Internet: A Medium Or A Message?

Internet: A Medium or a Message?

The State of the Net: An Interim Report about the Future of the Internet

Who are the participants who constitute the Internet?

- Users - connected to the net and interacting with it

- The communications lines and the communications equipment

- The intermediaries (e.g. the suppliers of on-line information or access providers).

- Hardware manufacturers

- Software authors and manufacturers (browsers, site development tools, specific applications, smart agents, search engines and others).

- The "Hitchhikers" (search engines, smart agents, Artificial Intelligence - AI - tools and more)

- Content producers and providers

- Suppliers of financial wherewithal (currently - corporate and institutional cash to be replaced, in the future, by advertising money)

- The fate of each of these components - separately and in solidarity - will determine the fate of the Internet.

- The Internet has hitherto been considered the territory of computer wizards. Thus, any attempt at predicting its future applied the Olympic formula : "Faster, Higher, Stronger" to its hardware and software determinants.

Media experts, sociologists, psychologists, advertising and marketing executives were left out of the collective effort to determine the future face of the Internet.

The Internet cannot be currently defined as a medium. It does not function as one - rather it is a very disordered library, mostly incorporating the writings of non-distinguished megalomania...

Internet: A Medium Or A Message?

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