Atheism, Sex, and Databases: The Net as a Social Technology

The most important policy issue is how to balance people’s rights and responsibilities in electronic gatherings. Every group creates and sustains a shared understanding of the rights and responsibilities of membership – a social contract … Because electronic groups are both diverse and ephemeral, attempts to directly apply codes of conduct from the real world often go awry. Social influence is played out in a world that is rich in imagination and diversity and impoverished in its means of communication – ascii text … Electronic groups currently have few ways to deal with blatant misbehavior … It is much easier to suggest tools for groups than it is to suggest policies for how to balance people’s rights and responsibilities. We need much more discussion within groups themselves as well as in the broader policy community about group governance. We also need research that documents implicit codes of behavior and social-influence mechanisms across a wide variety of group types.

Issues in the Development of Community Cooperative Networks

The global Internet will soon be the commercial information highway for the entire planet; the National Information Infrastructure will soon be the national information highway system, with all the economic potential our national railway and highway systems brought to communities a century ago. Each community must assess the benefits of network access against the cost for both the infrastructure and the community “learning-curve” challenges.

Issues in the Development of Community Cooperative Networks

Distributed bulletin board systems are not a substitute for full Internet access, but rather are the logical pathway toward full Internet access. They are “training-wheel” systems for the Internet that will continue to provide an important local support function even after full Internet access is achieved.

Issues in the Development of Community Cooperative Networks

Locally accessible low-cost community networks allow any community to provide training opportunities for its citizens that are targeted toward community strengths and the best potential economic opportunities … Training provided by the federal government would not be likely to have a local focus on a community’s most promising opportunities or necessarily reflect a budget-sensitive approach.

Issues in the Development of Community Cooperative Networks

Networking makes it possible to be “relationship-rich” even when one might feel isolated in one’s local environment. Isolated individuals without access to supportive on-line communities are likely to be “relationship-poor.”

Public Access Issues: An Introduction

The question of what has promoted the cooperative nature of the Internet is an important one for planners and policy-makers. Even beyond the issue of maintaining this cultural component of the Internet, there may be a potential model for community development or organizational design … Some factors that have contributed to the culture of the Internet will surely change; an example will probably be the pricing structure. One characteristic that will help maintain the village-like character of the Internet after it has expanded far beyond its original close-knit membership is the ability to define and redefine virtual places and entities … Planners must pay careful attention to maintaining the many positive elements of Internet culture.

Public Access Issues: An Introduction

The Internet has a culture of sharing that is unusual in the private sector. The technology that drives the Internet was largely developed in a voluntary and cooperative manner. The mere fact that it functions is remarkable … An important and difficult question is how to capture the values of cooperation and shared experience in an increasingly commercial Internet … As usage increases and commercial opportunities rise, it will be increasingly difficult to rely on informal rules of netiquette to maintain good citizenship.

Public Access Issues: An Introduction

Growth in the number of users and in accessible information have fueled one another through a combination of demand pull and supply push, exemplifying the unusual economics of networks, where an increase in users increases rather than decreases the value of the service to connected users and institutions. This growth has challenged the culture of the Internet and drawn attention to the social aspects of participation in networked communities … Lee Sproull and Samer Faraj … identify the network as a social technology and recognize users as social beings. These distinctions will be important ones as planners seek to design systems more broadly integrated into our daily lives.

Meeting the Challenges of Business and End-User Communities on the Internet: What They Want, What they Need, What They’re Doing

Every month, something newer and weirder happens, and the Internet seems to be substantially different every three months … Many worry that “big business” – providers or users – will destroy the Internet. I’m not worried; I believe there’s always room for research, educational, hobbyist and hacker communities. And, frankly the essential technology is readily available to anyone who wants to buy it, as the growth of shoestring providers demonstrates; if the Internet no longer provides an adequate home, I would expect that a core of network users could and would create Internet II within 48 hours. Indeed, that’s what a lot of what we have today is; a virtual network within the Internet, owned and operated by the Internet community. Much of what businesses are doing today leverages these efforts, making the Internet in some ways a trickle-up enterprise.

Meeting the Challenges of Business and End-User Communities on the Internet: What They Want, What they Need, What They’re Doing

[New users’] desires and activities can easily distort the usage flows, arbitrarily saturating popular sites and services – most of which, it’s important to remember, are labor-of-love offerings made available for free, but with no guarantee of availability, or intended in some fuzzy fashion for “the Internet community.” But within the past few years, media attention has made the Internet appear a vast, often free super-resource, as opposed to a large, shared resource that users must replenish as well as consume. Moreover, much of the “neat stuff” on the net is somewhere between “proof of concept” and “neat hacks.” There is no way these can be readily available to teeming millions of new cybersurfers within the current provisioning of user services and resources.