A few examples of developments on the Internet...


(1) Education

Interactive multimedia courses can now rival and in some instances even improve on interactive features of live classroom, allowing demonstrations and questions to extend beyond normal classroom limitations, and more thoughtful and inquiries from students and replies from faculty. Internet use expands the duration as well as the space of the classroom but is more immediately responsive than waiting for returning papers and making questions wait from time of study until next class meeting. Multimedia presentations can be even more competent. Cost of education can be reduced.

Downsizing economies, a major trend of educational institutions, as well as other commercial enterprises, will allow resources to be put to more productive academic enterprises such as research. This is a statement for contention, not a statement of belief. But if true, note that the matter of the timing of faculty/student interaction as well as its nature is crucial here. Examples would help. My own course in Psychology of Motivation at UVM (1992) did some pioneering providing faculty/student email discussions, and some interaction with students at other Universities, but did not exploit the presentation of course materials that the Web now provides. An increasing number of faculty at UVM are learning to use the Web as a means of gathering student input, facilitating research, and creating a different sort of interactive environment.


(2) Research and Academic Creativity

Research groups can now share and develop ideas, data, and other resources at a clip never before attainable, and with greater efficiency and cost effectiveness. I participate in a group developing a grant proposal, and that is much facilitated by net resources. The recent conference in Dresden on Nonlinear Analyses in Physiological Research had virtual participation as well as on-site participation, and shared ideas, data, data analysis programs, that started prior to the conference and outlives it via two mirrored Web sites and email interactions. The distinctions between conferences, publications, correspondence, and other EMC such as the telephone become blurred. A new personality of interaction emerges, and new flavors of archiving the more productive strains of thought are evolving.

Another example of such emergence occurred by the creation of a paper on philosophy of science issues confronting the dynamics community in psychology called Xaos at the Xrossroads. It was gleaned from various sources, including quotes from two articles in normal publications (Proceedings of the Society for Chaos Theory in Psychology and the Life Sciences), another of Lillian Greeley taken from my earlier book (Abraham et al., 1990), from some private email correspondence, and from two listservers, one of our Society, the other a philosophy of science group called Science Structure founded in the UK by Dick Bond. It references additional contributions by the coauthors that are parked on the net for backup. This article is intended for hard copy publication in the new journal of our society, but its own presence is not permitted under current publishing rules. Thus a rough draft exists at a Web site for use by the authors and other previewers. The article was created in two days; its html editing has drifted on indefinitely but normally a few days would do. Compare that with the one year lag for the hard copy journal. And what about the permanence of its archiving as a publication by either mode? And its access? This is an article that could mutate in its hyperlinkage on the net. Authors continue to modify their contributions within the article and at their own sites. While the net is still in its infancy and a bit clumsy, its ability to outstrip other modes of communication is already very evident.


(3) Communications

Engst, Low, & Simon (Internet Starter Kit, 1995, out of date!) mention statistics and uses galore for the Internet. Safe to say that as we used to use Consumer Report for certain commodity exchange information, that the Net now provides information on every aspect of human activity, and it is absolutely up to date. One example mentioned in the text describes a family recently dealing with a depression problem, and how this family found information on antidepressives that was more up to date and complete than that of the family physician. It came from a variety of net sources -- both commercial and user group type. This information provided some of the psychological cure in terms of understanding drug response (Paxil in this case). While this type of information can be obtained from standard sources and user groups, in fact this information surpassed what National Public Radio had been only recently reporting on the same subject. Additionally, it is assembled and commented on with a speed that other media simply don't provide, and at a much reduced, basically negligible cost. Newsweek made this it's story of the year. Now at least one headline story a day rates major media coverage.


4) Global Culture: Communities and Tribes

These can be implosive. E.g., Waterbury, Vermont, a small community is planning a combination of lists and Web sites to provide a calendar of events, a listing of civic groups, and a discussion area for various topics, a kind of extended year-long town meeting. In parallel the town planning commission is preparing databases on community businesses and resources for town promotions both for tourism and business attraction. These efforts are being coordinated, the first a citizen run and funded effort, the second a cooperative effort between the town governance and the major electric utility in the area. The need was seen even in a small community which can gather more frequently and is small and informal to begin with.

These can also be explosive. Now such communities events can exist on a global scale. A majority of such communities may serve special interest needs that conform with conformist social needs, or provide forums for divergent opinions to reconcile, and for conflict resolution. Alumni organizations, cooking groups, there are thousands.

Ken Stern, recently interviewed about his book on Paramilitary Groups and the Politics of Hate, when asked why there was an explosion of their activities in the past none months, replied that this explosion was nurtured on the Internet. Explosion is the right word, as the Oklahoma bombing involved some internet activity. I plan to take a cue from them, in using a Web page under the Waterbury community pages just mentioned, to have the Friends of Waterbury Reservoir use the net in its activities to win its battle to preserve the Reservoir, a wilderness-like area, as a place for quiet usage, rather than noisy motorboat usage. I hope we geeks can use the net more effectively than the bombers and the boaters.

A recent private effort attempts to create (recreate?) the idea of a "world fair" over the Internet. Calling on the nostalgic look back at the great 'expositions' of the past 150 years, this web site parlays the nostalgia into a real -- and very much multi-national -- effort to provide the on-line world with a kind of "virtual" fair: access and information about people, places, and things that many would not see -- certainly not at the same rate of speed afforded by the Internet.

And the very ancient past is not immune. Approximately 20 days after the discovery of a spectacular series of cave art paintings in France, a set of near photographic quality images was placed on the Web. These breathtakingly beautiful rock art drawings are now visible worldwide - and event that facilitates their inspection and appreciation by a large number of people. This is certainly a larger audience than might be expected of a hard copy book (which would take far longer to produce) and an infinitely larger audience than would even be possible if actual visits to the site were encouraged (in fact, visiting to this and the Lascaux site are restricted to a select few).


5) Legal issues

Freedom of speech and censorship issues are greatly amplified on the Net. The recent Compuserve incident involving German government boycott threats, and AOL and other services privacy issues related also to pornography are highly newsworthy. Government threatened legislation has been largely hyperactive and oppressive. Even if resolved in favor of free speech issues, privacy issues, and publication rights remain and are humongous.with the one year lag for the hardcopy journal. And what about the permanence of its archiving as a publication?

The recent passage of an omnibus telecommunications bill, one which seeks to restrict the flow of certain kinds of information (ironically, some of the "no-no" words outlawed by this bill are freely available and used regularly on other forms of EMC -- television, radio etc..) has resulted in a worldwide response to this: those who maintain web sites at some level have voluntarily turned their sites 'black' as a form of protest. The extent -- or desired extent -- of the law seems clearly lost on lawmakers: one part of the bill extols the information providers to adhere to "standards of the local community", prompting one Netizen to ask how such standards might be constructed in a 'virtual' community!

Finally, one interesting 'late breaking' development centers around the concepts of secrecy and intellectual property rights. It seems that the late François Mitterand, former president of France, may have suffered a long illness, and, while serving in his post as President, managed to keep this a complete secret. His doctor had apparently written a book about this, and it was published shortly after Mitterand's death. Four days after it's release, the French Government attempted to ban the book. By that time, however, it was too late. The tome had found it's way into many hands, and several of those owners decided -- after the attempted ban -- to 'publish' the book on the Web! A game of Internet cat-and-mouse ensued, with the French government doggedly pursuing any and all sites where the text was located. The speed of the Internet proved to be too much for the French Police, however, and the text is now readily found in other places. The curious browser can go to an American University to view this text. It poses an interesting challenge to the authorities as to whether or not they can wage a successful campaign to control "undesirable" information content or not.