By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. We Can’t Handle What the Internet Has Done to Us
Jules Evans, OneZero, 2019/12/24
The funny thing, for me, is that I'm actually comfortable with all this chaos. The whole internet thing doesn't bother me. Why not? Here's how Jules Evans characterizes the problem: "Social media has also totally transformed our politics, in a decade. It’s ripped apart our sense of trust in media and politicians.... The trick mirror turns everything into a performance, so political debate becomes wrestling.... We have reached a stage of collective consciousness, through globalization and the internet, and we can’t quite handle it."
So why am I OK with all this? Maybe it's because I grew up in a small town, maybe it's because I was writing from an early age, maybe it's because I never trusted media and politicians, having seen from the inside how they fabricate reality, maybe it's because I read a lot of science fiction and to me all this is normal. More...
We Can’t Handle What the Internet Has Done to Us
The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing
Katie Notopoulos, BuzzFeed.News, 2020/01/02
In 1998 I was posting on discussion boards (like the old HotWired Threads) and on mailing lists (like WWW-Dev) and seen some of these early forums come and go. So I decided that I should copy and preserve these posts on my own website, just in case the boards and lists disappeared. Which, in fact, they did. And that's how today I ended up with a huge archive of more than 1600 articles on my web site. But most people, as the author of this article suggests, "did nothing", and so we are now in the situation where a lot of the web's original content has been lost. Indeed, this article is a relatively recent listing of sites that wen't down - MySpace, Froendster, Xanga and Webshots. There's so much more - the venerated (and verifiably ugly) GeoCities, for example, Blip.tv and Google Videos (which between them lost about half my videos), and of course almost all of the aforementioned discussion board and mailing list contents. More...
Le recours à Internet améliore-t-il les procédures de recrutement des entreprises ?
Le développement d’Internet a considérablement modifié le fonctionnement du marché du travail et notamment la manière dont les employeurs et les candidats se rencontrent. Cette étude vise à mesurer l’effet d’Internet sur le processus de recrutement des employeurs à partir des données de l’enquête « Offre d’emploi et recrutement 2016 » de la Dares menée auprès d’employeurs ayant recruté en 2015. Plus...
How the Internet On Cable Became the Internet As Cable
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. How the Internet On Cable Became the Internet As Cable
With the launch of YouTube in Canada, featuring the CBC (television) and CFL (football), and the launch of the USC Channel, it is worth pausing for a moment to reflect on the way "internet service providers, and cultural groups steadily move toward the delivery of content online that bears a striking resemblance to the conventional cable model." What characterizes the cable model is not only channels and bundles, but also barriers and borders. "The new Daily Show site," for example, "is off-limits for Canadians since the U.S.-based Comedy Central recently took the unprecedented step of redirecting Canadian visitors to the CTV-owned Comedy Network site". More...
A Folk History of the Internet
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. A Folk History of the Internet
I have landed in the Apocalypse, also known as Orange County, a place that is today full of smoke and fire and brimstone, wailing winds and howling banshees. I'm working on a video for the USQ conference and I am preparing for some talks here at the AECT conference. meanwhile, I'm told I should post the link to one of my ongoing projects, a people's history of the internet. I have been working on this at a low level for some time now. because what has always attracted me to the internet hasn't been the technology - which is mostly frustrating - or the business applications, but the very real people doing very real things. You can contribute to this if you would like; the intent is to eventually create a nice book out of the project. Stephen Downes, Stephen's Web October 22, 2007 [Link] [Tags: Books, Video, Project Based Learning]. More...
Old News Item On This New Thing Called Internet
By Stephen Downes - Stephen's Web. Old News Item On This New Thing Called Internet
George Siemens sent me this link to an old CBC video about this brand new thing called 'the Internet', now being used by 15 million people. (As an aside, I'm finding that I've come to really dislike the comments that get posted on YouTube. Maybe I'm becoming old and intolerant. More...
Internet des objets : « On est sortis de l’ère de la débrouille »
Ville intelligente, industrie du futur, cybersécurité, intelligence artificielle… Le CITC (Centre d’innovation des technologies sans contact) organisait en région une semaine dédiée à l’Internet des objets et à l’innovation. Plus...
New public policies for the Internet – 2019 IGF in Berlin

Russia Is About to Disconnect From the Internet: What That Means
On Nov. 1, Russia is poised to disconnect from the internet—in theory. That is when a long-planned internet bill will go into effect and lay the foundation for a national network whereby internet service providers are controlled by Roskomnadzor, Russia’s telecom agency. More...
Broadband adoption is on the rise, but states can do much more
Broadband, which enables high-speed internet access, is essential infrastructure in our digital age. However, with 19 million disconnected households across the country, it is impossible to capitalize on broadband’s full economic and social impacts. More...