Thursday, December 2, 2010
Tuesday, November 23, 2010
Week 13: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week
Post by Sunday at midnight.
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WWW software for HTML (that he gave away for free, that made the web user-friendly for the first time in 1991 to the present) attacks the websites that create 'silos' on data and refuse to share them, or claim to own them and thus 'lock in' people's lives to particular monopolies. Appropriate to our weeks where we discuss the benefits of the web to Castells' 'mass self-communication' and the dangers of those corporations and governments that seek to use it as a surveillance tool and to limit our web experience. I mentioned in class on Monday how News Corporation pairing with Apple is creating yet another version of this 'demoted' web experience. The article is a list of 'web-damaging' demotions right now that limit the free flow of information and equal access to all. He 'advertises' some websites that maintain his 'seal of approval' for social networking and other open platform services that avoid proprietary websites.
--------------------------------
Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future
Zuckerberg rains on 20th birthday bash
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Music and Media, 20th November 2010 07:50 GMT
Tim Berners-Lee has dubbed Facebook a threat to the universality of the world wide web.
Next month marks the twentieth anniversary of the first webpage – served up by Berners-Lee at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva – and in the December issue of Scientific American, he celebrates the uniquely democratic nature of his creation, before warning against the forces that could eventually bring it down. "Several threats to the Web’s universality have arisen recently," he says.
He briefly warns of cable giants who may prevent the free flow of content across the net. "Cable television companies that sell internet connectivity are considering whether to limit their Internet users to downloading only the company’s mix of entertainment," he says. And then he sticks the boot into social networking sites, including Mark Zuckerberg's net behemoth. "Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and others typically provide value by capturing information as you enter it: your birthday, your e-mail address, your likes, and links indicating who is friends with whom and who is in which photograph," Berners-Lee writes.
"The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service--but only within their sites. Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the Web, but your data are not. You can access a Web page about a list of people you have created in one site, but you cannot send that list, or items from it, to another site."
This echoes the complaint Google made earlier this month as it banned Facebook from tapping Gmail's Contacts API. Mountain Views won't allow netizens to export email addresses to Facebook unless it reciprocates. But Berners-Lee goes further.
"The isolation occurs because each piece of information does not have a URI," Berners-Lee continues, referring to universal resource identifier. "Connections among data exist only within a site. So the more you enter, the more you become locked in. Your social-networking site becomes a central platform — a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it. The more this kind of architecture gains widespread use, the more the Web becomes fragmented, and the less we enjoy a single, universal information space.
"A related danger is that one social-networking site—or one search engine or one browser—gets so big that it becomes a monopoly, which tends to limit innovation." The threat here is not Friendster. It's Facebook, which now boasts over 500 million users worldwide.
Berners-Lee urges the adoption of more democratic services, including Facebook alternatives GnuSocial and Diaspora as well as the Status.net project, which gave rise to a decentralized incarnation of Twitter. "As has been the case since the Web began," he says, "continued grassroots innovation may be the best check and balance against any one company or government that tries to undermine universality."
Entitled "Love Live the Web," the Scientific American piece goes to promote the use of, yes, open standards. If you don't use open standards, Berners-Lee says, you create "closed worlds." Like Apple's iTunes. "Apple’s iTunes system," he says, "identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of 'http:' the addresses begin with 'itunes:,' which is proprietary. You can access an 'itunes:' link only using Apple’s proprietary iTunes program.
"You can’t make a link to any information in the iTunes world—a song or information about a band. You can’t send that link to someone else to see. You are no longer on the Web. The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped in a single store, rather than being on the open marketplace. For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up."
He also bemoans the proliferation of net-connected apps on the Apple iPhone and other smartphones. "The tendency for magazines, for example, to produce smartphone 'apps' rather than Web apps is disturbing, because that material is off the Web. You can’t bookmark it or e-mail a link to a page within it. You can’t tweet it. It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers, and the techniques for doing so are getting better all the time."
Dredging up Comcast's BitTorrent busting, he then warns against threats to so-called net neutrality. This includes Google for the FCC filing it laid down this summer in tandem with US telco giant Verizon. "Unfortunately, in August, Google and Verizon for some reason suggested that net neutrality should not apply to mobile phone–based connections," he says.
"Many people in rural areas from Utah to Uganda have access to the Internet only via mobile phones; exempting wireless from net neutrality would leave these users open to discrimination of service. It is also bizarre to imagine that my fundamental right to access the information source of my choice should apply when I am on my WiFi-connected computer at home but not when I use my cell phone."
Eric Schmidt now says that Google's proposal omitted wireless simply because this makes it easier to reach a compromise with the likes of Verizon on wireless lines. Wireless net neutrality, he indicates, will come later. But Berners-Lee is right to be, shall we say, skeptical.
He also warns against Phorm-style snooping and governments that restrict free speech on the web. But ultimately, he's optimistic. "Now is an exciting time," he says. "Web developers, companies, governments and citizens should work together openly and cooperatively, as we have done thus far, to preserve the Web’s fundamental principles, as well as those of the Internet, ensuring that the technological protocols and social conventions we set up respect basic human values. The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine."
---
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/20/berners_lee_says_facebook_a_thret_to_web/
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Berners-Lee, the inventor of the WWW software for HTML (that he gave away for free, that made the web user-friendly for the first time in 1991 to the present) attacks the websites that create 'silos' on data and refuse to share them, or claim to own them and thus 'lock in' people's lives to particular monopolies. Appropriate to our weeks where we discuss the benefits of the web to Castells' 'mass self-communication' and the dangers of those corporations and governments that seek to use it as a surveillance tool and to limit our web experience. I mentioned in class on Monday how News Corporation pairing with Apple is creating yet another version of this 'demoted' web experience. The article is a list of 'web-damaging' demotions right now that limit the free flow of information and equal access to all. He 'advertises' some websites that maintain his 'seal of approval' for social networking and other open platform services that avoid proprietary websites.
--------------------------------
Berners-Lee: Facebook 'threatens' web future
Zuckerberg rains on 20th birthday bash
By Cade Metz in San Francisco
Posted in Music and Media, 20th November 2010 07:50 GMT
Tim Berners-Lee has dubbed Facebook a threat to the universality of the world wide web.
Next month marks the twentieth anniversary of the first webpage – served up by Berners-Lee at the CERN particle physics lab in Geneva – and in the December issue of Scientific American, he celebrates the uniquely democratic nature of his creation, before warning against the forces that could eventually bring it down. "Several threats to the Web’s universality have arisen recently," he says.
He briefly warns of cable giants who may prevent the free flow of content across the net. "Cable television companies that sell internet connectivity are considering whether to limit their Internet users to downloading only the company’s mix of entertainment," he says. And then he sticks the boot into social networking sites, including Mark Zuckerberg's net behemoth. "Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster and others typically provide value by capturing information as you enter it: your birthday, your e-mail address, your likes, and links indicating who is friends with whom and who is in which photograph," Berners-Lee writes.
"The sites assemble these bits of data into brilliant databases and reuse the information to provide value-added service--but only within their sites. Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site. Each site is a silo, walled off from the others. Yes, your site’s pages are on the Web, but your data are not. You can access a Web page about a list of people you have created in one site, but you cannot send that list, or items from it, to another site."
This echoes the complaint Google made earlier this month as it banned Facebook from tapping Gmail's Contacts API. Mountain Views won't allow netizens to export email addresses to Facebook unless it reciprocates. But Berners-Lee goes further.
"The isolation occurs because each piece of information does not have a URI," Berners-Lee continues, referring to universal resource identifier. "Connections among data exist only within a site. So the more you enter, the more you become locked in. Your social-networking site becomes a central platform — a closed silo of content, and one that does not give you full control over your information in it. The more this kind of architecture gains widespread use, the more the Web becomes fragmented, and the less we enjoy a single, universal information space.
"A related danger is that one social-networking site—or one search engine or one browser—gets so big that it becomes a monopoly, which tends to limit innovation." The threat here is not Friendster. It's Facebook, which now boasts over 500 million users worldwide.
Berners-Lee urges the adoption of more democratic services, including Facebook alternatives GnuSocial and Diaspora as well as the Status.net project, which gave rise to a decentralized incarnation of Twitter. "As has been the case since the Web began," he says, "continued grassroots innovation may be the best check and balance against any one company or government that tries to undermine universality."
Entitled "Love Live the Web," the Scientific American piece goes to promote the use of, yes, open standards. If you don't use open standards, Berners-Lee says, you create "closed worlds." Like Apple's iTunes. "Apple’s iTunes system," he says, "identifies songs and videos using URIs that are open. But instead of 'http:' the addresses begin with 'itunes:,' which is proprietary. You can access an 'itunes:' link only using Apple’s proprietary iTunes program.
"You can’t make a link to any information in the iTunes world—a song or information about a band. You can’t send that link to someone else to see. You are no longer on the Web. The iTunes world is centralized and walled off. You are trapped in a single store, rather than being on the open marketplace. For all the store’s wonderful features, its evolution is limited to what one company thinks up."
He also bemoans the proliferation of net-connected apps on the Apple iPhone and other smartphones. "The tendency for magazines, for example, to produce smartphone 'apps' rather than Web apps is disturbing, because that material is off the Web. You can’t bookmark it or e-mail a link to a page within it. You can’t tweet it. It is better to build a Web app that will also run on smartphone browsers, and the techniques for doing so are getting better all the time."
Dredging up Comcast's BitTorrent busting, he then warns against threats to so-called net neutrality. This includes Google for the FCC filing it laid down this summer in tandem with US telco giant Verizon. "Unfortunately, in August, Google and Verizon for some reason suggested that net neutrality should not apply to mobile phone–based connections," he says.
"Many people in rural areas from Utah to Uganda have access to the Internet only via mobile phones; exempting wireless from net neutrality would leave these users open to discrimination of service. It is also bizarre to imagine that my fundamental right to access the information source of my choice should apply when I am on my WiFi-connected computer at home but not when I use my cell phone."
Eric Schmidt now says that Google's proposal omitted wireless simply because this makes it easier to reach a compromise with the likes of Verizon on wireless lines. Wireless net neutrality, he indicates, will come later. But Berners-Lee is right to be, shall we say, skeptical.
He also warns against Phorm-style snooping and governments that restrict free speech on the web. But ultimately, he's optimistic. "Now is an exciting time," he says. "Web developers, companies, governments and citizens should work together openly and cooperatively, as we have done thus far, to preserve the Web’s fundamental principles, as well as those of the Internet, ensuring that the technological protocols and social conventions we set up respect basic human values. The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine."
---
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/20/berners_lee_says_facebook_a_thret_to_web/
Friday, November 19, 2010
Tuesday, November 9, 2010
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Week 9: Post your Blog Entries as Comments to my Main Post Each Week
[on Wednesday, Oct. 27, I emailed you the digital readings for next week. If you didn't get them, email me for them. Read Turner; skim Katz]
Post by Sunday (10/31! next Sunday!) at midnight.
Here's some links related to how our network society is changing our social world:
0-21-2010 20:18
Location tracking App stirs dispute
http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/10/117_74987.html
Monitoring how Twitter users are feeling can predict the stock market three days in advance
By Niall Firth
20th October 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1322133/How-monitoring-Twitter-users-feeling-predict-stock-market-days-advance.html#ixzz13FPKIUJA
Facebook 'accidentally outing gay users' to outside firms through targeted ads
By Niall Firth
22nd October 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1322916/Facebook-accidentally-outing-gay-users-advertisers.html#ixzz13FPQQLLt
And another fascinating statistic:
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Internet Sector of British Economy Larger than Most Others
Who would have thought 20 years ago this would happen? These years are a very novel development, just as Castells argues.
---------------------------
Internet accounts for 7.2% of British economy: study
Oct 28 05:28 AM US/Eastern
The Internet contributed 100 billion pounds (155 billion dollars, 115 billion euros) to the British economy last year, about 7.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a report showed Thursday.
The sector is bigger than the construction, transport or utilities industries in Britain, according to the study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which was commissioned by the British arm of Internet giant Google.
The research also predicted that by 2015, the British 'Internet economy' is likely to grow to 10 percent of GDP, eclipsing the financial sector.
"The Internet is pervasive in the UK economy today, more so than in most advanced countries," said Paul Zwillenberg, a partner with BCG in London.
"Whether they are driving international expansion, improving their interactions with customers or the efficiency of their supply chains, UK companies are increasingly embracing the Internet's potential."
Much of the growth is driven by consumption, the majority of it online spending but also what consumers spend on getting access to the Internet, while the rest comes from government spending, private investment and exports.
The study found that about 62 percent of adults, or 31 million people, have bought goods or services online so far this year and collectively they spent about 50 billion pounds last year on goods or travel.
More than 19 million out of a total of 26 million British households have an Internet connection and broadband access has doubled since 2005.
Overall, Britain was ranked sixth among major economies on the BCG "e-intensity index" which judges the reach and depth of the Internet, after Denmark, South Korea, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands.
---
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.cc58070f3f3b3257db047a1b6231a166.421&show_article=1
If you want to look at the report yourself, it is here:
http://www.connectedkingdom.co.uk/downloads/bcg-the-connected-kingdom-oct-10.pdf
[Particularly for South Korea's rankings]
Post by Sunday (10/31! next Sunday!) at midnight.
Here's some links related to how our network society is changing our social world:
0-21-2010 20:18
Location tracking App stirs dispute
http://koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2010/10/117_74987.html
Monitoring how Twitter users are feeling can predict the stock market three days in advance
By Niall Firth
20th October 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1322133/How-monitoring-Twitter-users-feeling-predict-stock-market-days-advance.html#ixzz13FPKIUJA
Facebook 'accidentally outing gay users' to outside firms through targeted ads
By Niall Firth
22nd October 2010
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1322916/Facebook-accidentally-outing-gay-users-advertisers.html#ixzz13FPQQLLt
And another fascinating statistic:
1. Mark Whitaker
2. Internet Sector of British Economy Larger than Most Others
Who would have thought 20 years ago this would happen? These years are a very novel development, just as Castells argues.
---------------------------
Internet accounts for 7.2% of British economy: study
Oct 28 05:28 AM US/Eastern
The Internet contributed 100 billion pounds (155 billion dollars, 115 billion euros) to the British economy last year, about 7.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), a report showed Thursday.
The sector is bigger than the construction, transport or utilities industries in Britain, according to the study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), which was commissioned by the British arm of Internet giant Google.
The research also predicted that by 2015, the British 'Internet economy' is likely to grow to 10 percent of GDP, eclipsing the financial sector.
"The Internet is pervasive in the UK economy today, more so than in most advanced countries," said Paul Zwillenberg, a partner with BCG in London.
"Whether they are driving international expansion, improving their interactions with customers or the efficiency of their supply chains, UK companies are increasingly embracing the Internet's potential."
Much of the growth is driven by consumption, the majority of it online spending but also what consumers spend on getting access to the Internet, while the rest comes from government spending, private investment and exports.
The study found that about 62 percent of adults, or 31 million people, have bought goods or services online so far this year and collectively they spent about 50 billion pounds last year on goods or travel.
More than 19 million out of a total of 26 million British households have an Internet connection and broadband access has doubled since 2005.
Overall, Britain was ranked sixth among major economies on the BCG "e-intensity index" which judges the reach and depth of the Internet, after Denmark, South Korea, Japan, Sweden and the Netherlands.
---
http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=CNG.cc58070f3f3b3257db047a1b6231a166.421&show_article=1
If you want to look at the report yourself, it is here:
http://www.connectedkingdom.co.uk/downloads/bcg-the-connected-kingdom-oct-10.pdf
[Particularly for South Korea's rankings]
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Week 8: No Blog This Week; Work on Mid-Term
I emailed the class the mid-term a few hours ago. If you didn't receive it, contact me via my preferred email at mwhitake @ ssc.wisc.edu.
As a treat, appropriately through the network society itself, see the person who has researched this topic more than anyone, Manuel Castells. Learn more about him at the following links:
Conversations with History: Manuel Castells (2001)
58:18 min
Text of the interview here:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html
As a treat, appropriately through the network society itself, see the person who has researched this topic more than anyone, Manuel Castells. Learn more about him at the following links:
Conversations with History: Manuel Castells (2001)
58:18 min
"(UCtelevision, February 15, 2008 [when it was uploaded, this was filmed in 2001) "On this edition of Conversations with History, UC Berkeley's Harry Kreisler welcomes social theorist Manuel Castells, Professor of Sociology and Professor of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley, to discuss identity and change in the network society. Series: "Conversations with History" [6/2003] [Humanities] [Show ID: 7234]"
Text of the interview here:
http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html
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