The Internet and the Relaxation of Structure

• Artifacts have Politics
  
• Politics of the Internet
  
• Packet Switching - a technical digression
  
• Circuit switching (the telephone company)
  
• So, the internet is made up of constantly changing, ephemeral, objects and interactions
  
• This kind of structure reflects current social Trends
  
• The old Titanic
  
• The new Titanic
  
• The internet grew out of this kind of culture, and
  
• How do people react on encountering this bizarre bazaar?
  
• And, some have made their peace with this
  
• ...A dance
  
• Let's look at some examples
  
• The "issue date" of Selling Wine without Bottles,
  
• A discussion about fibromyalgia
  
• Some trends
  
• Business relationships on the internet
  
• Employment in the computer business is similar
  
• Community Software
  
• Perl
  
• Linux
  
• Netscape - Mozilla
  
• This kind of development approach is highly unstructured
  
• Social Relationships
  
• Chat rooms/newsgroups and support
  
• Email is a new way to communicate
  
• Can electronic contact foster real community
  
• Intellectual Property
  
• Society's ideas of what is moral change with time
  
• Consider a (motivated) information consumer
  
• Independent of the medium, trust is based on ...
  
• The last four items imply a need for context
  
• Can the fast-moving, ever-changing realm of the internet help you?
  
• What should responsible information providers do?
  
• In short, treat information as...
  
• Conclusion
  

(This group of documents can be accessed as a single file at Relaxation.html in this directory.)