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Raw Bytes Computer News KPBX FM 91.1 Radio National Public Radio Network Frank Delaney Producer Broadcast on Wednesday Morning 7:35 AM During Morning Edition Support Public Radio ! The Theater Of the Mind |
In computer news this week 05/30/2007
What
online tribe do you belong to on the Electronic Frontier ? Early man
lived in tribes and bands for mutual protection, and the whole world was
their frontier. Of all the
remaining frontiers on Earth and in the universe, so many of them have been
explored it seems there are few remaining true frontiers. Mt.
Everest has been climbed, perhaps first by George Mallory back in 1924 , then
confirmed climbed by Sir Edmund Hillary in 1953, and today there are
thousands of people who have climbed the world’s tallest peak. We’ve
discovered the tombs of the pharaohs, and shipwrecks laden with treasure
dating back before the time of Christ. We’ve
put a man on the Moon and in space stations, so the true frontiers are
disappearing. The
internet has been named the electronic frontier by some, and it is aptly
named, as the internet is truly the electronic frontier, and growing daily.
There is truly no end to the internet, although you will find many joke pages
that supposedly bring you to it. There is
no law on the internet, or the world wide web, which is its proper name. The
closest thing to it is ICANN - an
international corporation that assigns domain names and number, which
constantly argues among itself as countries jockey
for position. There
actually is an Electronic
Frontier Foundation that dates
back before the birth of the World Wide Web, founded by some of the greats of
the old early PC world; names like Mitch Kapor of
early spreadsheet fame, and Steve Wozniak of Apple history, but this is a
non-profit
organization dedicated to preserving free speech in the context
of today’s digital age. But try
to find a sheriff on the Internet when some phisher steals your identity or some
spammer tricks you into buying some non-existent item, and you won’t
find one. You’re on your own. In the
American frontier days people traveled in wagon
trains, and lived in communities often built around a fort for protection,
and became a community of farmers and people with similar interests to try to
live together in a challenging environment. Today we
have seen the growth of tribes on the internet; large
colonies of people with similar interests; and we’re beginning to
witness a sociological and anthropological evolution of online communities
– people who communicate and interact online through the internet. With the
WWW being such a dangerous place, and such a constantly changing
–hard-to-keep-up-with place, people are joining these communities to
find friends and contacts with similar interests, and supposedly
there’s safety in numbers and many other benefits. In a way
it’s not that different from the pre-WWW world of computer bulletin
boards, where people with similar interests would communicate with each other
through a computer bulletin board via dial-up phone lines, and have online
discussions of topics. But there was no sound or movies or pictures in that
world. Today’s
tribes or online communities are totally interactive with live audio/video
feeds connecting people, and next week I’ll tell you what tribes I and
others belong to. |
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For Raw Bytes This is Frank Delaney (C) 2007 MTA Micro
Technology Associates http://www.mtamicro.com/kpbx.html PO Box 31522 Spokane, Wa 99223-1522 (509)624-7230 |
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