All Quotes

"Only 12 years ago the networks were fragmented, today the Internet unites the world."

"Imagine being able to communicate at-will with 10 million people all over the world. Imagine having direct access to catalogs of hundreds of libraries as well as the most up-to-date news, busi-ness and weather reports. Imagine being able to get medical advice or gardening advice immediately from any number of experts. "This is not a dream. It's internet."

"The utopian vision of an open, reliable, and secure global network has not been achieved and is unlikely ever to be realized. Today, the internet is less free, more fragmented, and less secure."

"The Internet has made me very casual with a level of omniscience that was unthinkable a decade ago. I now wonder if God gets bored knowing the answer to everything."

"Researchers have sought to understand and explain the core differences between computer-mediated and FtF communication processes (for reviews, see Caplan 2001, 2003; Hancock & Dunham, 2001; Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, & Sunnafrank, 2002; Riva, 2002; Walther, 199,, 2004; Walther, Anderson, & Park, 1994; Walther & Parks, 2002). Among the earliest theories to emerge was the cues-filtered-out perspective (Culnan & Markus, 1987; also see Walther & Parks, 2002), which suggested that some forms of CMC are less personal than FtF activity because of the reduced number of contextual and nonverbal cues available in text-based online social interaction. The cues-filtered-out perspective asserts that the diminished available cues available in CMC create a heightened sense of anonymity, which leads to a more impersonal communication exchange than is present in FtF interaction. As Ramirez and Burgoon (2004) note, however, researchers have moved away from early perspectives focusing solely on cue deficits, toward more sophisticated theories that consider the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms people use to compensate for the lack of cues available in text-based CMC. One particularly influential theoretical perspective that describes how CMC and FtF processes differ is Walther's (1996) hyperpersonal communication perspective. According to Walther, interpersonal CMC can become hyperpersonal because it affords message sender a host of communicative advantages over traditional FtF interaction. Compared to ordinary FtF situations, due to the reduced number of available nonverbal cues, a hyperpersonal message sender has a greater ability to strategically develop and edit self-presentation, enabling a selective and optimized presentation of oneself to others (Walther, 1996, Walther & Burgoon, 1992). This process then allows senders to selectively control the quantity, quality, and even validity of personal information available to other participants (e.g., age, race, physical appearance, sex), to form idealized impressions of their partners and, consequently, engage in more intimate exchanges than people in FtF situations (Tidwell & Walther; 2002; Walther, 1993, 1996 Walther & Burgoon, 1992)."

"The social identification model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) proposed that, despite offering fewer interpersonal cues (e.g., Culnan & Markus, 1987), CMC is not necessarily impersonal; rather, impression formation online results in more socially categorical, rather than personal, impressions of others (Lea & Spears, 1992; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995; Spears & Lea, 1992, 1994; Spears, Postmes, & Lea, 2002). Similarly, social information-processing (SIP) theory (Walther, 1992, 1993; Walther & Burgoon, 1992; Walther, Loh, & Granka, 2005) also takes issue with the notion that CMC is necessarily impersonal; instead, SIP theory suggests that online interpersonal relationship development might require more time to develop than traditional FtF relationships."

"In addition to research on CMC and relational communication, in general, other studies have examined therapeutic relational communication online. There is a good deal of evidence suggesting that online support and therapeutic discussion groups are an important positive aspect of the Internet (e.g., see Caplan & Turner, in press; Walther & Perks, 2002; Wright, 1999, 2000, 2002; Wright & Bell, 2003). To date, researchers have not firmly established whether participation in online emotional support has therapeutic value that is less than, equivalent to, or beyond that obtained via FtF support (Finfgeld, 2000; Owen, Yarbough, Varga, & Tucker, 003; Walther & Boyd, 2002). The few studies that have compared computer-mediated and FtF psychotherapy sessions have reported that participants in both groups exhibited relatively equivalent outcomes (e.g., Cohen & Kerr, 1998; Day & Schneider, 2002; for a review, see Rochlen, Zack, & Speyer, 2004). To advance understanding of online emotional support, Walther and Parks (2002) recommend that researchers begin to develop explanations for why CMC might be particularly effective as a support medium."

"The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity, this is something truly good, a gift from God."

"Internet is the most successful example of the eternal present."

"[I]n one study comparing FtF to CMC romantic relationships, Cornwell and Lundgren (2001) found that CMC partners engaged in greater misrepresentation during self-presentation than their FtF counterparts. They attributed the difference in levels of misrepresentation to a lower level of relational involvement among CMC romantic partners, compared to those using an FtF channel. In another study, Joinson (2001) reported that levels of spontaneous self-disclosure were greater in CMC exchanges than in FtF interactions when there was a heightened sense of private self-awareness and a lower sense of public self awareness associated with CMC exchange. Other researchers have reported that, compared to FtF interactions, CMC exchanges include more direct and more intimate uncertainty reduction strategies (e.g., greater proportions of direct questions and self-disclosing statements; Tidwell & Walther, 2002), along with less detailed and more intense impressions of communication partners (Hancock & Dunham, 2001). As Rabby and Walther (2003) explain, “The development of relationships online may simply be temporaraly retarded in comparison to FtF relationship development” (p. 148). Empirical evidence supports this hypothesis. In one study of CMC and impression formation, Walther (1993) found that members of FtF groups developed impressions of one another more quickly than their CMC counterparts. But after a 6-week period, the CMC groups formed impressions that were as well developed as those exhibited by the FtF participants."

"In terms of communicating social support, Burleson and Goldsmith (1998) argue that the type of conversational environment most conducive to effective comforting requires reducing the distressed other's self-presentational anxiety. Caplan and Turner (in press) propose that establishing such an environment might be easier and more effective if the conversation is computer-mediated. They further assert that computer-mediated social support interactions might be especially helpful at creating a conversational context that is less socially risky than its FtF counterpart. For example, Walther and Boyd (2002) contend that computer mediated discussions of stigmatized topics are likely to be perceived as less threatening than their FtF counterparts due to their increased anonymity and increased social distance, which facilitate better stigma management. These findings that reflect how CMC social support affords its users reduced social stigma and increased anonymity were further validated by other similar studies (Gustafson et al., 19999; McKenna & Bargh, 1998; White & Dorman, 2001; Wright, 2002). Online health applications are discussed further in chapter 12 by Whitten (this volume). Caplan and Turner (in press) also point out that computer-mediated emotional support allows support seekers who have limited mobility to participate in groups that they would be less willing, if at all able, to attend if offered in an FtF format (Braithwaite, Waldron, & Finn., 1999; White & Dorman, 2001; Wright, 2002). Along a similar line, online conversation partners are not bound by proximity and geographical barriers; individuals can communicate with a seemingly limitless number of diverse people who would be difficult or impossible to locate in most FtF cases (Barrera, Glasgow, McKay, Boles, & Feil, 2002; Braithwaite et al., 1999; Finfgeld, 2000; Finn, 1999; Sharf, 1997; Walther & Boyd, 2002; White & Dorman, 2001; Wizelberg, 1997; Wright, 2002)."

"Young (1998) reported that dependent users mainly utilized the social and interactive functions of the Internet, whereas nondependents used the Internet more for information gathering. Similarly, Young and Rogers (1998) note that problematic or abusive Internet use involved primarily socially interactive uses, which also appear to be associated with low self-esteem. In another study, Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) found that the social aspects of Internet use consistently differentiated those with more Internet use problems from others, as the former were more likely to use the Internet for seeking emotional support, talking with others, and playing highly socially interactive games. LaRose, Lin, and Eastin (2003), based on uses and gratifications as well as operant conditioning theory, argue that when individuals have received repeated expected grafifications (or rewards) from Internet use over time, their Internet use behavior can turn into a conditioned habit (operant conditions). If these individuals subsequently preoccupy themselves with this habit due to deficient self-regulation of their Internet use behavior, they can go one step further and isolate themselves from society to the extent of becoming addicted to Internet use."

"In conclusion, computer-mediated social interaction technologies have facilitated significant changes in how people relate to members of their personal and professional social networks. For example, physical distance or proximity between network members is becoming increasingly less important. Thus, as Meyerowitz (1985) observes, “Where one is has less and less to do with that one knows and experiences. Electronic media have altered the significance of time and space for social interaction” (p. viiii). These changes in social interaction channels also create new challenges for parents. Growing concerns about children's safety online, for example, stem from the increasingly permeable physical boundaries that once separated families from the larger community. Meyerowitz (1985) notes that “the walls of the family home, for example, are no longer effective barriers that wholly isolate the family from the larger community and society. The family home is now a less bounded and unique environment” (p. viii). As computer-mediated social interaction becomes more widespread, we can expect that physical location will become an increasingly less salient predictor of with whom we interact. Hampton and Wellan (2000) make a similar point, observing that “whatever happens, new communication technologies are driving out the traditional belief that community can only be found locally” (p. 195). Clearly, communications scholars will need to adapt communication theories to evolving technologies and changing contexts in order to understand the uses and effects of computer-mediated social interaction technologies."

"NPR's coverage of the post-web era describes a "great online awakening" driven by an explosion in the number of internet-connected people. "The result is more chaos than you can imagine and literally thousands and thousands of websites," Rich Dean reported for NPR in 1996. By the end of 1995, more than 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada alone spent an average of 5 hours per week on the internet."

"I’m turning 41, but I don’t feel like celebrating."

"Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly."

"Things have been going in the wrong direction -- more surveillance, more control of everything we do on the net and also stricter copyright laws -- that's the wrong course for Europe. We want to set a new one."

"High-speed internet has a positive impact on poverty reduction."

"Better access to information increases farmers' effectiveness in agriculture. And fintech [financial technology] can make transactions more effective and less corrupt."

"As customers embrace the Net for real business, they're doing something much more than posting a Web site, offering their brochure or 800 number on the Web. "E-Business" done well involves every process of their business -- from order entry to inventory, to fulfillment, to distribution, to customer care. Consequently, it challenges, and in some cases overturns, very established ways of doing business in financial services, in distribution, in almost every industry."

"The main point here is that there will be lots of ways -- lots of low-cost ways -- for people to get on the Net and participate in this new economy. So, together we will have a greater opportunity to take unprecedented levels of service and information to the entire world regardless of an individual's social or political standing, or personal buying power."

"Today, almost everyone is talking about the Internet as the ultimate medium of business. And so now we find ourselves in 1999 taking an equally unconventional position: Today it's clear to us that the greatest value being created by this networking technology is not in these new "dot-com" Internet companies that a lot of people seem to believe are going to redefine the world of retail, of Wall Street, of the media industry, and gobble up everyone's business. These are interesting companies, and maybe one or two of them will be profitable someday. But I think of them as fireflies before the storm all stirred up, throwing off sparks. But the storm that's arriving -- the real disturbance in the force -- is when the thousands and thousands of institutions that exist today seize the power of this global computing and communications infrastructure and use it to transform themselves. That's the real revolution. ...Right now, there's a lot of focus on e-commerce -- on Net-based buying and selling. But we think that equally important, if not more important, are the staggering investments our customers are starting to make in what we call "e-business." E-business includes e-commerce, of course. But it's about a broader set of transactions and important applications that will go to the Net in supply chain, in customer care, in e-service; and internally in applications from product development to logistics to employee training to knowledge management inside enterprises. In fact, our view is that the Web enabling of these core business process will deliver returns on investments that will equal or exceed the returns on investments coming from e-commerce."

"The NET is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it."

"The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

"The Internet has created a seismic disruption to the balance of power in the media. It is getting easier and easier to post your thoughts, photos, or videos. Yet the Wild West of the Web is being tamed. Small Internet service providers are being driven out of business, with corporations like Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T dominating the market. Privacy, security, and the freedom to publish without fear of censorship are dwindling with each merger, with each effort by corporate lobbyists to further restrict the open Internet in favor of a narrow profit advantage."

"During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system."

"In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies — even our dreams."

"When sputnik and Apollo 11 fired the imagination of the world, everyone began predicting that by the end of the century, people would be living in space colonies on Mars and Pluto. Few of these forecasts came true. On the other hand, nobody foresaw the Internet."

"When education, banking and healthcare are online, and huge groups can't leverage these tools, the people who struggle most are struggling harder."

"She was crying to her mother about not being able to finish her homework because she didn't have internet access at home, and the library was closed. I'll never forget the mother's face, she was distraught and it was heartbreaking."

"People say, why don't you create a food platform, or something else tech-driven. But if you can't connect to the internet, it doesn't matter what else you can do"

"That's the beauty of the Web: You can roll around in a stranger's obsession without having to smell his or her house. You can amscray whenever you want without being rude. The site gets its "hit" and you know more about our species' diversity."

"The origin of the Internet dates back to when, in the shadow of the former Soviet Union's program the United States established the (DARPA) within the Department of Defense. Four years later a Ph.D. student at , Leonard Kleinrock, published the first paper on theory. With packet switching a message that is sent from one computer to another is broken down into small packets of digital data."

"The is a global system of interconnected computer networks that is used by billions of people worldwide. In the 1960s, a team of computer scientists working for the U.S. Defense Department's (Advanced Research Projects Agency) built a communications network to connect the computers in the agency, called , the predecessor of the internet. It used a method of data transmission called "", developed by computer scientist and team member , based on prior work of other computer scientists. This technology was progressed in the 1970s by scientists and , who developed the crucial communication protocols for the internet, the (TCP) and the (IP), according to computer scientist in his book “Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science” (, 2021). For this, Kahn and Cerf are often credited as "inventors of the internet”."

"In Paul Baran of the published, "On Distributed Communication Networks" in which he formulated the concept of packet-switching networks having no single outage point. With these theoretical concepts in place, others could develop workable concepts. Two additional key elements, re-routing around outages and access by other networks, helped lay the necessary groundwork to create the theoretical basis for the inception of an Internet. The underlying motive for developing this technology was to streamline communication between military command centers, remote missile bases and other installations in the event of a preemptive nuclear attack. DARPA funds for developing packet switching in the late accounted for 60% of the computer research done in the United States at that time. Much of the concern during this period of the cold war was based upon a study done by the RAND Corporation that cited the lines of communication as the most vulnerable portion of U.S. military command."

"In late , civilian contractors developed the network technology that grew into the Internet. The first network to use the packet switching technology was not actually built until , however, and it contained only four nodes. This network was used by the Department of Defense and was known as . The first ARPANET transmission occurred when Kleinrock logged on from a computer connected to a Stanford computer and typed the word "login." Although the system crashed as he typed in the "g" of "login," the Internet revolution was born. By 1973, a total of 37 nodes were in operation."

"In , the adopted the use of TCP/IP protocols on ARAPANET, which by this time, consisted of more than 100 nodes. The military felt that separate resources were needed for research and military uses. Thus, MILNET was established for the exclusive use of the military while ARAPANET continued to be a tool dedicated to government related research. ARAPANET and MILNET became separate networks when the term "Internet" was expanded to include the academic and research computer networks that were emerging. The proliferation of the IBM compatible personal computer, which sold over 75 million machines in the early , provided an increasing number of researchers and scholars access to computer networks. Groups of universities within various regions of the country began to form networks, some with , to exchange and other ."

", and were used primarily by people in universities or in technical industries, and along with other Internet applications were terminal based and not easy to use. During the early there were a few attempts to go beyond the basic protocols and allow for a more user-friendly interaction with the Internet."

"By , an estimated 50 million users were connected to the Internet worldwide. With the , the program came into existence with the goal of connecting millions of schools. was founded in 1999 to set standards for , which was already blossoming. The business and media worlds were rocked in 2000 when and announced their merger, making the marriage of the media industry and a reality. In , during a strong period of innovation, the first cyber-age robbery occurred in Russia. The theft of millions of dollars from showed the world the ramifications of the misuse of this new technology."

"The commercial exploitation of the web has become a growing facet of the world economy, particularly in the last several years. In June 1999 NUA Internet Surveys estimated that 179 million people are connected to the Internet worldwide. A recent study by the sponsored by estimated that the "Internet Economy" generated $300 billion in revenue in the United States alone."

"When we sent that first message, there weren't any reporters, cameras, tape recorders or scribes to document that major event. ... We knew we were creating an important new technology that we expected would be of use to a segment of the population, but we had no idea how truly momentous an event it was."

"What I wrote was that the internet and dreams share the same quality of giving rise to the repressed subconscious. I think in countries like Japan and America and other countries where internet is prevalent, people can anonymously seek or release things they can't speak of offline, as if there's a part of the subconscious that's uncontrollable and comes out on the internet. That is very much like dreams. This may be a very visualistic analogy, but I've always thought we drop down into dreams, and when you're sitting in front of your computer and connect to the internet, you're also going down into some kind of underworld. I've always thought those two images had something in common. I'm not trying to say that dreams and the internet are good or bad, I'm trying to saying that there's good and bad that cannot be judged in both worlds. Some people say that in the virtual world, different rules exist or try to say that a lot of vicious things happen there, but I don't think there's a reason to differentiate the virtual world from reality because reality includes that virtual world."

"Being a netizen in China is an interesting experience. You can learn a lot from what is posted—and even more from what [the] censors delete."

"Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices."

"The real definition of Internet is: "lots of blogs and fat people trying to have sex with you.""

"The internet is like a big circus tent full of scary, boring creatures and pornography."

"You should view Internet arguments as a really crummy fighting game: only the utter idiots bother pressing the "block / defend" button. While your enemy cowers in a corner with their arms raised above their face to futilely protect them, real men pull off complex 408-move combos that involve transforming into a fiery phoenix of doom and releasing unrelenting waves of liquid napalm Satan clown death upon them."

"For hundreds of millions of years, Sex was the most efficient method for propagating information of dubious provenance: the origins of all those snippets of junk DNA are lost in the sands of reproductive history. Move aside, Sex: the world-wide Web has usurped your role."

"I'll probably be the last to know, because I don't get on the internet no more."

"In my 2008 article, I highlighted the word for ‘broadband’ in Germanic: we have breiðband in Icelandic, breëband in Afrikaans, breedband in Dutch, breitband in German and bredbånd in Danish, etc., all showing regular sound shifts from Proto-Germanic, which is reconstructible as proto-Germanic *braiđazbanđan, albeit without this implying that proto-Germanic tribes had the Internet... As such, they are intended to show that calque formation can generate an extraordinary diversity of expressions for an item of technology invented on a single occasion within a very restricted time frame and hence that such expressions do not allow any inferences to be drawn as to whether there was a single invention of an item of technology or multiple inventions (e.g. the French mania for coining their own neologisms, in this case ‘high flow rate’, by no means entails an independent invention). Nor do they tell us anything about the point of origin of this item. They also violate the rule of thumb according to which, the degree of lexical differentiation is a function of the age of the item. All that is required for this process to occur is a network and if anything, it shows that the more extensive the network linking speakers, the more diversity it generates, since the number of routes for dissemination is multiplied. Apply [the] logic on wheel etymologies to the above and you would have [Indo-Europeanist David Anthony] arguing that proto-Germanic couldn’t have broken up before broadband appeared in 2000 and the French and the Slavs each invented their own versions of broadband."