Talk:Internet

Suggested edits for clarity

I would make the following edits if this page were not protected:

1) The phrase "both commissioned by the United States government to develop projects of its military agencies to build robust,..." is clunky. I like "both commissioned by American military agencies to build robust, ..."

 Not done Sentence no longer exists in article. -—Kvng 17:27, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

2) The sentence beginning "Most traditional communications media, such as telephone and television services, are reshaped or redefined using the technologies of the Internet,": the verb should be "are being reshaped or redefined."

 Done -—Kvng 17:27, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

3) The following sentence is poorly written-- this reads as if BBN established that VACs were legalized in the U.S., which is not the case: "Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), the private contractors for ARPANET, set out to create a separate commercial version after establishing "value added carriers" was legalized in the U.S.[6]."

Looking at the source document, a rewrite is: "Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN), the private contractors for ARPANET, set out to create a separate commercial version after the Federal Communications Commission permitted the establishment of value-added carriers in the U.S. [6]." Rohan.maddamsetti (talk) 01:08, 25 August 2010 (UTC)

+++++++++++++++ Could someone make the change in the history section from "London University" to "University of London"? "London University" was the old name of UCL before 1836, a different, but constituent, institution. It isn't a major point but the current version is wrong. Thank you. --109.149.114.234 (talk) 00:14, 7 January 2012 (UTC)

 Done Institute of Computer Science does indeed reference University of London. -—Kvng 17:27, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Internet traffic growth

A very minor issue : this article states that "During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet grew by 100 percent per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997.[10]" . Since that is followed by numbers of users, this is a little bit misleading, and one might think the number of user doubled each year (which is contradicted by the graph below, showing a linear, and not exponential growth) .

I suggest, from the source 10 : "During the 1990s, it was estimated that the Internet traffic grew by 100 percent per year, with a brief period of explosive growth in 1996 and 1997. The mean annual growth in Internet users has been argued to be between 20% and 50%[10]" —Preceding unsigned comment added by Hannezo (talk • contribs) 10:50, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree it was confusing. I have tried to improve it. First I made the 100% figure clearer: it is an estimate for "the growth rate of traffic on the public Internet", according to the source. I took out the bit about 'explosive growth in 2 years as this may be misleading with regard to what actually happened in other nearby years. Having made the distinction regarding 'traffic', I put in the figures given for 'number of users'. The source paper appears to have been written in 1997, and revised in 1998 so I said 'late 1990s to cover this. Thank you for your suggestions. Do people think that's a fairer summary? --Nigelj (talk) 15:22, 16 November 2010 (UTC)

Currently growth rates of Internet use are down to 40% a year, but as world economic growth is around a tenth of that it is very clear that every year Internet users are becoming less and less productive. Really it's just a colossal waste of time. Hcobb (talk) 05:07, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Commercial role in the origin of the Internet

Hi Everybody! As an Internet user from the times of Gopher, WAIS, and Bulletin Boards, I found confusing the assertion: "The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s, commissioned by the United States government in collaboration with private commercial interests". I think it would be more accurate to say "...government and spurred by the scientific community and Academia". As far as I remember the commercial community (except for IBM and others interest in hardware), was extremely skeptical about the new "scientific" information exchange tool (yesterday's "geeks".) The creation of the WWW and of Gopher, later on, did not reduce the business community's disdain for the internet. Later, when Netscape appeared, some commercial interest showed-up; but was countered by many books and articles pleading for the non-commercialization of the Internet. Even Microsoft derided it and did not pay attention until Netscape had become 'the' web navigator (browser); but that's another history. Going too far back in search of originating ideas, can lead us to crediting the dreams of ancient geniuses and visionaries. It is the practical proposals that mark the real beginning of those visions. From this point of view, I cannot see a real role of business in the origins of the Internet.

(My apologies for possible violations) Alexandrod (talk) 17:41, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Please read the Wikipedia article on ARPANET, and then go to a library and read some real books on Internet history (I've read nearly all of them, by the way) before further embarrassing yourself by displaying your abysmal ignorance in public. If you aren't familiar with the books on Internet history by Janet Abbate, M. Mitchell Waldrop, Katie Hafner, and Martin Campbell-Kelly, then you're way out of your league. ARPANET and Internet research was funded by the U.S. government, but was made possible by private contractors like BBN, computer manufacturers like Honeywell, communications contractors like AT&T, and academic think tanks like SRI. --Coolcaesar (talk) 17:57, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Alexandrod that the present formulation is misleading, and your reply fails to address the issue. The misleading phrase is the 'private commercial interests' that motivated companies to help create the Internet: for those who haven't read the books you mention (myself included), this phrase suggests that companies wanted to create the Internet as a mass medium for communication between businesses and their customers, something that only started to happen around 1993. Rp (talk) 16:25, 13 June 2012 (UTC)

it is very important for you to search on google for all your work with its never ending wisdon written by the unknown —Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.224.173.13 (talk) 08:40, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the "private commercial interests" phrase. Additional improvement is welcomed. This portion of the lead is unreferenced and not well supported by the History section of the article. -—Kvng 17:38, 29 November 2012 (UTC)

Kevin.strong (talk) 20:20, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Small edit in History section:

Modification to correct confusing year reference:

"Commercial internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s and 1990s."

change to

Commercial internet service providers (ISPs) began to emerge in the late 1980s into the 1990s.

Mis-capitilisation

Under Modern Uses the first word of the third sentence (mobile) isn't capitalised.

Social Impact

I'd like to add the following, if I could:

Though the internet has made information more readily available to people, it is difficult to believe that anything could be found online that could not be found somewhere in a library (including media and music). That's because it seems strange to think that authorities would not de facto or de jure wish to monitor all information to enhance policing. Given that authorities have more available technologically and otherwise than an everyday people, it's probably true that the internet is de facto highly patrolled (IP addresses secretly recorded, etc.). This is evident even in the most progressive attempts to use "social media" for liberation. Wikipedia, for instance, protects webpages from editing and records IP addresses. Webpages, too, cost money to maintain as first listed simple "www" addresses, making the internet, like the rest of services in the world, highly influenced by corporate and special group interests, moreso than by simple individuals without much power or influence. The result is that the internet, while seemingly outside the realm of government or authority control, is in fact much less free than many would like to think.

Some also worry that, rather than making the internet a place friendly to intellectual curiousity, creativity, and integrity, the internet has become a place of trivial pursuits and degeneration of personal character. This is evident in the ways in which people use strange acronyms, colloquialisms and broken sentences as language in "social media" sites, blogs, and chat sites to communicate idle concerns, rather than well-formed, well-conceived sentences to portray complex ideas and sentiments. It's also evident in pervasive anonymous bullying, harassment, and abuse people often complain about on these same "social media" sites. In this sense, some criticize the internet for creating a culture of insolent and idle people, rather than knowledgeable, creative, intelligent (and dare I say, civil) persons.

There are worries as well, that the predominance of internet use over actual social interaction creates societies of isolated people, ironically while being heavily invested in "social media" communication. 70.72.44.213 (talk) 02:13, 18 April 2012 (UTC) April 18, 2012

Do you have any citations for this material? --Kvng (talk) 17:59, 22 April 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia doesn't seem like the right place to make these claims. -Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 03:11, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

Fee-fi-fo-fum, someone's been hacking and editing my original talk post. Mine read much better. Remember, just because there are rules, that doesn't mean they must be followed always in writing. For instance, if I said: "Me, professor?," I could omit the comma between the "me" and "professor" because it's understood easily in such a short sentence, even if the actual rule is to place a comma in between. It's just usage. Really, look it up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.72.45.98 (talk) 22:32, 8 November 2012 (UTC)

The research study which concluded that "loneliness" correlates to internet usage was conducted more than a decade ago (in the late 90s) and references material from the late 80s. Can this statement either be removed or cited with better research? I read the article which was linked (from Boston University) and it did not seem at all relevant to today's internet. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.44.185.10 (talk) 04:43, 27 November 2012 (UTC)

Philanthropy

Philanthropy reads like an ad for Zidisha - including multiple links to their article ... Could/should someone tone it down?

Kuebel (talk) 08:05, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

 Done. Jeff Ogden (W163) (talk) 16:10, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

internet is internationnel and network it a means tool of information and communication and antertainment instruction to do research .to make education studies easies .to chat have frindly talk addiction to get and become addict — Preceding unsigned comment added by 105.146.1.128 (talk) 20:24, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

Delete wordiness

"The origins of the Internet reach back to research of the 1960s," should be changed to "The Internet originated in research of the 1960s," — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.80.147.170 (talk) 18:32, 7 November 2012 (UTC)

 Done -—Kvng 02:17, 30 November 2012 (UTC)

Internet Penetration by Country

I believe the information on this graph could be useful for the page: http://www.portal.euromonitor.com/Portal/ShowImage.html?..//MediaLibrary//HighResImage//image0010.png Would someone make a new version of the graph just for this Wikipedia page? The info should be added in the 'Users' section of the article, saying: According to Euromonitor, by 2020 43.7% of the world's population will be users of the Internet. Splitting by country, in 2011 Iceland, Norway and the Netherlands had the highest internet penetration by the number of users, with more than 90% of the population with access. And then either link to the source or post the new graph. Cheers, Zalunardo8 (talk) 12:05, 17 December 2012 (UTC)

Edit request on 11 January 2013

Paragraph 3, last sentence should read "[...]—more than a third of the world's human population—[...]" Reasoning: The source quoted here (http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm) states that at the time (July 2012) the global Internet user base makes up 34.3% of the world population. As this is more than 1/3 (33%) the existing half-sentence reading "—nearly a third of the world's human population—" should be replaced. 134.115.65.192 (talk) 02:01, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

 Done albeit with a slight word change - the sentence already says "more than 2.4 billion people..." so I changed the proposed wording to "over" instead. - a boat that can float! (watch me float) 18:15, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Introduction

"(or internet)" - the article is clearly about a specific internet, and thus is a proper noun, and so should have a capital "I", my grasp of English grammar isn't great, but this seems as clear cut a case as you'd get, being both a proper noun and a proper name. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.45.158.52 (talk) 09:56, 11 January 2013 (UTC)

Have a look at the Terminology section and Capitalization of "Internet". -—Kvng 14:03, 14 January 2013 (UTC)

Edit request

In the "Social impact" section, please add an "Economics" sub-section as follows:

While much has been written of the economic advantages of internet-enabled commerce, there is also evidence that some aspects of the internet such as maps and location-aware services may serve to reinforce economic inequality and the digital divide. Even electronic commerce may be responsible for consolidation and the decline of mom-and-pop, brick and mortar businesses resulting in increases in income inequality.

Thanks! Neo Poz (talk) 05:06, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

 Partly done: I omitted the "Even" that begins the final sentence, since it didn't make sense to me. (Let me know if I'm reading it wrong.) Also tagged that final sentence because it is unsourced. Rivertorch (talk) 07:44, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Cool! Thank you. That's better without "even". Here's the ref for that second sentence: sorry I forgot that. Neo Poz (talk) 09:55, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure we can use that to support the wording as written. It's very interesting, and the author clearly knows what he's talking about, but it's basically an editorial, not an article. Rivertorch (talk) 18:42, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Is it okay to use that for the gist/overview along with the hard numbers he links to, e.g. [1] and [2] (that second one also is more prose than stats, but it links to stats too)? Neo Poz (talk) 01:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Umm . . . I'm not sure. In general terms, the main thing is to avoid stating something as fact that's sourced to an opinion piece. You can get around that by attributing it (i.e., "So-and-so writes in Such-and-such that . . ."), although you need to be careful, if paraphrasing, not to put words in the somebody's mouth. A brief direct quote is sometimes the best way to avoid that. An additional concern is avoiding giving undue weight to a particular point of view. I doubt that that's a big concern here, but I'll bet you can find other sources (e.g., newspaper articles) that cover the same topic neutrally enough. Your account should be autoconfirmed in a couple days, so I'll leave it up to you! Rivertorch (talk) 07:37, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

See also

• Internaut