web as hypertext is not a metaphor for anything except a Web designer’s ability to insert hyperlinks into otherwise ordinary electronic documents.

 

The term hypertext was coined in the 1965 by Theodore H. Nelson to concretise a form of electronic text, which was a radical departure from the printed word, and which involved the use of information technology. Before the advent of the Web, hypertext used to denote non-sequential writing, which embodied branches that allowed textual choices for the reader (Landow, 1993). Readers could become decision makers choosing various pathways to enter, backtrack and choose again. In one sense hypertext, as originally conceived, was a new form of writing, a new creative genre in which the reader never quite finished the text, since there was always the possibility of unchosen paths opening up. Whilst the World Wide Web certainly makes use of hypertext, the original meaning of the word has been changed. The Web’s utilisation of hypertext is basically as a support mechanism for a primary, but somewhat abbreviated text. The incidental links (not the menus) within most Web pages are not really the point of the home page content, but simply technological add-ons.

 

A good example is a German Vannevar Bush website (http://www.ps.uni-sb.de/~duchier/pub/vbush/vbush.shtml). Bush in 1945 is credited with being the first scientist to discuss the merits of hypertext-like technology. Nothwithstanding the article’s rhetoric, it is instructional to analyse how this milestone article, ‘As We May Think’ is presented in the medium it purports to champion. The paper on the Web is split into its original nine sections. The division of a longish paper into digestible units is theoretically supposed to enhance the comprehension of online information. What this also enables is a menu system which can be arranged by the Web editor, and that serendipitous discoverers of this article may then ‘browse’ in different sections without necessarily downloading the entire article.

 

The German rendition of this momentous text mitigates against easy saving or printing of this paper since it appears in nine separate sections. What is more problematic is the fact that throughout the article, the Web editor has thought it prudent to hyperlink the most unusual concepts, so that we might visit other sites to clarify our curiosity. For example there are links to dictionary definitions of ‘diazo’, and ‘adze’, a link to the Encyclopedia Brittanica’s commercial website, and several links to law schools and patent explanations. Whilst the hypertext used in this article could be judged to be patronising to the reader, or distracting at best, it also changes Bush’s original language by providing points of emphasis never intended in the original The Atlantic Monthly version. What the hypertext reveals is not what the author intended but what appeals to the Web editor in terms of difficult concepts needing explanation, and the availability of other sites to link to. [iii]

 

Hypertext might be an appropriate metaphor for the human mind’s associative ministrations, but the real-life application of hypertext as seen on much of the Web today is trivial, boring, and totally at the behest of the computer geek wishing to showcase his or her minor talents.

 

The notion of (discourse) community

 

The Internet has quite often been described as a community. Although some real life communities, such as schools, clubs and organisations actually use the Internet to communicate, the focus for many advocates has been on the unique sense of community engendered by electronic communication and computer networks. People who interact (usually via writing) on a regular basis report feeling a sense of identity with their fellow members leading to the suggestion that the Internet has permitted new kinds of communities to emerge, where there were previously none. America Online is now the largest Internet Service Provider (ISP) in the USA, if not the world, and originally became popular because of its unique interactive discourse facilities. E-mail listservs and Usenet newsgroups have been cited as innovative examples, with many afficionados also citing Web users, especially those of educational sites, as forming another sort of ‘virtual’ community (Chaplin, 1996).

My definition of community importantly includes interacting with people, and it is here that the Web has major limitations. Apart from Web chat, and hypertext versions of newsgroups, the vast majority of websites are not set up for interaction. Their sole purpose is the one-way dissemination of information -- personal, advertising, educational or otherwise. Users of these websites are not expected to talk to other users. They are expected to browse, to assimilate information, not to ask questions. Thus most business websites are not much more than glitzy shopfronts constituting more than 80% of the total number of sites on the Web (NetNames, 1998).

 

Sclove and Scheur (1994) in examining the freeway metaphor for the Information Superhighway warn us that the metaphor may in fact be too close to the real thing. They blame the construction of the asphalt highway system of the US for both the destruction of poor neighbourhoods, and their marginalisation into ghettoes. Sclove and Scheur argue that highway noise and pollution forced children from the street pavements, and families off the front porch. With employment in small towns becoming scarce, communities lost their breadwinners who were forced to find work in the big cities. Alienating shopping malls were only made possible by the freeway system. The community spaces of the general store, the soda fountain, the Main Street sidewalk and the Town Square vanished with the advent of the freeway. Undoubtedly the Internet has enabled the creation of new communities, but what about the loss of the old communities? Does anyone worry that when we are creating community with our associates across the other side of the world, we are ignoring our neighbours, our familes and our friends? What are the side effects of Internet commerce if we no longer venture outside our homes and meet people?

 

There seems to be some evidence of mass pre-occupation with Internet instant messaging, which is not the formation of Internet communities, but the exact opposite - constant distraction by online acquaintances, so that study and work becomes stop-start, haphazard and disjointed. If the number of users of the online messaging systems is staggering, the number of messages beggars the imagination. The majority of my students and all of my adolescent-aged children log on to MSN Messenger or ICQ before they even open their Web browsers. The online conversations are sometimes interesting, but inevitably trivial and boring, and most definitely use up valuable time online. It is almost a pre-requisite that today’s Internet youth must divide their time between socially-oriented activities, such as chat and e-mail, and real study or work. For most young people, the Internet has become a multi-tasking classroom/playground, replete with music, video and instant friendships.

 

The language of the Internet

 

The Internet has in many ways permeated our real lives. These days, we cannot view an advertisement in the media without some mention of a website, or email address. A few years ago the catch phrase was ‘Virtual Reality’, then the media seized upon ‘The Information Superhighway’, these days it is ‘cyberspace’ and the ‘Internet’, which have become vogue expressions. Unfortunately these terms and the accompanying jargon, which is needed to support these concepts read like secret codes for all but the most technical people. Try reading the manuals (if they exist) of your local Internet Service Provider. Or attempt to make sense of the saleperson’s explanations when you ask for details about setting up a Web page for commercial purposes. The jargon of the Internet both perplexes and confuses novice computer users since there are often no other terms available to translate highly technical words. The Internet has also developed its own specialised language or slang, which has led to hundreds of Internet glossary pages being written. Since most communication is achieved through keyboard typing, a number of shortcuts have evolved to speed up the process1. If you use the interactive parts of the Internet such as the Usenet or Internet Relay Chat, newcomers may in fact be overwhelmed by the acronyms and jargon they encounter.

 

Several commentators have noted the oral nature of much of the Internet (Ong, 1985; Langham, 1994; Vitanza, 1997). The fast turnaround of Internet interaction contributes to the informality characteristic of spoken language. Many users of Internet email, Usenet newsgroups and real-time chat systems tend to rely on short sentences, keyboard emphasis, ‘emoticons’ and abbreviated grammatical constructions because of the difficulty in reading complex arguments on a screen.

 

Figure 3 below provides an example of a Usenet article, which illustrates these linguistic features. The Usenet is an interactive sub-system of the Internet consisting of thousands of computer conferences called newsgroups and categorised by the prefix to the newsgroup name. It is common to find abbreviations such as ‘Alt’ which stands for ‘alternate’, ‘comp’ for ‘computer’, ‘rec’ for ‘recreation’, ‘soc’ for ‘social’ and so on. The language of the Usenet is very much tied to text-based written communication and the range of possible keyboard non-verbal communication. In Figure 3 we have a short advertisement from the newsgroup, alt.business.careeer-opportunities. Note the intitial bio with impressive sales figures, use of capitals for emphasis, colloquialisms such as ‘jam-packed’ and ‘grow’, personal asides such as ‘This guy really knows what he's talking about!’, the use of exclamation marks, and the final emoticon.

 

This guy really knows what he's talking about! :-)

Chat users also abbreviate their prose so much that it resembles typed speech (see Figure 4 below). The immediacy of computer chatting creates the need for even greater brevity and succinctness which in turn leads to very short sentences, acronyms and often a distorted perception of tone and feeling in heated discussions. On IRC, users may join one of thousands of channels, or a user may choose to simply chat one on one without being in a channel. Channels range from professional discussions to the most banal topics imaginable. Figure 4 displays a social channel discussion. Note the short declarative sentences, successive brief statements by Jay^ and DJ_Scott, abbreviations, and lack of punctuation. Typically, users are involved in more than one conversation in the channel, and often in more than one channel, so that successive statements from the same person will not be coherent to the casual observer. IRC is probably the only medium, which can be both public and private simultaneously.

 

Culture and miscommunication

 

Most professionals would agree that the Internet has enabled us to communicate more effectively with our friends and colleagues, both locally and overseas. The ease, the speed and the convenience of e-mail, bulletin boards, chat systems and instant messaging have revolutionised our professional practice. But how does online communication affect intercultural communication? I believe that our Western, informal and direct use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) technologies conflicts with the way other cultures use these technologies and interpret our messages. When we start to apply our own cultural values to the Internet, many of the communication problems related to culture become glaringly obvious.

 

For many anthropologists and sociologists, a person’s worldview is an important precursor to their communication expectations. The American or Australian worldview wishes for a fast decision or negotiation and emphasises expediency as being necessary in order to keep up with political, social and technological change. Because work happens in the immediate present, the organisation needs to move on to the next project. Thus, when we use e-mail we prefer fast turnarounds and equally quick decisions. This expectation may be totally at odds with multicultural partners, who may feel pressured to make premature decisions due to the demands of the technology, or who may simply defer answering our demanding e-mails.

 

On the Internet, our true identities are most often hidden from sight, unless we choose to reveal who we really are. Celebrities, politicians, CEO’s, and professionals all have e-mail addresses, which are meant to disguise their real identities. Bulletin board logins and chat nicknames are usually not easily recognisable. However, in many cultures, especially most parts of Asia, knowing the identity of the other person is imperative to understanding how to act towards that person. The status of that person, their role in the organisation, their decision-making power, and their personality are all, to some extent, important considerations, which are often totally absent in mediated communication.

 

In the 80’s, the anthropologist, Edward T. Hall (1983) typified the world’s cultures by dividing them into two categories: high context and low context. If Hall’s theories are also applicable to online communication, this may explain why CMC technologies are so problematic for some cultures. Low-context cultures such as Anglo-Saxon America, Britain and Australia do not usually use social contexts as a way of determining the most appropriate way of replying to messages. But, in high-context cultures such as Japan, Russia and Latin America, the context conveys as much information (or even more) than the literal meaning of the message being discussed.

 

When we receive an e-mail message, participate on a listserv, or peruse a bulletin board forum we are not usually looking for context. The identities of other participants are almost unimportant, compared to their words - argumentation, ideas and prose style are more important than who they are. This is exactly the opposite situation to a member of a high-context culture, whose whole upbringing requires a clear, unambiguous social structure in order for any communication to occur. Without the context, the high-context person is lost for words.

 

Using CMC, we create a persona via the keyboard, with eventual problems occurring when there is a considerable mismatch between our screen identity and our real selves. Synchronous chat systems are especially prone to this kind of distortion and exaggeration because we are severely limited in the kinds of non-verbal emotion we can portray. Attempts at linguistic subtlety such as sarcasm or irony may simply be viewed as criticism. Here is a transcript of a real-life conversation on the instant messaging system, ICQ:

 

Here, an ordinary question was interpreted by a Japanese ex-patriot to be inappropriate for the relationship. Yoko’s description of the mistake was to call the simple question, “rude”. Bruce’s surprise was deafening since he cannot escape the accusation, and without the availability of non-verbal communication, any explanation would be brutally long-winded and self-defeating. Once the accusation was made on the chat system, the fledgling relationship was unable to be rescued.

 

Our use of the English language has problems for other cultures. Linguists agree that language serves least two functions, an informative function and a social function (Scollon and Scollon, 2001). What happens when we use CMC with a non-native colleague who is attuned to the social functions of the language, not only the information provided? Westerners do not normally ask about family and health in business meetings, or via online communication. In our face-to-face meetings and in our online communication, we tend to get to the point very quickly, express our individual viewpoints, and expect a reply that affirms or perhaps contradicts our conclusions. We do not expect our local colleagues to talk about the weather, their health or their fathers’ or mothers’ well-being. Could it be the case that online, we are tacitly seen as rude and uncaring lot, devoid of humanity and only worried about individual gain, by many of our multicultural partners?

 

Democracy or anti-democracy

 

For most of its life, the Internet has been seen as the last remaining bastion of freedom and democracy in our society. Given the large student population on the Internet, its reputation as being an open, hospitable and democratic environment has been a natural extension of its users’ ideology and politics. The main criticism of the early Internet was that it was difficult to learn the arcane Unix commands, and that access was for the privileged few, namely engineering and computer science students. The question for the Internet of the future is perhaps not whether or not this unique medium can maintain its vainglorious reputation, but whether it was ever a free and democratic environment in the first instance.

 

The experienced Internet user is typically young (under 30 years old, according to Survey.Net, 2003), well-educated and highly intolerant towards newer users, who are often called ‘newbies’. My knowledge of adept users is that they are usually highly opinionated about technical issues, impatient towards others less skilled than themselves, and extreme in their attitudes about technology. Characteristically, experienced Internet users do not typify cooperation and affability. On the other hand, novice users, in needing information and help, usually epitomise openness and friendship.

 

One of the major claims about the Internet is its democratising feature – it levels the playing field, so that ordinary people and experts alike have access to exactly the same information. However, the truth may in fact be the exact opposite. Having access to information is certainly useful, but not the only requirement of a democratic society. For example, allowing everyone access to the latest political campaign policies of competing political parties does not ensure that people will 1. locate that information, 2. understand that information, or 3. act upon the information. In the USA, the number of online accesses to election news has in fact decreased from 22% of all users in 1996, to 15% in 1998 (Mikheyev, 1999). While this may be an aberration related to the youthful ages of new users, the real concern is the 85% of online users, who do not democratically access the Internet for political reasons.

Whilst the Clinton administration’s so-called Communications Decency Act of February, 1996 created an anti-censorship movement leading to an eventual legislative reversal, the Internet itself is not the open and liberated place it proclaims itself to be. The Usenet, email, and chat systems all have their policies, norms and value systems. To transgress a tacit rule of the Internet will bring disfavour, and contempt. And if one continually flaunts the rules of cyberspace one will be censored.

 

A good example is the now infamous mass Usenet post of the Greencard lawyers, Canter and Siegel. The lawyers had a programmer quite legally ‘spam’ their ordinary advertisement to thousands of newsgroups. Millions of people received the same message, resulting in anger and retaliation on the part of the Net community. The extent of their activities was recognised so within minutes ‘flames’ began pouring into the lawyers’ mailbox, so many that their host system crashed repeatedly. In Time magazine (July 25, 1994) the lawyers reported they made an extra $100,000 in new business. And despite the ill feelings, Canter and Siegel were unmoved and unrepentant over their actions. A later interview in the New York Times signaled that they would repeat the whole exercise, so the harassment swelled anew. The lawyers’ fax machine became tied up with dozens of blank pages; hundreds of bogus customers signed onto their books; and a Norwegian programmer created a piece of software which looked specifically at Canter and Siegel posts, and deleted them before they spread.

 

Unsolicited electronic mail is the equivalent of ordinary junk mail, but there is one main difference, each piece of junk email costs the recipient a few fractions of a cent. However, apart from the cost burden, the Internet community detests unsolicited email so much that even public service announcements can result in extreme anger and retaliation from supposedly wounded recipients. Service providers, frightened of being black-banned by a sympathetic fraternity of users, also tend to respond badly to individuals who break this rule.

 

A few years ago, an Australian company announced that it was offering a free copy of a historically significant document to any visitor to its website. The company spammed 50,000 Australian email addresses in order to inform the public of the significance of the gift. The response from the recipients varied from irritation and anger to praise and thanks. But it was the company’s ISP that provides a salutory lesson in Internet democracy. Because the Service Provider also received a few angry email messages, they immediately blanked out the supposedly offensive website, spuriously claiming that the company had broken their policies. The company website was only reinstated when legal action was threatened against the ISP for breach of contract.

 

Epistemological considerations

 

The development of the computer is regarded as one of the major technological achievements of the twentieth century. Our shiny monitors and computers promise us perfection in the way in which words can now be processed, in the way that numbers can now be manipulated, and significantly in the way that information can now be stored and retrieved. Sherry Turkle (1995) in her book, Life on the Screen talks about the computer’s ‘holding power’, its mystique as a machine that is right, and anything found on a computer as being true. The Web extends this mythology (and it is a myth) to all the computer’s hosts on the Web. A belief now exists that useful information about any topic can be easily found, and once found this information’s reliability is unlikely to be questioned.

 

We tend to regard information found on the Web through one of the search engines as a godsend -- as a way of saving time and energy in dark musty libraries. As such there is a tendency to regard this knowledge as free and therefore able to be copied and used without the usual restrictions of intellectual property and copyright protection. But this is not the case. Moreover the information we find is usually neatly and tidily packaged into small easily assimilated units called home pages. There are few books on the Web, few long academic treatises, but lots of short, self-opinionated magazine-style snippets which are fast becoming the norm for our students. Are we guilty of fostering a generation of young researchers who are accustomed to Sesame Street-style information grabs by erroneously placing our confidence in the Web?

 

Paradoxically, belief in the power of the Web also leads scholars to devalue the information acquired therein since this knowledge is intrinsically public knowledge. Jones (1994) in his essay entitled ‘The Ethics of Cyberspace’ suggests that all the knowledge found on the Internet is in fact public knowledge. Academics pride themselves on their research skills. Scholars specialise in a particular field of knowledge in which they do research and compile precious bibliographies. Scholars are seen as experts in a particular field and are hired as professionals to teach, consult and do further research in these highly specialist areas. But what if an expert’s knowledge was available to anyone and everyone? What if someone could do a search on the Web and find out the same things which have taken specialists years to acquire? Would they still be hired? Would a specialist’s knowledge be worth anything at all? What is valuable about our experience and about our best students’ work is the fact that the knowledge acquired is rare -- it is painstakingly difficult to find.

 

The Web changes our perceptions of the value of information by placing online the fruits of many experts’ collective labours. It is said to supposedly level the playing field in terms of access to this specialist knowledge, since we can locate all manner of esoterica. The Clinton administration has stated that electronic access to information enhances the country’s democratic processes since all Americans can search for and find all the pertinent information relevant to an issue or problem. This claim not only totally ignores those citizens who cannot afford a PC, a modem and an Internet account, or who do not have the skills to use such technical tools, but it also presupposes that the information found on any government’s websites is fair, unbiased and includes a range of policy opinions. This is simply not true. As stated earlier, Web sites provide a particular point of view which may be rhetorical at best, but also polemical in extreme cases.

 

Conclusion - technology redux

 

Some commentators have complained that the educational Web is growing too fast (Duin & Archee, 1997) or in the wrong direction of adult-oriented material (Archee, 1997). Whilst Web pages change on a daily basis they can also disappear overnight without warning. How can we have faith in a reference if it no longer exists? Books, once printed, may be referenced and checked time and time again. But Web pages by their very nature are ephemeral and changeable. There are very few Internet documents and programs which still exist in their original form.

 

The Web’s utilisation of hypertext means that a single mouse click can bring up completely different sets of information. Similarly the content of the Web may be digested by scanning and browsing as opposed to close reading and reflection – printing tends to be eschewed in favour of online assimilation. As it has been earlier stated, the very nature of hypertext mitigates against perusal in any other form except online format. Given present costs of Internet usage and printing, the normal process of reading and questioning may be reduced to mere minutes. If educators persist in placing all their course material online, then the vast majority of students will digest the same material in situ. The result is an imperfect reading, or at best a superficial perusal of significant documents by our students.

 

Ciolek (1996, 1998) asks if the Web, in fact, has much to interest academics or educators. He provocatively suggests that the future may hold in store a ‘multimedia mediocrity’ since the ratio of useful information is diminishing in favour of advertising and commerce. Ciolek also implies that the Web is too easy to access and thus also too difficult to control access to. Anyone from the youngest schoolchild to the most senior citizen can access the Web today. And whilst there are numerous benefits for all users by allowing ordinary people access to the largest database in the world, there are also dangers of which we, as responsible parents and educators need to be aware. The spectre of pornography raises its ugly head, not only as a danger, but also as a distraction. Unless you use a special Web server or search engine, you cannot do any search on the Web without coming across a hyperlink to an ‘adult site’. The most innocuous keywords will yield pornographic hits. You do not have to follow up these hyperlinks, but they still exist alongside your research results. The distraction of these hits can lead to frustration and dissatisfaction with the whole system.

 

In his book, Travels in Hyperreality (which predates the Web) Umberto Eco (1986) suggests that Americans (and Australians) adore creating hyperreal simulacra of real things that seem more vibrant than the originals. Whilst the Web is not American, the major Web browsers, Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape are examples of this tendency. Schoolchildren, the unemployed and students are able to publish online, and compete with multinational companies for user attention. Depending on their level of expertise there can be little difference between such personal home pages and those of huge corporations. The same computer screen displays both. The people as represented on the Web are hyperreal and so are the companies. There seems to be little distinction between the personal/private and the corporate/public. Rheingold (1994, p. 281) states succinctly:

 

This is also true for the Websites of other cultures, which are all beginning to look rather similar to the Microsoft or IBM home page. Will the typical Internet user by the year 2004 be any more sophisticated about their information sources? I would like to think that we shall impart caution alongside our enthusiasm for the digital. As educators and scholars we need to be aware of the problems inherent in the latest technology. And before we embrace the Web too wholeheartedly we need to determine why we are using it in the first place. What real benefits does it offer, and what are the costs involved for our students? Strange as it may seem, some experienced Web users are already complaining of boredom with much that they see on the Web. Are we turning our students into archetypal couch potatoes clicking mindlessly on 3 billion Web channels only to find that there is nothing worth viewing? <click>

 

 

References

 

Archee, R. (1997). The Australian Internet 1997 - Behaviour and Attitudes. Published on the World Wide Web for the EU’s European Information Technology Conference 1997, Brussels, Belgium, Nov 24-26, 1997. WWW document available at: http://stc.uws.edu.au/~rarchee/oznet97.html.

 

Bush, V. (1945). As We May Think, Atlantic Monthly, 1945. WWW document available at: http://www.w3.org/Out-Of-Date/History/1945/vbush/.

 

Carmel, E. (1992). Browsing in Hypertext: A Cognitive Study, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, & Cybernetics, 22:5, 865-884.

 

Chaplin, D.A. (1996). Creating Web Communities, Computer Mediated Communication Magazine, May 1, 1996. WWW document available at: http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1996/may/chaplin.html.

 

Ciolek, M. (1996). Today’s WWW-tomorrow’s MMM? The specter of multi-media mediocrity, Computer, 29:1, January, 1996. WWW document available at: http://www.ciolek.com/PAPERS/MMM.html.

Ciolek, M. (1998). Internet: Opportunities and Disadvantages to Scholarly Work. WWW document available at: http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/QltyPages/NetStudies.html.

 

Duin, A.H. and Archee, R. (1997). ‘Distance Education via the World Wide Web: Information, Engagement and Community’. In Stuart Selber (ed). Computers and Technical Communication: Pedagogical and Programmatic Perspectives, Ablex: Greenwich, Connecticut.

 

 

Eco, U. (1986). Travels in Hyperreality, Pan, London.

 

Hall, E.T. (1983). The Dance of Life, New York, NY: Anchor Books.

 

Internet Software Consortium (2003). Internet Domain Survey. http://www.isc.org/ds/.

 

Jones, R.A. (1994). The Ethics of Research in Cyberspace, Internet Research, 4:3, 1994 30-35. WWW document available at: http://www.mcb.co.uk/services/articles/liblink/intr/ethics.html

 

Landow, G.P. (1993). Hypertext in Hypertext - An Expanded Electronic Edition of Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore.

 

Langham, D. (1994). The Common Place MOO: Orality and Literacy in Virtual Reality in Computer-Mediated Communication Magazine 1:3, Jul, 1994. WWW document available at:http://www.december.com/cmc/mag/1994/jul/moo.html.

 

Mikheyev, A. (1999). How Modern Information Technologies Influence Political Process. WWW document available at http://www.iatp.nnov.ru/miheev/haley1.html.

 

Nelson, T.H. (1992). Literary Machines, Mindful Press, Sausalito.

 

NetNames Ltd (1998). WWW document available at: http://www.domainstats.com/internic.cfm.

 

NUA (2002). http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online/index.html

 

Ong, W. (1985). Orality And Literacy: The Technologizing Of The Word, Routledge, NY.

 

Rheingold, H. (1994). The Virtual Community: Surfing the Internet, Minerva: London. Electronic version available at : http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/10.html

 

Rouet, J., Levonen, J.L., Dillon, A. and Spiro, R.J. eds. (1996). Hypertext and Cognition, Lawrence Erlbaum, NY.

 

Scollon, Ron, and Suzanne Wong Scollon (2001). Intercultural Communication: A discourse approach, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.

 

Sclove, Richard E., and Jeffrey Scheuer. ‘The Ghost in the Modem: For Architects of the Info-Highway, Some Lessons From the Concrete Interstate,’ Sunday Outlook Section, The Washington Post, 29 May 1994, p. C3. Reprinted in The Fifth Conference on Computers, Freedom and Privacy: C FP ‘95 Program (Stanford, CA: Stanford Law and Technology Policy Center, 1995)., pp. 51-58.

 

Turkle, S. (1995). Life on the Screen, Simon and Shuster, NY.

 

Wild, M., and Henderson, L. (1997). Contextualizing learning in the World Wide Web: accounting for the impact of culture, Education and Information Technologies, 2:3, 179.

 

www.survey.net (2003). Survey results for Sep 29, 2003. WWW document available at: http://www.survey.net/content0r.html.

 

Vitanza, V. (1997). Writing for the World Wide Web, Allyn and Bacon, NY.

 

Footnotes:

[i] See the previous edition of D. Gibbs & K. Krause (eds) Cyberlines for my argument as to why use of “Internet” in place of “the Internet” is nonsensical.

[ii] Acording to some sources, one in every three pictures shown on Web browsers is related to an adult site (Archee, 1997).

[iii] To be fair, the relatively new, The Atlantic Monthly website rendition of the Bush article is very faithful to the original text version see http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/computer/bushf.htm