Heart of the Net 332
The Net has evolved, and radically. It's much too big and diverse for a single locus. It's also much too corporatized, and its new kinds of messaging systems increasingly too personalized and subterranean. Unless you're selling things via AOL or MSN, there's no longer any way even to reach a significant chunk of the Net universe, including the tech elites who still wield so much influence in cyberspace. The new media sites are all struggling; Wired has become a homogenized bulletin board for computer execs; and the most successful and heavily trafficked sites are about products, games or entertainment.
Since the Net has always been an almost organic, free-form entity -- nobody's in charge of it, or really decides how it will evolve and grow -- its epicenter floats all over. For a while, the heartbeat resided in the dream of new kinds of virtual and media communities -- the WELL, ECHO, Salon, Slate -- that popped up to connect people of common cultural or political interests. They were supposed to herald the movement of traditional media online. They were top-down, agenda-setting and, almost without exception, marginal or unsuccessful.
Enter AOL, then and now a Main Street for middle-class access. Its labyrinthine commercial sites, shameless peddling of goods, vast network of messaging boards and sex sites a form perfect metaphor for the evolution of the modern Internet -- people selling things like mad, and forming ever smaller, more specialized groups to talk to people much like themselves, with the same interests and ideals.
Of these developments, probably the early design era -- the Net's actual construction -- was its most idealistic. The early BBS's felt -- and were -- revolutionary, and few of the people first going online could help but feel they were participating in and witnessing the birth of a new kind of culture. Engineers and defense researchers like Postel, Licklider set out to build a free and open information network that would theoretically be open to and benefit everyone. Net architecture was certainly designed that way, and government, media and business paid little attention to the network, dismissing it as the handiwork of tech-heads and kids, irrelevant once the Cold War had passed.
The hacker period was the most revolutionary, and the open source phase one of the most political, especially when that movement rose to challenge the Microsofting of the desktop. The rise of the dot.coms might have been the most purely American era, in its speedy rise, greed and eventual collapse. Open source didn't stop the Microsofting of the Net, but it might have forced programmers to write better code, and greatly influenced the culture in other ways, creating a community of programmers committed to the idea of open access to information. And panicking corporate lobbyists into co-opting intellectual property legislation.
In between, enterprises like Amazon.com, which teased and tantalized investors and analysts with the retailing promise of networked computing, served as the heart of the Net, at least for a time, because they were so closely studied and monitored, and in some ways, highly innovative. For better or worse, Amazon has changed marketing in America for good.
Napster, which freed millions of music lovers from the hoary grip of the recording industry, symbolized the Net's challenge to hierarchical business and institutional structures -- until it showed the true power of corporatists. For years, the hackers believed nobody could stop them. After the Napster battles, it was clear that lobbyists and lawmakers, especially conjunction with wealthy corporatists, could. Briefly, Napster was the heart of the Net, and the Napster era -- now over -- one of it's most pivotal periods. Perhaps inevitably, this wasn't a fight the good guys ever really had a shot at winning, although they were slow to see it. While free music is still widely available online - free software types and music and movie traders are all over the place - the Net, it's now clear, will not remain a free frontier except in certain isolated and idiosyncratic corners.
The free software movement, in fact, was the apogee of the Net's most recent political period, the legacy to the hacker idea of liberating information, especially its sudden radical promise and challenge to proprietary institutions and information. For the hackers, the idea of an Open Net was their shining hour. Then the software turned communications inward, mostly permitting shoppers, chatters and people of like mind to talk to one another and shut out the clutter and the spam, including different points of view. At first, it was just religious fanatics and pious Boomers who embraced the idea of blocking and filtering. Then even hackers adopted it as a means of filtering out all that noise and an enormous volume of unwanted messiahs. The Net, designed to be the most open medium ever, became an increasingly closed nation of blockades, guardhouses and moderation and ratings systems. What the corporatists didn't sanitize, the hackers themselves chopped up.
An idea very close to the heart of the Net -- an open medium -- died, probably for good.
Where's the heart of the Net now?
The odd truth is that there probably isn't one.
The Net has become an economic and utilitarian rather than social, political or idealistic network. It has grown beyond almost anybody's earliest imaginings to become a thoroughly mainstream and very American communications medium., thoroughly corporatized and Disnified. Its grown too diffuse to have a center. Half of the nation is now online, says the U.S. Department of Commerce, nearly 90 percent of all kids.
AOL, a peculiar notion of the Net, is dominant -- with more than 25 million subscribers, it's probably the biggest single entity on the Net, at least in the U.S., and the largest host of utilitarian virtual communities. MSN is fast closing the gap. Who imagined just how prescient Steve Case really was, or how determined Bill Gates was? The middle-class wants to use the Net for pragmatic purposes -- shopping, entertainment, personal communications, and yes, sex. And they don't mind giving up privacy and freedom from corporate and government monitoring to do it.
This isn't meant to be a lament, not entirely. The Net was intended as an individualistic medium; it was inevitable that it would grow beyond a single focal point. Individualists still use it to chatter around the clock via mailing lists, blogs, vanity sites and IRC. But mostly, they appear to be speaking to ever smaller increments, like one another, rather to the larger world. The notion of the Net as a new kind of common ground is nearly over.
It isn't yet possible to know if this is a good or bad thing. The flowering of individual ideas is astounding; it's also a cacophony and something of a trap. Few of them escape their immediate surroundings. The fragmentation, hostility and narcissism are equally jarring. The Net may never recover from the waves of hostile adolescents and intellectual programming crackers, like the DoS vandals -- often bitter enemies of free speech -- who thundered online in the 90s, nor from the corporatists who shaped and co-opted telecommunications policy, copyright and intellectual property law. The Net is perennially interesting, and in many ways its story is just beginning to unfold, but in a far subtler way. This culture is being transformed by its own success.
can we please (Score:5, Insightful)
There's something else... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Medium of Communication (Score:3, Insightful)
I think this an important distinction compared to the phone system and so on.
Re:can we please (Score:2, Redundant)
Re:can we please (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:can we please (Score:3, Funny)
I think a better analogy might be weather.
"Clean up continues from hurricane Code Red, and lastnight's Slashdot Effect casued TrailerPark.com to go down.
Our forecast for today: Partly laggy with a small chance of packet loss, but we won't see any garbage accumulation.
The extended forecast shows a good chance of ping storms and mail floods this week as spring break ends and the kids head back to school, but by the end of the week things should clear up and Sun will shine (with it's latest oferring to the Net)."
Internet is the first many to many mass medium (Score:2)
The internet is many to many. The internet is many to many. Nopes. The magic doesn't go away if i repeat myself.
The magic is that the internet is quite hard to curb. There is no final omniscient editor that can filter out all unwanted messages. Why do you think the Chinese are trying so hard to censor the net? Why do you think the Taliban outlawed it?
The heart of the web? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The heart of the web? (Score:1)
p0rn.
The most common shared experience (no visuals, please) on the net.
Re:The heart of the web? (Score:4, Funny)
password: ********
heart#conf t
Enter configuration commands, one per line. End with CNTL/Z.
heart(config)#int internet0
heart(config-if)#ip address 64.28.67.150 255.255.255.255
heart(config-if)#^Z
heart#
No Center, multiple "Centers" ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No Center, multiple "Centers" ... (Score:2)
--
Evan
Re:No Center, multiple "Centers" ... (Score:2)
Re:No Center, multiple "Centers" ... (Score:5, Informative)
If you have to ask, you don't know. (Score:1)
so, wait a second... (Score:3, Interesting)
I hate to tell you this Jon, but "hackers in suburban bedrooms" are still just as prevalent as the Wired CEO of the Week, as are many, many dotcom companies that are actually making money.
The heart of the net is pure ones and zeroes. It has nothing to do with what aspects of it the Washington Post and Wired decide to pay attention to.
And lets not forget... (Score:3, Insightful)
Amid all those "outsiders of the week", ever since the net went public its biggest componants and financial backers have been the huge brick and mortar businesses. Suburban hackers and dot coms have at their best been a far second to IBM, 3M, Merrill Lynch, Wells Fargo, General Motors and all of the other multi-billion dollar companies that, through their own use of the net, covered the costs of building it so the eschewed hackers Jon so loves to think he's in touch with could write a few perl scripts.
If we're talking about ideas that are at the heart of the net and what most represents them, I'd have to say that for the last 8 or 10 years - since the net started to be really popular - that idea has been self-promotion, whether of a mega corporation or an idea or a person. My vote for the epicenter of this use of the net is jennicam.
Uh.... yeah. (Score:3, Informative)
What did I miss back in the mid-90's? I always thought Wired was more like Vogue for the technology set -- candy-coated fluff without much substance.
Anyone have an issue of the magazine this guy's talking about? :)
Re:Uh.... yeah. (Score:2, Flamebait)
Read the article, his assumption is that the entire internet is focused on whatever he's into or knows about at the moment. Completely and utterly self-centric.
*shrug* I just find no big suprise there.
Re:Uh.... yeah. (Score:2)
Re:Uh.... yeah. (Score:2)
Re:Uh.... yeah. (Score:2)
Re:Uh.... yeah. (Score:2)
Push technology. giggle.
--saint
Many Hearts (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Many Hearts (Score:2, Insightful)
Secondly, how in hell can there be a heart or soul of the internet if we can't even place where it begins or ends? Every time we come close to finding out that the net "wont go there" some silly jackass comes up with the idea of a "wired refrigerator" or something. For christs sake, what's next the blow-up doll with a 10/100 port so it'll be inflated and warmed up when I get home from work?
I remember when the internet was useful. You could find reference to information, once you found the reference you could read it (mostly in your own language) and you didn't have to stare at somebodys boobs or penis. Now I can lose weight, enlarge my penis, buck up my sex drive and gain the email addresses of millions of people all from the comfort of my office chair while doing a basic search for a programming tool.
Ladies and Gentlemen; we can all do without this crap. We can do without the junk on the internet and the people who write junk trying to personify and create the image of some ever changing entity that will either save or destroy us all depending on the yarn of the day. I know I personally don't give a crap about who's where, where it starts, where it ends. I don't care about java on the web, I don't want a "compelling experience" I'd just like to be able to read the friggin page in something other than russian or chinese?!?
Maybe I'm just overly sensitive, but the "net" is going to hell in a handbasket and soon there will only be two groups of people.... script kiddies and the marketting guys trying to sell them penis enlargers... > I want my old BBS back!
John Katz .. ! (Score:2, Interesting)
unless your talking about the World Wide Web
Both the U.K. and Europe in general have a great deal more of an 'information' presence.
of course
Kats, Kats, Who Let the Katz out ?
$$$ (Score:2)
Businesses want to woo customers, customers want to find free/cheap information and products. Drill down anything on the net and you arrive at money changing hands. Perhaps 1% of the net is true selfless volunteering for the greater good, but even that has its alterior motives (fame, pride, power, etc)
AOL is dominant only in the USA (Score:5, Insightful)
I live in Brazil, where AOL tried to enter the market but loses constantly to national ISPs. We here have many free ISPs and also some who charges money but offers a lot of content.
I believe the future of the Net will still be created by us: engineers, developers, programmers, system and network administrators. We are the Internet power. Our communities and associations with scientific and open spirits are the only way to mantain and establish open standards and open source softwares who can keep the Net and all its infrastructure alive. Without us the corporatists are nothing more than crying babies and the machines will simply stop!
Thank you all.
Jose Paulo Papo, from Brazil
Many hearts (Score:1)
Router (Score:2, Redundant)
More like all organisms than just one... (Score:1)
Apparently.... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Apparently.... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Apparently.... (Score:2)
>
>The heart of the net is as or pertaining to a melon?
One melon, only if you've got a fetish for it. But a nice pair of melons, sure.
It's not that important (Score:5, Insightful)
This fits just nicely into the category of stories that have been posted recently. First, His Royal Hypocrit RMS, a lot of bullshit about licenses and now this rant.
There is nothing like a golden era of the net. You just remember a period of relative peace, stability and comfort in which you accidentally stumbled on the internet and decided to spend some time with it. The internet is exciting NOW, and you are living in the present. Stop whining about the good old days.
Don't overemphasize. Check your reality.
The net evolves, matures and disappears (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a good thing, I think. The net is mapping to the world at large, not the exclusive domain of the cogniscenti, or the young or the hardcore geeks.
All of those communities can find places to thrive and even to interact, but they will do so in the company of other communities using the web in ways that suit them.
It's a wonderful grown-up kind of thing.
I've said it once, and I'm saying it now (Score:1, Flamebait)
really stupid (Score:2, Insightful)
The "Net" Isn't alive. The "Net" will never be alive. There is no heart of the net, as it's constantly changing by the input of countless of people. AOL is a provider, not the heart. BBS's were not even on the net, for as the name implies (Net) they would of have to of been interconnected, and that was not usually the case. Microsofting of the net?.. care to explain that? Sure they're a huge monopoly, but i don't see any part of the "Net" carved out for them. Only some servers running their code. Opensourcing is a reasonable outcome of interconnecting everyone together. I don't believe it's motives were purely political. There have been many collaberations going on before anyone mentioned anything about gpling their stuff.
All in all, the net is just a tool. Nothing more. To try and look at it in a different light is a waste of time.
Duh... It's Google! (Score:5, Insightful)
If there's a heart of the Net, it's Google.
Without Google, the Internet wouldn't be nearly as useful for me.
...a swing and a miss. (Score:5, Funny)
If you cut through the hype and punditry that Mr. Katz is so fond of, and you just look at traffic patterns (i.e., top search engine queries, Usenet posts, credit card transactions, etc.), a plausible case can be made that pornography is the "heart of the net".
Of course, even Jon acknowledges the fallacy of looking for a "heart" in a decentralized system with this sentence in his opening paragraph:
I submit that the "net" has no heart. Instead, it has millions of sweaty crotches.
k.
Re:...a swing and a miss. (Score:3, Interesting)
In the early days (or is it daze) of Usenet, I remember seeing stats that estimated 40% of Usernet sites/traffic was porn-related. It's probably not a whole lot different on today's Web (maybe a lower percentage). Point is, porn sites are typically on the vanguard of implementing 'richer' Web experiences (streaming video, interactive video/chat, etc.) and developing self-serve economic models (i.e. credit-card processing). This would not exist if a significant portion of the Web community did not want it. Right?
Porn is the tech driver of all media (Score:3, Interesting)
VHS won, because Sony wouldn't let porn on Betamax.
The first "multi-angle" DVD's were porn
as the poster above states porn dominates the internet.
porn dominates spam. and drives spamming technology (well, porn and credit card offers)
jpeg? send porn pictures to your friends faster
mpeg? send porn movies to your friends faster
porn drives all media
Re:Porn is the tech driver of all media (Score:2)
Even 300,000 years ago, when Ooog could just club some barely legal asian lolita barnyard cum guzzler over the head and get whatever he wanted from her. And he STILL needed to look at dirty pictures.
Frontline: American Porn (Score:2)
Anthropomorphization (Score:1)
Tell that to anyone on usenet, freely sending email to each other, IRC, anyone still using nTalk, there are loads of ways still to freely use the net openly.
Is it just me, or is this just anti-commercialism being beaten-up, and presented here because it goes with the reputation of this site? Katz, if I can give you any hint for your writing, try not to be so emotional and vague. It just looks evasive and manipulative, like you dont have a real point to get across and are writing for the sake of a post.
indeed, very true (Score:2)
The net became popular for all the wrong reasons. As jon puts it, AOL shameless peddles it's goods and sex. AOL also markets it's servies twoard WinME using adolecents.
The problem here is that the populace views the internet as a way to buy books, talk to friends, send e-mails, and of course... view porn. This is not what the internet was created for. The internet was created as a means of communication and sharing of information. In this aspect, it has succeeded. E-mail is quickly replacing faxes for information transmission; universities publish their studies on the net; news sites keep people informed of the latest happenings, etc, ad infinitium.
Despite it's successes, these resources are generally untapped. The average Joe InternetUser will never view any content outside of aol's proprietary network, and will most likey end up buying an encyclopedia with 3 clicks of the mouse.
The internet will not revolutionize shopping. People have been able to order goods through the mail (and later by phone) from establishments such as sears for over 75 years. Nothing revolutionary here. The net does, however provide a medium to provide more information about the products sold through these means.
Now, for a small rant on html. html should have died years ago. all html was intended for was as a means to format text and link documents to one another. innocent enough, this was what the original intent of the net was anyway... share information. Then e-commerce developed, perl was invented, etc. A more interactive medium should have taken over. Rebol is a great example of one such format, as it improves functionality tenfold, while keeping bandwidth at a minimum.
Take this as a lesson. Small groups of people working out of the goodness of their heart make the net a better place. Big corporations do not.
Well said jon... it's the sad truth
Re:indeed, very true (Score:2)
Telephones were invented to allow people to talk to each other over a distance. That includes phone sex. Photography was invented to record images--that includes sexual images. It's liek you're saying I can't use a hammer to drive stakes into the ground because it was only "invented for" driving nails into wood.
Odd Truth? (Score:3, Interesting)
The premise of this article is like asking where the heart of the library is - the periodicals? the dictionary? The Grapes of Wrath? Or how about the heart of the phone book? The yellow pages? The residential listings? 867-5309?
The not-so-odd truth is that the internet is a medium, not a message, and therefore its heart depends on the perspective of the user.
Oh yeah, and all that stuff about AOL - just because there are more of "them" doesn't make them more (or less) relevant. Remember, for every human being on earth there are thousands of pounds of insects!
The Golden Years? (Score:1)
This is not a terrible loss of Internet 'heart', but evolution. Things change.
The heart, epicenter, or focal point of the net is (Score:1, Insightful)
This article can be summed up in 3 sentances (Score:1, Flamebait)
Some people use it for sex.
I wish I could mod down JonKatz: Offtopic, Redundant and Stupid.
There are some things karma can't buy (Score:3, Funny)
- Stating that there are lots of different people on the Internet: 1 sentence.
- A Jon Katz essay saying the same thing: 1,000 words.
- Skipping yet another windbag editorial: priceless.
To make your point clearly there's concise writing, for everything else there's John Katz.Re:This article can be summed up in 3 sentances (Score:2)
Government (Score:1)
Not only is the government afraid of the anarchy of the Internet, but it is also realizing that it is a great way to keep tabs on what its citizens are doing, since more people spend more and more time online. Wrap it all up in a FUD package about hackers and terrorists and the deal is done.
But I don't think the question should be what the "heart" is today. I think the more interesting question is where it will be tomorrow. Is the monitoring going to become more widespread and controversial and ultimately handed off to private organizations? Perhaps a new government subsidised monopoly may emerge? Who knows?
idle chatter (Score:5, Insightful)
a) the "gurus of wired" never did anything but write pie-in-the-sky articles about the "new economy", as if infotech somehow freed the human race from manufacturing, farming, etc (a decidedly first-world conceit). if it wasn't that specious line of reasoning, then it was silly futurist articles about how technology was going to either make everyone into a superhuman cyborg or alternately turn the planet into a william gibson novel gone wrong. i give wired props for graphic design, but not much else. read it in an airport when you're bored, but if you want science news, read a science journal.
b) all of this eulogizing is a bit premature. the hacker period is not over. people are still hacking away, in fact, i'd bet that the number of people writing free software is larger now than in your idealized hacker period. it's just not big sexy news anymore. shut up and let people work.
c) before you get all misty-eyed (too late, i know), the "heart of the NET" was the u.s. military. i'm much happier with the heart of the net being porn sites than some kind of post-apocalyptic military communications network. that seems like progress to me. if some gung-ho motherfuckers get our world blown-up, the last thing i want them to be able to do is get together and talk about it afterwords.
Slashdot News Flash - Katz (Score:2, Troll)
Centre of the net? Bulls**t. The whole point of the net is that it IS decentralised and anarchistic. There has never really been a centre - but there are clusters. The groups and communities that he mentions as 'having had their time', etc all still exist and contribute to the experience that is otherwise known as the Internet, for better or (in AOL's case) for the worst
The Media's focus on what is hot might have changed, but so what? Media attention is the most fickle of creatures. I never understood the anti-Katz sentiment on Slash as I never bothered reading his articles, but now that I have I can't think why he is given such bandwidth!
Mod me down as a troll or flamebait, but I dare someone to point me to a link with a Katz article which actually has any useful or genuinely though provoking information about technology and culture!
Re:Slashdot News Flash - Katz: the ultimate troll (Score:2, Redundant)
Latte Drinkers (Score:2, Insightful)
make mine a double decaff lowfat nutrasweet (Score:2)
the heart (Score:3, Insightful)
The heart of the net is the beat..wait, no, that's rock'n'roll.
Why does everyone feel the need to summarize the net? You can't do it. It's just the big wonderful, horrible, informational, disgusting, collection of people, their thoughts, data, and lives.
Damn, I ask why everyone tries to summarize it, and then that's what I go and do. Shame on me. But then again, don't you Em Emalb me for everything anyway?
porn (Score:2, Funny)
Do you read the comments Katz ? (Score:2)
let's take a look at some parts of your delusional ideas:
"The Net has become an economic and utilitarian rather than social, political or idealistic network." : the internet _ALWAYS_ were an utilitarian network. The _MILITARY_ created and sponsored it in the 60's as a backup communication method to use in case of a nuclear war.
"Its grown too diffuse to have a center" : duh-uh. every large communication network becomes difuse whe it reaches global poportions. look the telephone system.
"For years, the hackers believed nobody could stop them. After the Napster battles, it was clear that lobbyists and lawmakers, especially conjunction with wealthy corporatists, could. Briefly, Napster was the heart of the Net, and the Napster era -- now over -- one of it's most pivotal periods. Perhaps inevitably, this wasn't a fight the good guys ever really had a shot at winning, although they were slow to see it. While free music is still widely available online - free software types and music and movie traders are all over the place - the Net, it's now clear, will not remain a free frontier except in certain isolated and idiosyncratic corners." : They still do, in the same way that Bin Laden still believes he can win over US of A. They have an ideal and they'll fight for it with all the weapons they have. doesn't matter if they're wright or wrong, hackers/terrorist/eco activists, etc are usually fanatics for what they're doing
the napster era IS NOT over. what you call "napster era" I call "peer-to-peer era". napster made the concept of p2p file sharing popular. if the software or the company is no-more there's others to fill the gap, and these ones goes titsup.com new ones will come. this is a fight _THE RECORDING INDUSTRY_ can't win.
I could go over and over, but I'm tired of this. Katz simply doesn't have a clue.
The Anatomy of the Internet (Score:3, Funny)
Heart = www.yahoo.com
Lungs = www.google.com
Kidneys = www.blogger.com
Pancreas = www.slashdot.org
Large Intestines = www.aol.com
Small Intestines = www.msn.com
Brain = still under development
hope this helps...
Re:The Anatomy of the Internet (Score:2, Funny)
Why I think Jon Katz articles are a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Now that I have your attention, I would like to point out a fact that a lot of people seem to miss:
Jon is good for slashdot. He makes you think. Yes, a lot of his articles are high on the fluff-meter, but he means well AND, it's his opinion. You are allowed to voice yours, he is allowed to voice his. Many people here despise him, and yet they keep on posting replies to his messages. That's exactly what is wanted here. He gives a view point, you say BS, jump on it, and add your $.02. Then, your opinion is considered, people post to that, and so on. It's called communication, and it rocks. If you really don't like his articles, go to your preferences page and stop seeing them.
One last thing...Jon is human like the rest of us, please keep those posts that call him stupid, an asshole, etc., to a minimum. How would you like it if a bunch of people got together and PUBLICLY posted how much of a moron you are?
Let the flames/trolls begin.
Re:Why I think Jon Katz articles are a Good Thing (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with much of what he writes, and don't care much for his writing style. Editorials without cred don't do it for me.
However, insult his opinions and his ideas; not the man. With all the modded up bitching in this article, the only really good comment was that sex is the heart of the net.
For the last time folks: edit your preferences.
At this point, I figure that people read the front page blurb and the author, then just blast away.
Of course, that's more reading than most of the editors do...
Re:Why I think Jon Katz articles are a Good Thing (Score:2)
When I click on a story on slashdot, I don't pay attention to which editor posted it. So when I click on a Katz story, I don't know it's a Katz story until I start reading. I usually know within 1 sentence. Usually that sentence starts off with a phrase like "Through history," "From the beginning," or something equally grand. By the second sentence, I feel like I'm reading something that the author feels is the most important thing in the world, but that I just don't see the point of.
Katz's writing has a kind of arrogance and self-importance where it seems like he thinks he's above the world and is a great scholar writing about Great Themes of the 20th (or 21st) Century. I have no idea if he really thinks that way. And I (and probably many others here) don't like to read stuff that is full of ego, especially when that stuff doesn't seem all that enlightened. I prefer people to just cut through the BS and get to it. With too many of Katz's stories, I get to the end and just think "what was the point of all that?" There's not enough coherence.
Guess it's official now, I'm a slashdot regular; I finally posted a comment about Katz...
Re:Why I think Jon Katz articles are a Good Thing (Score:2)
Then why is Katz turned off for the front page more than CmdrTaco? By your statement, you'd think it be both.
Re:Why I think Jon Katz articles are a Good Thing (Score:2)
I nominate samazdat (Score:2, Interesting)
It seems reasonable to assume that the cost and speed of data transfer in the early days of the internet served as a filter for determining how "valuable" the information was considered. As the price decreased, the holes in the sieve grew larger and the amount of less valuable information increased. Where we stand in that trend today I will leave to your judgement, but it is arguably a collapse toward a mean where the information typically has little value at all.
In the middle of all this is the 'net's equivalent of samazdat - the underground literature of the former Soviet Union - where somehow information that's valued is being transferred. Where the traditional media is increasingly concentrated in the editorial hands of a few, the internet remains one of the few ways for either rapid broadcast to many or discreet transmission to few.
Both corporate and government policies seem bent on increasing control over this information. The heart of the net will increasingly deal with the ability to freely disseminate information of value without prior official oversight.
unsure about the heart, but the ASS of the Net... (Score:2, Funny)
I know it's in vogue to bash JK, but I can't help it here...
What's the point of this? It's a long, rambling, generally pointless survey of the evolution of the Internet.
"The 'net has changed!!!" Oh my God... Stop the Presses! Hide the women and sysadmins! Jon has had a revelation of gargantuan proportions! Thank you for this brilliant insight Jon!
*sigh* I really don't feel like anything I read these days from JK is anything more than a stream of semi-consciousness that fails to do anything more than steal minutes away from my life, and prove once again that he is the quintessential Mr. MOTO (Master Of The... damn... I'm catching Katz Disease.)
net is a medium not a thing (Score:2, Insightful)
Horsepuckey. (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Net" wasn't designed to be a "medium" of any sort, individualistic or not. It was simply a way for users of computer systems to access resources on other systems - a throwback to the days when most serious computers were military and/or academic and resources were scarce and widely scattered. It was also designed to be more reliable than traditional communications methods.
That's pretty much the original design goal, Jon. Everything else, even e-mail (even TCP/IP itself), is just a function that was grafted on to the original design. The Web? An accident, really. Tim Berners-Lee was looking for an easy navigation system for researchers and created the Web. The uses we've come up with for it are something else entirely.
There's also a lot more to the Internet than the Web though, Jon. And things like the specialized communities of Usenet, the P2P file sharing systems like Gnutella, and such add to the experiences you speak of. The Internet has become an entertainment medium, but it's not just about that, even though you write about it as if all Web content is now provided by Disney.
It's not the case at all. All the quirky individual sites still exist, though some have gone and others appeared. There's still communities out there - hell, Slashdot is really one of them. They're more lost in the noise than they were in the days when there were a few hundred websites and they were all listed on Netscape's "What's Cool" page, but you can still find what you want without too much trouble.
So I don't buy this one, Jon. Just because AOL has a lot of users who type with one hand doesn't mean the Net has become a different medium. It's just that not everyone has the same high-minded hopes and lofty goals you do. Most people probably are just looking to read (or watch) news, buy stuff, get some amusement, find people like them to talk to, and (sorry) get their rocks off once in a while. The Net isn't just a place for the elite anymore, and that's fine, because the "elite" can still do what they want to do.
The next step (Score:2, Interesting)
Descentralized Intelligence->
Centralized Media->
Descentralized Media->
Centralized Business->
...
Se where do I want to go? I believe net's future is on the services part of the economy, but descentralized. You will have individuals offering their work without much interference from large companies. Like a peer to peer trade system.
Hmm. (Score:2, Insightful)
And of course the net has evolved. Slashdot evolves every few hours, does it not? Everything on the net changes. No changes means no one visiting something they've always seen. Eventually, with these information changes, other things eventually get added. Look at Yahoo. Look at Google. Even slashdot gets new features to its slashcode. All these things cost money. Unless you're rich, you would at least like to recouperate these costs. Hence advertising. Even more new features to attract new customers.
Unless you're selling things via AOL or MSN, there's no longer any way even to reach a significant chunk of the Net universe, including the tech elites who still wield so much influence in cyberspace.
So, those sites that get slashdotted by us "tech elites" actually aren't reaching us? What about "all your base are belong to us". What of Napster? All these things reached a large chunk of the net. Invent a new search engine, better than Google. Include what you like on the homepage. You'll reach a hell of a lot of people.
As for new media sites struggling, can it be argued that the information on their sites is no longer of the quality it used to be? Because an article is split into as many as fifteen pages, each page containing at most three paragraphs? Media sites are forgetting the one main reason we visit them. For media in one easy-to-find place. Not split across pages so that advertising is shoved in our faces fifteen times instead of once.
Enter AOL, then and now a Main Street for middle-class access. Its labyrinthine commercial sites, shameless peddling of goods, vast network of messaging boards and sex sites...
Well, of course AOL is peddling things. Its a business. Give me a free access ISP, and I'll give you a much freer (sp?) internet. How can the internet truly be free when we have to pay to access it? (Free Library internet access withstanding - but how many people use that constantly?)
Of these developments, probably the early design era -- the Net's actual construction -- was its most idealistic. The early BBS's felt -- and were -- revolutionary, and few of the people first going online could help but feel they were participating in and witnessing the birth of a new kind of culture.
Well... duh. If you were there building the first spaceship to go to the moon, would you not feel the same? The same for building the original IBM PC? Anyone involved in building something big will feel the same way. And no longer will you feel the same about the future. How many of us really care if man lands on the moon again? Do we really care about another new PC with cries of "it'll change culture as we know it"? Been there, done that.
Briefly, Napster was the heart of the Net, and the Napster era -- now over -- one of it's most pivotal periods...
What about P2P nowadays? Could that not be the new "heart" of the web?
The free software movement, in fact, was the apogee of the Net's most recent political period, the legacy to the hacker idea of liberating information...
Wrong. Most people don't care, or have any thoughts about "free software". How can that be political, when most people don't care? Compare it to things such as abortion, terrorism, or even gay rights, and suddenly everyone has an opinion.
The internet is a communications medium. Don't ever forget that. Where's the heart of the Net now? Where's the heart of television or radio? There isn't one. And those mediums have survived without one. Yes, whilst television might not always have great shows on, then why does almost every household possess at least, and often more than, one television?
You might as well talk about "The heart of TV"... (Score:2)
The Internet has grown up. It's through its childhood (ARPAnet, with its heart in academics and defense) and just recently got through its crazy teenage years (the dot-com boom!). It's not -done- growing up yet, by any means, but it's a heck of a lot more mature than it used to be, and it's got a heck of a lot more diversified in the process. You might as well ask "What's the heart of the Library of Congress?" With everything from amateur webzines to CNN, from personal homepages to vast realms of technical scientific data, from spam and porn to rational, well-argued intellectual discussions, there's a little bit of everything on the net these days.
And that's the way it should be.
As the internet becomes mundane, perhaps analogies (Score:2)
The US air transportation system doesn't have a single heart, but it certainly does have a few large hubs.
The US government certainly has a *something* in Washington, DC. Many would argue both for and against calling it a heart or brain, though.
Beyond those two, our modern country and world get terribly diffuse.
Where is the heart of the Interstate Highway System?
Is Kansas still the heart of the US? (Read "American Gods" by Neil Gaiman.)
Or perhaps according to William Gibson and other cyberpunks, the religion of the Internet is Voodoun. So obviously the Heart must be somewhere in the Carribean.
Isn't that the beauty of the thing? (Score:2, Insightful)
AOL may be the "Net" for millions, but who cares? Those folks were never really a part of the internet community anyway. From when I first started surfing newsgroups and gopher (in 1993) the net was a cacaphony of ideas without a centralized or focused direction or power. Has that changed?
The industrialization of the net hasn't changed the "core" (if there is such a thing) of the Internet one bit! If anything, it's perpetuated what many corporations/people/organizations fear: Totally and completely open exchange of ideas, information, commerce, etc.. It's something the marketing folks can't quantify, the sales people can't estimate, the politicians can't control.
Amazon makes a profit, France has outlawed Nazi paraphenalia (mis-speelled like a champ), but has that really changed anything? The "media guerillas" haven't been slowed, much less stopped. IBM is pushing a FREE (as in beer) OS! MS calls it a virus. Some "geek" zine has a heated, flame-filled, yet also containing some pretty good posts, about a license change to something that doesn't fully work! The implications of this change may have very interesting consequences. It may define which open licenses are most effective and the fate of this project may determine how much control a certian company has over the PC in the future. It may look minor now, but what happens if Wine takes off? What if suddenly everyone can easily use software written for windows on Linux/BSD/*NIX? What then? OTOH, it may fail and fall flat, but isn't the journey the point?
Some of the most exciting developments are happening in the open, under no corporate guidance, on this wierd, wild and uncontrolled medium. People named Theo, Linus, Miguel and many others are making decisions which are at least as important as those being made by people named Lou and Larry.
Is the spirit of the Internet dead, changed, "corporatized"? I should think not. It has matured, but is hardly dead. If anything, it has hardened as many have watched, with resentment, as corporations, governments and others attempt to control and restrict that which they also seek to profit from. OTOH, we've also seen evidence of the potantial of this unrestricted exchange of ideas.
More on the Amazon Phenomenon (Score:2, Interesting)
A niche question here, but I would be interested to hear from John (or anyone) on why you think this is or is not so. I have spent a lot of money there and have seen it absorb the online entities of Toys 'R Us, IMDb and others. In what ways has this affected all marketing across America?
Network Citizenry (Score:3, Interesting)
First it was MUDs, then MUSH. As technology advanced, the only things I really valued were managing to have a computer that would let me play some of the latest games and let me run a terminal window to one of the communities I practically grew up on. For years, despite the balkanization of the net brought about by deregulation and the emergence of the national ISPs, I found community in those textual realms. Unfortunately, as time has gone on and the quality of people online has degraded further away from those of us with an innate interest in the concept and technology toward today's "All Aboard" culture. For me, the heart of the net was something I felt innately, but always had a hard time placing when the time came. Was it in the exposure I had to people of other cultures and locations? Was it the close friends I made and maintained to this day? Both. But furthermore, it was a place where I felt like I had something in common with -everyone- else there. We were all on the Internet instead of doing "normal" things.
Now, the "normal" thing to do is AIM, ICQ, MSN Messenger, email... My mother has an Internet account. I can no longer say that I have something in common with everyone, and in that way the heart of the net has just seemed to slow it's beat. The balkanization has come around to completion, and it just doesn't feel quite right anymore. I seek out other communities, but the spirit just isn't there. I can't tell if it's because I've aged, the Internet has grown, or a combination of both.
I feel like there's a need to create a new community on top of the Internet, some massive VPN of exclusive, open sourced applications and services meant to bring people together without fear of corporate takeover. A sort of Open Internet. Maybe this way we can reclaim something like what existed before the rise of commercialism.
It's a means to an end, not the end itself (Score:3, Insightful)
The corporate messages are thus:
1) The "NET" can be used to make money.
2) The "NET" can be used to control/influence thought.
The hacker message:
1) The "NET" is k3wl.
2) The "NET" is just one giant shooting ground with a lot of slow moving targets.
The programmer's message:
1) The "NET" is a communication medium. Be it person-to-person, computer-to-computer, or program-to-program.
So there's no current epicenter. That just means that the "NET" has grown large enough for more than one group to expand the boundaries at the same time. If anything, we should look at this comoditization as a positive step and we can concentrate on the things that go on top of the "NET" rather than the "NET" itself.
Lack of center? So what! (Score:5, Informative)
First of all, the corporatization of the Internet has helped to push higher speeds and ubiquity. These two factors alone, while meant to benefit the middle class users, have only helped to lower the cost of entry to future nerds, geeks, hackers and coders.
I'm 25 now, but as a kid growing up in the late 80s, getting any kind of net access was a struggle and a hopeless quest. Enter BBSes and the like. Most of us probably cut our teeth on the BBS. Then enter Freenets (like Cleveland Freenet) and the like. Back then the network was considered blazingly fast at 14.4K. However, my view of what the Internet was and could be was completely blown away upon my visit to the campus of Case Western Reserve in Late 1993. What I saw there was a completely fiber network and the web.
Wow. *that* was cool.
Fast forward to now. Most of the kids coming into college have already experienced the Internet much as I was only able to do once reaching the university. The young hackers in their larval stage come in with a store of knowledge that I could only dream about. I am convinced that we now have more hackers and more technological enthusiasts than we ever have had before. While this may seem like an obvious and trite observation, we need to consider this when also taking into account the fact that the "commodity" usage of the Internet has gone up as well.
In other words, sure, the vast majority of Internet users use it in a utilitarian way. However, now, more than ever, there are users who are using it as a tool to expand their own knowledge and to explore new frontiers of technology. I almost look upon this as romantic, in a weird sort of way, in the way that New York is romantic. I draw the analogy by thinking of both the city and the Internet as being unimaginably dense with people, ideas, culture and thought. However, just underneath the surface, if you look close enough, you'll find your niche, you'll find the "underground".
Granted, most people don't give a shit about the underground. But who cares? It's still there and we can still use. We can still build and we can still expand it. The Internet doesn't exist to fill one purpose or to have one center. The Internet exists to be whatever we want it to be. Again, at the risk of sounding trite, we are slowly and quietly moving towards the concept of cyberspace discussed in early and seminal cyberpunk literature. Think back to the writings of Gibson and Sterling.
So, in closing, in response to the questioned lack of center and the concept that most Internet users are simply Internet consumers, I simply respond, "So what". All we can hope is that right minded individuals will find their calling and explore what makes this whole thing tick. We can hope that they will find out about Open Source software and becoming contributing members to the global computing community. It's not a utopian goal by far, but it is the way things have been and continue to be moving. In every group of people who are content with the status quo and accepting the medium for what it is, there are those individuals like ourselves who are willing to take the next step to make the medium do what we want. There's nothing wrong with that. Let the Internet continue to grow!
Only Jon Katz could... (Score:2, Funny)
Only Jon could turn the word "Disney" in to an adverb...
Ignorant Rabble (Score:2, Interesting)
It just annoys me that all of this intelligence (of various degrees) has been put into a system for idiots. Yeah, yeah: that's the way it goes. Whatever. I'm still waiting for the Internet's John Galt moment when the technically inclined abandon their monkey users.
The heart of the Internet probably is AOL, and that is a harbinger of the inexorable slide of the human intellect into entropy if there ever was one.
Sigh. I guess I just miss the days when I signed at the university computer lab and could find meaningful content on the larval Internet.
You might be a JonKatz article if... (Score:5, Funny)
Starts with a sweeping generalization based on nothing but a vague idea of Katz's ("It seemed the Net always had a heart... like the Tin Man.")
Asks histrionic, theoretical questions by the end of the first paragraph ("Is this culture dying out? Is the world about to change forever? Is Technology X dead? Will Flash Gordon escape from the Pit of the Morlocks?")
Insists on using phrases like "cyber", "cyber-geeks", and "Wired magazine guru", when even Dateline NBC's Jane Pauley finds them too unhip to say anymore.
Features the Bleeding Obvious lead sentence. ("The Net has evolved, and radically. Bears are shitting in the woods, and in great numbers. Despite the machinations of cyber-geek hack information guerillas everywhere, the Pope is still Catholic.")
Sports CmdrTaco style proofreading ("Briefly, Napster was the heart of the Net, and the Napster era -- now over -- one of it's [sic] most pivotal periods.")
Maintains four-color, Jack Kirby philosophy of good vs. evil (Napster good, corporations bad; Napster frees us from the "hoary grip" of the record companies, much like the Fantastic Four escaping from the clutches of Mole Man.)
Uses lots and lots of passive voice
Wraps up with a nattering, waffling conclusion ("It isn't yet possible to know if this is a good or bad thing. The flowering of individual ideas is astounding; it's also a cacophony and something of a trap. Have you ever looked at your thumb? I mean really looked at it? Do you think bees dream?")
He's the Slashdot version of Harry Carey (Score:2)
The center of the sun is over 5 MILLION degrees F... that's pretty darn hot Norm...
(humorous excerpt from saturday night live)
Re:You might be a JonKatz article if... (Score:2)
Re:You might be a JonKatz article if... (Score:2)
too many zeros and ones.... they aint good for ya (Score:2, Insightful)
i use zeros and ones when it enhances my life. the author here uses zeros and ones for his life.
thats not a insult, (i do obviously choose to spend time with my computer as a hobby) but i wonder if people who dont spend so much time with the computer would have such a life altering view of the internet evolution as katz does here.
i know alot of people who dont know and dont care what the internet is, and are very happy, balanced, well adjusted, energetic people.
to then, all of the hoopla in the email is really over played.
did jon live through the same 20 years that i did? (Score:2)
Re:did jon live through the same 20 years that i d (Score:2)
SourceForge, etc. (Score:2)
Why does the Net need a heart? (Score:2)
Aside from a few tech columnists and other such computer-hip people, people don't think of themselves as internet citizens. The internet isn't a way of life, no matter what those AOL commercials might try to represent as common behavior. It might be fun to play with, it might be useful, and it might even be essential, but in the end it is just a tool. More people consider their devotion to a sports team to be a way of life than their web surfing.
Ignoring that for a moment, people still don't use the internet in the same ways. All of Katz's examples seem to be new uses that were popular for a while because they were new - academic work, music "sharing,"
The Net can't have a heart because of the freedom and flexibility given to its users - the Net is what you want it to be, more or less. It isn't a newspaper or magazine, all in a neat, well-organized package; it isn't a city, with everything linked by proximity and a common body of residents that identify themselves with that city more than another; it isn't even a single industry, with multiple distinct entities linked by common interests, feeding off each other while at the same time trying to improve their relative positions.
The internet is a network - nodes, links, and bits of data. It isn't restricted to certain uses or users, so it is difficult to characterize it as anything more than a general purpose medium. Its "heart" is whatever you want it to be - research document sites for academics,
Heart != Hype (Score:2)
The core of the internet was the scientific community. It remained that way for many years.
The "heart" of the internet, the pulse, always has been, and always will be, the flow of information.
In the early-mid 1990's, more people became exposed to the information flow that was the internet, utilizing it for their own purposes. There was nothing really "new", just more of it. Instead of sharing physics concepts, research information, and the like, people talked about sports, hobbies, etc.
The "dot-commerce" groups tried to build a business infrastructure on top of, and a business model centered upon, the internet.
The "hacker" group was exciting, but they were really no different than the physicists, engineers and scientists that used it in the first place. Their work just had a larger target audience.
The "Napsterization" of the internet added entertainment (music, movies, etc.) as a type of intformation exchange.
What will be the next big hype? Probably integration: merging entertainment, communication, productivity, and work all together.
It's Always Been Small Communities (Score:2)
This doesn't surprise me. Human nature is to form tribes and cling to those tribes. Should we be shocked and amazed that we've brought that behavior into this new medium?
And the net is no more Disnified than before. Again, look at the population that's online. Most average people will be interested in average things on the net, and will put up average pages about these average things. This isn't Disnification; this is how populations work when you get a broad crosssection in one place. What we're seeing is more mainstream sites because more people on average are interested in a mainstream site than a fringe site.
But the fringe sites are still out there. They haven't gone away, and thanks to Google and Dmoz they're easier to find than ever before.
-1 (Score:2)
Useless intellectual effort (Score:2, Insightful)
Geeks (Score:2, Insightful)
I just wanted to let you know that I am currently reading 'Geeks'.
I bought it at a thrift store where I normally buy old pc parts for
I have always disliked your movie reviews on
I also find your articles here on Slashdot to be deliberate bait. I usually skip them.
However, I am really enjoying 'Geeks'.
Your writing style seems more fluid. More personal and yes, it definitely seems to be better edited.
In particular, I like that you advanced the boys cash. That seems human; I'm currently at the point where they are planning their 2nd move, and I really hope that I see more interaction between them and you.
As most geeks now, once you find a mentor and someone that believes in you, things go better. I'm betting that your interaction played a big part in the success of these boys.
Additionally, have you done a follow up on the book? What became of these guys?
Anyway, I'm going to try re-reading your stuff in the hopes that it lives up to 'Geeks' on a second reading.
what a load of horseshit (Score:4, Insightful)
The press, in it's infinite stupidity, has many times in the past tried to characterize 'the Net' (with that capital 'N') as being defined by thing X, where thing X is the flashiest and simplest bauble that the press could find *and* understand. Note the last is especially critical, as the press is comprised of people possessing especially low IQs (we call them 'reporters') so they tend to gloss over or discard 95% of what they run into simply because they lack the brain cells to appropriately process the information. The other 5% they usually get wrong.
What the press refuses to accept is that the internet has no center, no locus, either technically, socially, intellectually, or in any other way you can think of. It never has, even back in the bad old days when it belonged to college students who made a hobby, and sometimes a career, of hacking the system while the 'academics' took credit for their innovations.
What Katz talks about has nothing to do with the net and instead has everything to do with the media perception of the net. This media perception has *always* been horribly wrong, in both its assumptions and its conclusions. Here, the assumption being that there is a heart (there isn't) and that this press-inspired delusion has been dominated at various times by groups that never truly existed or never wielded any real power.
What this piece boils down to is yet another whining, self-masturbatory exhibition of baseless assumptions and lies presented as facts. Virtually every line of Katz's article contains something patently false or ludicrous, tripe that only a reporter or a technophobic Boomer could buy into. In fact, the article is so full of shit that my original plan - to refute the statements individually - would haven taken several times the space of the article itself.
Perhaps Jon should give up writing on something he so very clearly knows nothing about. It's getting bloody tired, especially on a site that supposedly caters to the more technically-inclined. Jon clearly couldn't find his ass with both hands, so why is he posting articles on a technology which defies his ability to understand it? Enough is enough, already - hire someone who has at least a glimmering of a clue.
Max
Please Katz (Score:2)