Balkanisation/Splinternet
The splinternet is a characterisation of the Internet as splintering and dividing due to various factors such as technology, commerce, politics, nationalism, religion and interests.
"Powerful forces are threatening to balkanise it", writes the Economist weekly, and it may soon splinter along geographic and commercial boundaries.
Countries such as China have erected what is termed a "Great Firewall", for political reasons, while other nations such as the US and Australia, discuss plans to create a similar firewall to block child pornography or weapon-making instructions.
Technology
Describing the splintering of Internet technology, some writers see the problem in terms of new devices using different standards. Users no longer require web browsers to access the internet, as new hardware tools often come with their own "unique set of standards" for displaying info.
Journalist and author Doc Searls uses the term "splinternet" to describe the "growing distance between the ideals of the internet and the realities of dysfunctional nationalisms", which contribute to the various and sometimes incompatible standards which often make it hard for search engines to use the data. He notes that "it all works because the web is standardised." However as new devices incorporate their own ad networks, formats, and technology, many are able to "hide content" from search engines.
Stephen Lewis, information manager, describes the causes primarily in terms of the technology "infrastructure", leading to a "conundrum" whereby the internet could eventually be carved up into numerous geopolitical entities and borders, much as the physical world is today.
Commericial Lock-In
The Atlantic magazine speculates that many of the new "gadgets have a 'hidden agenda' to hold you in their ecosystem of content display and advertising. These are walls going up just as the walls to mobile internet access are falling down". Writer Derek Thompson explains that "in the splinternet age, ads are more tightly controlled by platform". They rationalise the new standards as possibility a result of companies wanting to increase their revenue through targeted advertising to their own proprietary user base.
Forrester Research vice president and author Josh Bernoff also writes that "the unified web is turning into a splinternet", as users of new devices risk leaving one internet standard. He uses the term "splinternet" to refer to "a web in which content on devices other than PCs, or hidden behind password, makes it harder for site developers and marketers to create a unified experience". He points out, for example, that web pages "don't look the same because of the screen size and don't work the same since the iPhone doesn't support Flash". He adds that now, with the explosion of other phone platforms like Google Android, "we'll have yet another incompatible set of devices". However, both Android and IOS are Unix-based platforms and both offer WebKit-based browsers as standards, as does leading manufacturer Nokia.
Politics and Nationalism
A survey conducted in 2007 by a number of large universities found that Iran, China, and Saudi Arabia filter a wide range of topics and also block a large amount of content related to those topics. South Korea filters and censors news agencies belonging to North Korea.
It found that numerous countries engaged in "substantial politically motivated filtering", including Burma, China, Iran, Syria and Tunisia.
Saudi Arabia, Iran and Tunisia engage in substantial social content filtering.
Burma, China, Iran, Pakistan and South Korea have the most encompassing national security filtering, targeting the websites related to border disputes, separatists and extremists.
Organisations such as the OpenNet Initiative were created because they recognised that "Internet censorship and surveillance are growing global phenomena." Their book on the subject was reportedly "censored by the U.N" with a poster removed by the U.N. security officials because it mentioned China's "Great Firewall". In March 2010, Google chose to pull its search engines and other services out of China in protest of their censorship and the hacking of Gmail accounts belonging to Chinese activists.
Religion
Internet access has also been blocked for reasons of religion. In 2007, and again in May 2010, Pakistan blocked the video sharing website Facebook and YouTube, reportedly along with the search engine Google, and Wikipedia, to contain what it described as "blasphemous" and "un-Islamic" material.
The Church Of Scientology recommended Internet censorship as a method of defending itself against what it said were a constant campaign of abuse by the group "Anonymous", along with "misinformation" and "misrepresentation" in the media. In September 2009 it asked the Australian Humans Rights Commission's Freedom of Religion and Belief to restrict access to web site it believes incites "religious vilification".
Interests
Splintering of the Internet community can occur when members of a specific interest groups use the Internet to exclude or avoid views that contradict their own cherished beliefs and theories. Cyberbalkanisation refers to the division of the internet into sub-groups with specific interests (digital tribes), where the sub-group's members almost always use the Internet or the web or communicate/read material that is only of interest to the rest of the sub-group.
Cass Sunstein argued that cyberbalkanisation could damage democracy, because it allows different groups to avoid exposure to one another as they gather in increasingly segregated communities, making recognition of other points of view or common ground decreasingly likely. The commentator Aleks Krotoski feels that Jihadist groups use the internet in this way.
Despite the concerns of cyberbalkanisation, there is mixed evidence that it actually growing. One Wharton study found that internet filters can create commonality, not fragmentation. However, this study is primarily focused on music recommendation algorithms, and openly states that more research is required surrounding other domains (eg news, books, fashion). Another study found that ideological segregation of online news consumption is low in absolute terms, higher than the segregation of most offline news consumption, and significantly lower than the segregation of face-to-face interactions with neighbours, co-workers, or family members.
-----------------------------------------------------------
EG of Balkanisation; Net Neutrality issue! -web is becoming more fragmented.
Currently, when you access the internet on your phone, tablet or computer, you get to view websites and watch videos at pretty much the same speed as everyone else does. The traffic you create by browsing the web is treated equally by the companies that have built the infrastructure of the internet; internet service providers (ISPs). Net neutrality essentially means that everyone gets the same treatment.
The FCC - which regulates how ISPs are allowed to handle traffic - said that it would create new rules that may allow ISPs to treat traffic differently. Some people - companies big enough to pay extra, basically - may get faster internet than the rest of us. Here is what the FCC specifically said:
"The NPRM will propose...that broadband providers would be required to offer a baseline level of service to their subscribers, along with the ability to enter into individual negotiations with content providers. In all instances, broadband providers would need to act in a commercially reasonable manner subject to review on a case-by-case basis."
Instead of treating everyone equally, ISPs will only be required to give you a "baseline" level of service. Some people - again, likely companies rather than individuals - will be able to get faster, better service. The change came about because a federal court recently ruled that the FCC doesn't have the power to regulate the Internet the same way it regulates phones. With phones, companies have to supply everyone with the same hardwire service - even if they live way out in the countryside where its very expensive to put up the lines. The web used to work that way too - companies had to give you the same service even if you cost them more - but thats now going to change.
The big changes will be around companies like Netflix. Currently, sometimes almost a third of all web traffic is Netflix's streaming movies. Netflix often accounts for nearly 50% of all web video streaming at one time. Over time, companies like Comcast have gotten tired of serving bandwidth hogs like Netflix and paying for the privilege to do so. By amazing coincidence, the speed at which Comcast delivered Netflix movies started to get slower and slower.
So, Netflix reached a deal with Comcast: Netflix would pay Comcast for a direct connection between its servers and Comcast's, so that Netflix's traffic didn't have to go through the interconnect companies. As if by magic, Netflix speeds went up again.
This isnt the first time that an ISP has made major decisions like this: In 2007, Comcast blocked BitTorrent and in 2005 Madison River Communications blocked people from making phone calls over the net.
Netflix CEO Reed Hastings believes that all companies' traffic should be treated equally, and if ISPs are in the business of providing the web service, they should do just that in aggregate, and not pick winners and losers based on the fees they're willing to pay.
Comcast has the opposite point of view. If it is to serve Netflix at the same prices it serves your personal homepage on About.me, then Netflix is essentially getting a huge service for free, Comcast argues.
AT&T argued recently....
Internet Is NOT The Answer
The internet that we use today was switched on in January 1983, and for it first 10 years, it was almost exclusively the preserve of academic researchers, which meant that cyberspace evolved as a parallel, utopian universe in which the norms of "meatspace" (John Perry Barlow's term for the real world) didn't apply. In fact, for most of two decades, the real world remained blissfully unaware f the existence of the virtual one.
And then Tim Berners-Lee invented the web, and in 1993 Marc Andreessen released Mosaic, the first graphical browser, and suddenly the real world realised what the internet was, with hindsight, predictable, though relatively few people spotted it at the time. It was later summed up by John Doerr, as "the greatest legal accumulation of wealth in history".
Andrew Keen- like many who were involved in the net in the early days - started out as an internet evangelist. His first book, The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet Is Killing Our Culture, was a lacerating critique of the obsession with user-generated content which characterised the early days of web 2.0.
Keen challenges the dominant narrative about the internet - that it's a technology that liberates, informs and empowers people. The problem with this narrative, he points it out, is not that it's wrong - the network society is breaking the old centre, compounding economic and cultural inequality, and creating a digital generation of masters of the universe. This new power may be rooted in a borderless network, but it still translates into massive wealth and power for a tiny handful of companies and individuals."
Far from being the "answer" to society's problems, Keen argues, the internet is at the root of many of them. As a result, it poses an existential question for democracies everywhere: can elected governments control the waves of creative destruction now sweeping through our societies as the digital revolution gathers momentum? Mr Keen doesn't have the answer to this. But then - as an inspection of our current campaign confirms - neither do we.
Andrew Keen noted that those people who really do think that the internet is the answer to all of our problems; not only in getting a taxi, or a sex partner, but also in education and politics, are the techno-utopians of Silicon Valley, the wealthy or wannabe-wealthy libertarians with a fetish for "disruption". Expressions of such a worldview are becoming more common outside the startup bubble, too. In the last episode of the BBC Radio 4 series "Can Democracy Work?", for eg, the Ukip politician Douglas Carswell was celebrating how the internet "democratises" everything, including the fusty old political process.
The internet is now dominated by giant monopolists (eg Google). We live voluntarily in an "electronic panopticon". Keen argues that the big internet companies taken together are the net destroyer of jobs - jobs in independent bookshops or taxi firms.
Keen is especially angry about what has happened to music, since, as he relates he grew up at the end of the golden age of Soho record shops, and founded his own early music startup, AudioCafe. "Back then," he confesses, "it really did seem as if the internet was the answer. The web 'changed everything' about the music industry, I promised my investors." As it turned out, it did, but not in a good way.
Macrowikinomics
Many of the institutions that have served us well for decades, or even centuries, have come to the end of their life cycles; from newspapers, record labels and old models of financial services to our energy grid, transportation systems and institutions for global co-operation and problem solving.
The industrial economy has finally run out of gas, we're at a turning point in human history. At the same time, the contours of a new kind of civilisation are becoming clear, as millions of connected citizens forge alternative institutions using the web as a platform for innovation. From education and science to new approaches to citizen engagement and democracy, sparkling new initiatives are under-way, embracing a new set of principles for the 21st century.
Collaboration, openess, sharing, inter-dependance and integrity - it's finally happening. With the proliferation of social media and social networks, we all have at our fingertips the most powerful tools and platform ever for growth, prosperity, social development and social justice. Social media is becoming social production. in every industry from all walks of life, people are self-organising, taking us from collaborative innovation in business, to macrowikinomics, the art and science of collaboration to change the world. The new media are enabling the birth of a new civilisation.
We're innovating science and healthcare with 'PatientsLikeMe', where 80 thousand patients are crowdsourcing their data to help out doctors, scientists and their own course of treatment. In Kenya, a text messaging platform named Ushahidi, created to document election violence, has grown from helping emergency response teams in Haiti during the earthquake, to helping emergency snow removal in Washington, and even the BBC during the Tube Strike in London.
With GALAXYZOO, 275 thousand students and teachers are reinventing science and education by helping astronomers discover and map new galaxies. Teachers, professors and students are using the internet to reinvent education from the industrial model where teachers lecture and students are passive recipients of knowledge, to student focused, collaborative learning, customised to the needs of the learner.
Network models of the newspaper are providing good journalism, investigative reporting and ensuring that journalists get paid. Old style radio is collapsing, TV is becoming nothing less than a cool new app, and the failing music industry is being replaced by streaming audio which gives access to millions of songs with fair compensation to musicians and to song-writers.
The Wiki-Revolution sweeping the Middle East are harbingers of change. Social media didn't cause the Arab Spring, injustice did. Social media didn't create the revolutions, they were created by a new generation that no longer wanted to be treated as subjects. But just as the internet drops collaboration costs in business, so it also drops the cost of descent or rebellion.
Social change is in the air. Occupy Wall Street is the tip of the iceberg of a global movement for a world that is fair and just. The KONY 2012 video was seen by over 100 million people in a week. On the one hand, it led to a movement that caused the US Congress to take action and help hunt down the brutal warlord. But on the other, it raises tough issues about these networks - their accountability, their legitimacy, their representation and leadership. Issues that our new generation of social innovators and activists must address. This is a time of danger, but fundamentally its a time of profound change and great opportunity, and we can achieve a new age of promise fulfilled, but only if we get involved.
EXAMPLES FOR ESSAY
THEORISTS YOU CAN USE
No comments:
Post a Comment