An Introduction

1. What do you know about the internet?
As it is increasingly user-created, it’s in perpetual flux. The lastest major shifts have been the revolution termed “web 2.0″ – heavily interactive content created mostly by users, and with much greater potential for expansion. Media has increased as file size constraints have dropped, leading to more fluid and some entirely new forms of communication.

At the same time, it has generally become more user-friendly for the layperson and in many ways more difficult for the tinkerer or programmer.

2. What do you think about the internet?
It’s inherently organic, which is a strange thing to say about something made by men. It’s grown of its own accord, it’s tremendously social in function due to what created it, it mimics biology in its form (many joined processors communicating) and in its behaviour (note in particular the common-and-varied virus analogies, between damaging, self-replicating, contagion-like “virus” programs and the social phenomenon of “viral” content.)

3. What do you wonder about the internet?
What’s next. I want to know where development will come from and what angle will be taken. The current climate is very expansive, but seems to be in a lull as far as true creative development – new implementations of extant technologies, such as a new form of social network, or a set of wholly new technologies on their own, such as new human interfaces, could and will be the next developments.

I also wonder about the earlier internet communities and how they functioned – my own experiences began during the days when intrapersonal communications were technologically restricted to text chat, so I’d like to know what came before.