It is epitomized by the Internet. The huge potential of these services has attracted the attention of the business world, and today more and more business is transacted via the Internet. The impact of this trend is explored on the local, national, and global level by specific examples and some statistical facts. The Washington DC region is home to a great number of Government agencies, Government and private research institutions, and many high-tech companies in Northern Virginia alone there are over IT companies , that make a heavy use of the Internet.
The extent of Internet use, applications, and transactions executed by this collection of different Government and private organizations is so large that it is quite hard to think of how they were able to operate and carry out their daily business without the Internet as was the case only a few years ago. This is of course trivially true of those organizations that owe their very existence to the Internet. And the impact of the Internet in all its facets on this varied group of outfits has in turn impacted directly the DC economy.
It is sufficient to consider two conspicuous cases as examples. Founded in , America Online, Inc. America Online, headquartered in Dulles, Virginia. The following charts are from a AOL report. The revenue sources included advertising and commerce revenues, and AOL membership growth. For a company that employs thousands in the Washington DC region, such impressive performance is nothing but a blessing to the region's economy. Next we turn to the U. Federal Government, the largest employer in the DC region.
The Federal Government employs many thousands of workers in numerous Government agencies. All these agencies have Internet connections for communication, military, scientific, public information, and many other purposes. To maintain its vast Internet operations, a sizable part of the Government's work force-both internal and contract work force-consists of software and communication engineers, programmers, networks specialists, and other high-tech personnel.
This highly paid large body of workers has a huge buying power which contributes handsomely to the DC area economy. TRMM is the first mission dedicated to measuring tropical and subtropical rainfall through microwave and visible infrared sensors, and includes the first spaceborne rain radar. Tropical rainfall comprises more than two-thirds of global rainfall.
It is the primary distributor of heat through the circulation of the atmosphere. Understanding rainfall and its variability is crucial to understanding and predicting global climate change. By use of a low-altitude orbit of miles kilometers , TRMM's complement of state-of-the-art instruments will provide more accurate measurements. These new measurements will increase our knowledge of how rainfall releases heat energy to drive atmospheric circulation. This requires a highly paid skilled work force who lives and spends in and around Washington DC and thus invigorates the DC area economy.
TRMM is only one of thousands of similar Government projects and initiatives that prove to be a bonanza for the DC area economy. From U. Playing an important role in this are a shrinking budget deficit, low interest rates, a stable macro- economic environment, expanding international trade with fewer barriers, and effective private sector management. While the full economic impact of the Internet cannot yet be precisely assessed, its impact has been significant as can be seen from the following facts published in a U.
Accordingly, Internet commerce is growing fastest among businesses, and the number of Americans using the Internet has grown from fewer than 5 million in to as many as 62 million by Moreover, the number of names registered in the domain name system and the number of hosts connected to the Internet expanded greatly as can be seen from Table E1.
The table shows that the number registered domain names grew from 26, in July to 1. Table E1. From the report we learn that the appetite for top-level commercial.
At the same time hundreds of new firms were created whose business is to help businesses use the Internet effectively. These firms design Web pages with advertising banners, create Web-based catalogs, build security tools, create and track direct marketing trends, and develop means to speed up the flow of data and information across the network. This latter group of information technology start-ups is a good example of the direct impact of the Internet on the U.
It seems however that the greatest impact of the Internet on the U. This is best explained quite well in the following extended quotation from e-business page:.
The Web is changing every aspect of our lives, but no area is undergoing as rapid and significant a change as the way businesses operate. As businesses incorporate Internet technology into their core business processes they start to achieve real business value. Today, companies large and small are using the Web to communicate with their partners, to connect with their back-end data-systems, and to transact commerce.
This is e- business -- where the strength and reliability of traditional information technology meet the Internet. The new killer apps are interactive, transaction intensive, and let people do business in more meaningful ways. But this is an early stage of a new medium which is sure to expand dramatically given the present rate of growth. To assess the economic impact of the Internet globally, we shall concentrate on an important sector of the world economy: Tourism-a multi-billion industry. Tourism covers eco-tourism, adventure tourism, beaches, hotels, resorts, spas, national parks, restaurants, golf, skiing, conference centers, safari, boating, and many more recreational activities, all of which generate business on a large scale.
More than , people are directly employed in Southern Nevada's recreational industries. And when it comes to business from tourism, the Internet has had its impact globally.
From aggressive advertisement links , travel packaging and tourism research, to ticket purchasing and eco tourism, it can all be handled today via the Internet. In fact traditional travel agencies are starting to feel the Internet impact and are gradually shifting towards doing more and more business on the Net.
The transfer to business online has been accelerated due to the fact that major airlines have reduced dramatically the commissions paid to online travel services-to a level half that paid to conventional travel agencies. In turn the online services were able to pass on the lower costs and savings to the consumer. Com, and WorldRes. Contributing to this growth is the travel industry.
In the U. The economic impact of the Internet on our society was demonstrated by specific examples pertaining to the economies of the Washington DC region, the U. The examples were supported by Government as well the private sector reports.
The emerging picture is that of a basic change in the way business is done locally, nationally, and globally: More and more business is going online, and this trend is growing rapidly. This regards traditional business, and all the more so regarding IT companies such as America Online, Inc. Given the present rate of growth of e-commerce, the 21st century will no doubt witness even a greater impact of the Internet on the world economy.
The Internet drives the hottest stocks on Wall Street, shapes technological innovation, and fills the pages of the world's presses. What does this mean for society, government, commerce, and other institutions?
How will the way we live, work, learn, profit, govern, and communicate change? The Internet creates new ways for citizens to communicate, congregate, and share information of a social nature.
It is obvious that the Internet has and will continue to change the way we live. How it is changed, and how it will continue to change our lives, is the reason for so many conferences on the topic.
For example, the following is an abstract of a conference that took place:. This conference flows from the premise that information technology and more specifically, Internet technology are rapidly and radically transforming the character of life and work.
The changes driven by the Internet will have an enormous impact on the conduct of every aspect of our society, business, government, education, and private life. The impact on the design and construction industry will be no less dramatic. It is imperative, therefore, that industry leaders prepare themselves to evaluate opportunities and challenges they will face. We shall discuss one such school as one example, the C. This is a private school K with an objective to educate students to be good and productive American citizens, on the one hand, and leaders of the Jewish community on the other hand.
About four years ago, teachers were very slowly introduced to the world of computers. Most teachers were somewhat apprehensive, afraid that with an incorrect click, the computer would "explode".
How would the students learn if the teachers felt so inadequate? This is an area of great interest, as in this age of computer technology the roles are not always as traditional as in the past. It is not "here I am the teacher let me teach you something new", but rather, lets try and do this together. Let us search and and see what we can learn with the help of this new technology. The horizons of students and teachers, have become so much greater. Let us concentrate on one specific example.
The Book of Exodus is studied in the fifth grade classes in Hebrew. This year with the help of the Internet a new component was added, "Ancient Egypt". Searching the Internet was very interesting, as the graphics were wonderful to look at, the information most exciting. They were able to locate sites with Egyptian music too. With the help of a computer program called HyeperStudio the students were able to create a beautiful interactive project about Ancient Egypt.
A topic that could be very dry and bookish, took on an exciting life of its own, with the help of the excitement that exists with the use of the Internet. This is one small example that tells about the independence the Internet affords students.
Research can be done, in a way that is so much more exciting to most students. The students also participated in e-mailing in Hebrew with Kibbutz children in Israel. Students in other schools "talk" to authors over the Internet some residing in countries other than the U. The possibilities are limitless. What about comparing rain measurements by students in different countries?
What about comparing projects and different experiments? The Internet can make learning so much more exciting, interesting, very engaging and very much alive. Computers have been a source of joy for children for some years now, because of the games they like to play on them. So school work, that resembles play, is much more appealing.
With the vast opportunities the Internet, affords great learning with much joy. This is the reason that computers are taught from kindergarten. Some examples of "students project" can be seen on the schools website. Transforming Medicine and Health Synergistic discoveries and instant scientific collaborations between researchers working on areas as diverse as hereditary neurologic diseases and the basic biology of microorganisms all happening thanks to the Internet.
Telemedicine allows medical specialists in Boston to diagnose and treat patients in California. How will the Internet affect two aspects of "medicine, fundamental research and medical care? One of the impacts of the Internet on our society in the field of medicine, is the research capabilities it affords the general public, or the empowerment it affords patients and their families.
Once the patient or his family, were afforded just one second opinion. Those that could and still can afford it can go to as many doctors that they deem necessary. On the whole, the general public can see one "extra" specialist. Today, with the vast knowledge presented on the "Internet" one can glean great sources of information. The patient is much better informed to discuss his case with his doctor, understand alternatives, side affects, the latest treatments available and the statistical probabilities of success.
This most prestigious government facility engages some of the best doctors and scientist in the world, that work in pure and clinical research in the fields of medicine.
Everyone is most welcome to use their website to learn about any medical aspect that is of concern to them. Not just traditional medicine is available on N. H's website.
In recent years when alternative solutions to medical problems were gaining much interest, N. In part because it comes into practice before scientists can assess its effects and implications, so there is always a gap between social change and its understanding.
For instance, media often report that intense use of the Internet increases the risk of alienation, isolation, depression, and withdrawal from society.
In fact, available evidence shows that there is either no relationship or a positive cumulative relationship between the Internet use and the intensity of sociability.
We observe that, overall, the more sociable people are, the more they use the Internet. And the more they use the Internet, the more they increase their sociability online and offline, their civic engagement, and the intensity of family and friendship relationships, in all cultures—with the exception of a couple of early studies of the Internet in the s, corrected by their authors later Castells ; Castells et al.
Thus, the purpose of this chapter will be to summarize some of the key research findings on the social effects of the Internet relying on the evidence provided by some of the major institutions specialized in the social study of the Internet. I would like to emphasize that most of the data in these reports converge toward similar trends.
Thus I have selected for my analysis the findings that complement and reinforce each other, offering a consistent picture of the human experience on the Internet in spite of the human diversity.
Given the aim of this publication to reach a broad audience, I will not present in this text the data supporting the analysis presented here. Instead, I am referring the interested reader to the web sources of the research organizations mentioned above, as well as to selected bibliographic references discussing the empirical foundation of the social trends reported here.
In order to fully understand the effects of the Internet on society, we should remember that technology is material culture. It is produced in a social process in a given institutional environment on the basis of the ideas, values, interests, and knowledge of their producers, both their early producers and their subsequent producers.
In this process we must include the users of the technology, who appropriate and adapt the technology rather than adopting it, and by so doing they modify it and produce it in an endless process of interaction between technological production and social use. So, to assess the relevance of Internet in society we must recall the specific characteristics of Internet as a technology. Then we must place it in the context of the transformation of the overall social structure, as well as in relationship to the culture characteristic of this social structure.
Indeed, we live in a new social structure, the global network society, characterized by the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy.
Internet is a technology of freedom, in the terms coined by Ithiel de Sola Pool in , coming from a libertarian culture, paradoxically financed by the Pentagon for the benefit of scientists, engineers, and their students, with no direct military application in mind Castells The expansion of the Internet from the mids onward resulted from the combination of three main factors:.
Our society is a network society; that is, a society constructed around personal and organizational networks powered by digital networks and communicated by the Internet.
And because networks are global and know no boundaries, the network society is a global network society. This historically specific social structure resulted from the interaction between the emerging technological paradigm based on the digital revolution and some major sociocultural changes. A primary dimension of these changes is what has been labeled the rise of the Me-centered society, or, in sociological terms, the process of individuation, the decline of community understood in terms of space, work, family, and ascription in general.
This is not the end of community, and not the end of place-based interaction, but there is a shift toward the reconstruction of social relationships, including strong cultural and personal ties that could be considered a form of community, on the basis of individual interests, values, and projects. The process of individuation is not just a matter of cultural evolution, it is materially produced by the new forms of organizing economic activities, and social and political life, as I analyzed in my trilogy on the Information Age Castells — It is based on the transformation of space metropolitan life , work and economic activity rise of the networked enterprise and networked work processes , culture and communication shift from mass communication based on mass media to mass self-communication based on the Internet ; on the crisis of the patriarchal family, with increasing autonomy of its individual members; the substitution of media politics for mass party politics; and globalization as the selective networking of places and processes throughout the planet.
But individuation does not mean isolation, or even less the end of community. Sociability is reconstructed as networked individualism and community through a quest for like-minded individuals in a process that combines online interaction with offline interaction, cyberspace and the local space. Individuation is the key process in constituting subjects individual or collective , networking is the organizational form constructed by these subjects; this is the network society, and the form of sociability is what Rainie and Wellman conceptualized as networked individualism.
Network technologies are of course the medium for this new social structure and this new culture Papacharissi As stated above, academic research has established that the Internet does not isolate people, nor does it reduce their sociability; it actually increases sociability, as shown by myself in my studies in Catalonia Castells , Rainie and Wellman in the United States , Cardoso in Portugal , and the World Internet Survey for the world at large Center for the Digital Future et al.
Furthermore, a major study by Michael Willmott for the British Computer Society Trajectory Partnership has shown a positive correlation, for individuals and for countries, between the frequency and intensity of the use of the Internet and the psychological indicators of personal happiness.
He used global data for 35, people obtained from the World Wide Survey of the University of Michigan from to Controlling for other factors, the study showed that Internet use empowers people by increasing their feelings of security, personal freedom, and influence, all feelings that have a positive effect on happiness and personal well-being.
The effect is particularly positive for people with lower income and who are less qualified, for people in the developing world, and for women. Age does not affect the positive relationship; it is significant for all ages. Why women? Because they are at the center of the network of their families, Internet helps them to organize their lives.
Also, it helps them to overcome their isolation, particularly in patriarchal societies. The Internet also contributes to the rise of the culture of autonomy. The key for the process of individuation is the construction of autonomy by social actors, who become subjects in the process.
They do so by defining their specific projects in interaction with, but not submission to, the institutions of society. This is the case for a minority of individuals, but because of their capacity to lead and mobilize they introduce a new culture in every domain of social life: in work entrepreneurship , in the media the active audience , in the Internet the creative user , in the market the informed and proactive consumer , in education students as informed critical thinkers, making possible the new frontier of e-learning and m-learning pedagogy , in health the patient-centered health management system in e-government the informed, participatory citizen , in social movements cultural change from the grassroots, as in feminism or environmentalism , and in politics the independent-minded citizen able to participate in self-generated political networks.
There is increasing evidence of the direct relationship between the Internet and the rise of social autonomy. From to I directed in Catalonia one of the largest studies ever conducted in Europe on the Internet and society, based on 55, interviews, one-third of them face to face IN3 — As part of this study, my collaborators and I compared the behavior of Internet users to non-Internet users in a sample of 3, people, representative of the population of Catalonia.
Because in only about 40 percent of people were Internet users we could really compare the differences in social behavior for users and non-users, something that nowadays would be more difficult given the 79 percent penetration rate of the Internet in Catalonia.
Although the data are relatively old, the findings are not, as more recent studies in other countries particularly in Portugal appear to confirm the observed trends. We constructed scales of autonomy in different dimensions. Only between 10 and 20 percent of the population, depending on dimensions, were in the high level of autonomy. But we focused on this active segment of the population to explore the role of the Internet in the construction of autonomy.
Using factor analysis we identified six major types of autonomy based on projects of individuals according to their practices:. These six types of autonomous practices were statistically independent among themselves. This is a major empirical finding. Because if the dominant cultural trend in our society is the search for autonomy, and if the Internet powers this search, then we are moving toward a society of assertive individuals and cultural freedom, regardless of the barriers of rigid social organizations inherited from the Industrial Age.
From this Internet-based culture of autonomy have emerged a new kind of sociability, networked sociability, and a new kind of sociopolitical practice, networked social movements and networked democracy. I will now turn to the analysis of these two fundamental trends at the source of current processes of social change worldwide. Since creation of Friendster, prior to Facebook a new socio-technical revolution has taken place on the Internet: the rise of social network sites where now all human activities are present, from personal interaction to business, to work, to culture, to communication, to social movements, and to politics.
Social Network Sites are web-based services that allow individuals to 1 construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, 2 articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and 3 view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. Social networking uses, in time globally spent, surpassed e-mail in November It surpassed e-mail in number of users in July In terms of users it reached 1 billion by September , with Facebook accounting for about half of it.
In it has almost doubled, particularly because of increasing use in China, India, and Latin America. There is indeed a great diversity of social networking sites SNS by countries and cultures. In terms of demographics, age is the main differential factor in the use of SNS, with a drop of frequency of use after 50 years of age, and particularly The main Facebook U.
Nearly 60 percent of adults in the U. Females are as present as males, except when in a society there is a general gender gap. We observe no differences in education and class, but there is some class specialization of SNS, such as Myspace being lower than FB; LinkedIn is for professionals. Thus, the most important activity on the Internet at this point in time goes through social networking, and SNS have become the chosen platforms for all kind of activities, not just personal friendships or chatting, but for marketing, e-commerce, education, cultural creativity, media and entertainment distribution, health applications, and sociopolitical activism.
This is a significant trend for society at large. Let me explore the meaning of this trend on the basis of the still scant evidence. Social networking sites are constructed by users themselves building on specific criteria of grouping. There is entrepreneurship in the process of creating sites, then people choose according to their interests and projects. Networks are tailored by people themselves with different levels of profiling and privacy.
The key to success is not anonymity, but on the contrary, self-presentation of a real person connecting to real people in some cases people are excluded from the SNS when they fake their identity.
So, it is a self-constructed society by networking connecting to other networks. But this is not a virtual society. There is a close connection between virtual networks and networks in life at large.
This is a hybrid world, a real world, not a virtual world or a segregated world. People build networks to be with others, and to be with others they want to be with on the basis of criteria that include those people who they already know a selected sub-segment. Most users go on the site every day. It is permanent connectivity.
If we needed an answer to what happened to sociability in the Internet world, here it is:. There is a dramatic increase in sociability, but a different kind of sociability, facilitated and dynamized by permanent connectivity and social networking on the web. Based on the time when Facebook was still releasing data this time is now gone we know that in users spent billion minutes per month. This is not just about friendship or interpersonal communication.
People do things together, share, act, exactly as in society, although the personal dimension is always there. Thus, in the U. On Facebook, in the average user was connected to 60 pages, groups, and events, people interacted per month to million objects pages, groups, events , the average user created 70 pieces of content per month, and there were 25 billion pieces of content shared per month web links, news stories, blogs posts, notes, photos.
This transforms culture because people share experience with a low emotional cost, while saving energy and effort. They transcend time and space, yet they produce content, set up links, and connect practices.
It is a constantly networked world in every dimension of human experience. They co-evolve in permanent, multiple interaction. But they choose the terms of their co-evolution. Paradoxically, the virtual life is more social than the physical life, now individualized by the organization of work and urban living. Because people are increasingly at ease in the multi-textuality and multidimensionality of the web, marketers, work organizations, service agencies, government, and civil society are migrating massively to the Internet, less and less setting up alternative sites, more and more being present in the networks that people construct by themselves and for themselves, with the help of Internet social networking entrepreneurs, some of whom become billionaires in the process, actually selling freedom and the possibility of the autonomous construction of lives.
This is the liberating potential of the Internet made material practice by these social networking sites. The largest of these social networking sites are usually bounded social spaces managed by a company. However, if the company tries to impede free communication it may lose many of its users, because the entry barriers in this industry are very low. A couple of technologically savvy youngsters with little capital can set up a site on the Internet and attract escapees from a more restricted Internet space, as happened to AOL and other networking sites of the first generation, and as could happen to Facebook or any other SNS if they are tempted to tinker with the rules of openness Facebook tried to make users pay and retracted within days.
So, SNS are often a business, but they are in the business of selling freedom, free expression, chosen sociability. When they tinker with this promise they risk their hollowing by net citizens migrating with their friends to more friendly virtual lands.
Perhaps the most telling expression of this new freedom is the transformation of sociopolitical practices on the Internet. Power and counterpower, the foundational relationships of society, are constructed in the human mind, through the construction of meaning and the processing of information according to certain sets of values and interests Castells Ideological apparatuses and the mass media have been key tools of mediating communication and asserting power, and still are.
But the rise of a new culture, the culture of autonomy, has found in Internet and mobile communication networks a major medium of mass self-communication and self-organization. The key source for the social production of meaning is the process of socialized communication. I define communication as the process of sharing meaning through the exchange of information.
Socialized communication is the one that exists in the public realm, that has the potential of reaching society at large. Therefore, the battle over the human mind is largely played out in the process of socialized communication.
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