Alan T. Miller

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What Does the Internet Mean?

By Alan T. Miller | November 1998

“The Internet has yet to discover where its boundaries lie and to establish what it cannot do.”

— Geoff Huston

The jury is in, the Internet is big news and it is here to stay. The Internet is not only big news but also big industry and increasingly becoming a bigger part of our everyday lives. It has simply, and undeniably exploded onto the cultural landscape. What this all means is that fundamental changes are taking place at almost every level of modern life, and they are taking place at lighting speed, changes that occur so fast no one can keep atop the latest developments.

As for the specifics of those changes they are vast and many, the ability to conduct electronic commerce being one obvious example; electronic delivery of education another. It's a desperate race to get online. The first question one might ask about this phenomenon is why is it so pervasive and how come now; a better question perhaps is what does it all mean? This paper will briefly try to answer the first question and attempt an answer at the second.

As for our first question, why, in light of the fact that computer networking has existed for over 30 years, the Internet has enjoyed so much success so quickly. In comparison to previous networking technologies of the last 30 years, what makes the Internet so substantial is that it operates for the most part, independent of proprietary technology and also much like the Borg of Star Trek science fiction, the Internet simply assimilates all other communication technologies and as it does so and gains even more momentum with each and every assimilation. With computer hardware becoming ever more accessible, high-speed Internet access a reality for more more people and institutions, and massive fiber-optic networks proliferating which will carry all the Internet's traffic, the collective's scope is amassing at lightning speed and showing no signs of slowing down.

At the center of this phenomenon is a widely accepted protocol coupled with a simple idea. TCP/IP (Transmission Control Protocol / Internet Protocol) is that protocol, and the simple idea is that a computer network ought to focus on simply moving information and should leave the more difficult tasks of deciphering that information to individual host computers at both the sending and receiving ends 1. While it was a remarkable and perhaps radical idea at its conception that would require computer network operators worldwide to share programming in common, the concept, fostered by the excitement and possibilities eventually caught on. Once the protocol was in place, room for the foundational Internet applications that we know today such as the Usenet, IRC and World Wide Web, became probable.

The widespread implementation of the TCP/IP protocol not only made the Internet possible but also created a computer network that was like no other before it. Rather than passing proprietary information for proprietary purposes, the Internet became the first network that combined the power and functionality of all the communication networks that preceded it 2 as well as opened the doors for much of the new technologies we are witnessing today come online.

On a technical level, we might see Internet communication as Shannon and Weaver saw communication in general, as a linear process by which messages are sent and received and if we were only interested in the mechanics and engineering of the Internet that would be sufficient. However, just as communication scholars have pointed out deficiencies in Shannon and Weaver's model of human communication and argue that it is too limiting when trying to understand human communication, much the same can be said of trying to understand Internet communication.3

It should be obvious by now that the Internet is more than a technical phenomenon and increasing common household word. For purposes of this paper, this short technical explanation as to the Internet's recent explosive growth is given to attest to the fact that indeed, a significant new communication technology of grand scale has been introduced into the life-world of human civilization. The Internet as we can see, is not just another communication technology but one that has the power to bring together all previous communication technologies in ways that were never before possible. The emergence of the Internet is not just a quantitative advancement, but a qualitative one opening the door for communicative experiences hitherto unknown to human beings. With that said, leaving Shannon and Weaver behind, the question becomes, what does the Internet mean for the future of humanity?

According to communication scholars Couch and Shen, "Any change in the information technologies of a culture will have major consequences for the type of information accumulated, retained and shared. That in turn will have major consequences for the social relationships of the society. And any transformation of social structures transforms human consciousness."4 Taking this into account, we can see that the explosive growth and dominance of the Internet will have much farther-reaching implications than what might appear on the surface. In other words, if we take this statement to heart, the Internet can be seen as an agent of change that will effect not only how we define and use information, but will affect how we structure ourselves and our relationships with others, and even transform to a degree our subjective selves.

Types of Information

Every communication technology can be said to have its own bias favoring certain types of information over others. According to Couch and Shen, "The type and amount of information retained is partially contingent upon the information technologies of a society."5 Each communication technology whether we are speaking of an oral, pictographic or phonetic communication technology carries with it its own bias. For example, an oral technology like that used by Homer in the Iliad and Odyssey conducts itself in real time and "gives greater emphasis to sensations than pictographic technologies."6

Pictographic technologies while perhaps less dramatic, display a "larger esthetic component than phonetic technologies."7 Phonetic technologies allow the spoken word to be reproduced with greater fidelity or accuracy while perhaps downplaying the drama of an oral technology and the esthetics of a pictographic technology. While the Iliad and Odyssey are great testaments to the amount of information an oral society could retain, each technology brings with it new possibilities for the amount of information a society can retain. According to Couch and Shen, "Oral technologies made it possible for human beings to retain much more information than was possible by ordinary speech"8 Just as oral technologies increased the amount of information human beings could retain, the development of writing accomplished the same ends.9 When taking the Internet into consideration, information retention is only limited by the amount of hard drive space or backup media available. However, as mentioned before, the Internet offers more than a quantitative change in the amount of information we have at our disposal, it offers at the same time a qualitative change as well. The Internet harbors the capability of reproducing all of the above biases in each of the communication technologies outlined above at the same time.

According to Couch and Shen, "The static quality of written information allows a number of people to examine the information in a detached manner over time."10 The Internet is a communication technology that not only spans time and space but also exists in the here and now. The Internet as a communication technology can deliver the drama of an oral epic poem and deliver it at 30 frames a second, live from anywhere in the world at anytime. The Internet as a communication technology like the esthetics of pictographic communication technologies often touts its own esthetic ability to deliver information in ways that make pictographic technology seem static and stale. The Internet as a communications technology can not only reproduce the fidelity of the spoken word as phonetic literacy can, but it can do it in a number of ways either by actually reproducing the spoken word in a stream of audio, as the text itself, or a combination of both with pictographs thrown in. In fact some have argued that Internet communication technologies bring about new types of communicative experiences altogether.11

Social Relationships and social Structures

Theorists of the past have said much about the future social landscape that new communication technologies will bring. Mcluhan perhaps being one of the most popular not only coined the phrase, "The medium is the message," but also serves as a good place to begin this discussion. Although it is doubtful we will see Mcluhan's global village anytime soon, we can expect to see the Internet as a communication technology helping to facilitate major change in our social relationships and structures. As mentioned earlier in this paper we are already beginning to see how the Internet as a communication technology, is reshaping the world of commerce. In his book, "The End of Work," Cal Rifkin suggests that the effects are so great that work as we know it is about to undergo a radical transformation. The current relationships we associate with commerce will undergo radical change displacing most jobs of today in favor of either low paying service work, or high paid information specialists. While it may be too early to say whether Rifkin is correct in his analysis, Couch and Shen do suggest that the relationship between information specialists and nonspecialists play a key role in understanding social structures.12

Maines and Couch, suggest that "Transactionally, as information technologies are put to use for a variety of purposes, both the user, the audience, and their contexts are transformed."13 From this we might assert that the Internet as a communication technology will in fact transform the context in which we communicate with others as we are already seeing in some areas (commerce being one such example). Another example we see unfolding now is that of education. Education, a sacred institution which could hardly have been conceived outside the relationship between a professor, teacher, instructor and student which we currently imagine occurring in real time much in the same way we might imagine a Greek poet reciting Homer we find now often taking place in the new context of computer mediated communication. It is no secret that distance learning will become a major component of modern education. In fact, ironically when it comes to the latest in high technology, the majority of education and training now takes place electronically and that is more often than not the preferred method.14

Couch and Shen further argue that "Each technology elaborates upon and reorganizes information and since all social structures rest upon a foundation of information, changes in information technologies simultaneously reorganize social structures."15 On a more individual level the Internet as a communication technology has had the power of bringing together people in ways that were hitherto impossible, or at the least, unlikely. In contrast to Mcluhan's global village where we come together as a community with shared beliefs and attitudes the Internet affords many opportunities to interact in virtual communities specifically tailored to individual interests. The significance of this for purposes of this paper is not so much that people are given more of a chance to engage others in discourse that they may not have before, but that by doing so, they are in effect as Maines and Couch have suggested, changing the context in which they engage each other, or as Couch and Shen have suggested the changing of their context results in reorganization of social structures (social structures are changed).

Human Consciousness

Information at this point needs to be distinguished from communication. Whereby information is inert; communication exists as an active intentional or unintentional process that is shared. Information can exist independent of interaction; communication requires active participation. It is through communication not information that we distinguish ourselves and define who we are and make sense of our world.

For example, The German philosopher, Martin Heidegger once said, "Language is the house of Being." By this, a simple explanation of what he meant was to say that language, i.e. the way in which we communicate, is what defines our world and our subjective existence.16 Another example of this phenomenon might be when we take into account Einstein's theory of relativity. Drawing from Einstein's theory, Maines and Couch assert, "Reality is always encased in a communicative matrix"17 Communication seen in this vein determines our place in the world. If there is any truth to either Heidegger's assertion or Maines and Couch's suggestion, or the discussion above, than it becomes evident that the Internet will bring with it a qualitative change to modern life and the subjective experience of living it.

Mark Poster is one theorist who offers us a post-structuralist cultural analysis of emerging media technologies. For him "The technically advanced societies are at a point in their history similar to that of the emergence of an urban, merchant culture in the midst of feudal society in the Middle Ages."18 Poster has named this new media epoch "The Second Media Age." The Second Media Age is characterized by another analytical construct he has named, "The Mode of Information." The Mode of Information is a takeoff of Marx's concept the mode of production, whereby Marx wanted to characterize advanced capitalistic societies in terms of production; Poster wants to characterize modern advanced societies in terms of Information technologies.19

As a scholar who writes in the post structuralist tradition, Poster wants to place subject constitution at the fore, and borrows from post structuralist writers as Foucault who focus on how we might make sense of our world. For Poster, the first media age was characterized by mass communication systems that were unidirectional in nature and fixed such as newsprint, radio and television. The new media according to Poster "promotes the individual as an unstable identity, as a continuous process of multiple identity formation, and raises the question of a social form beyond the modern, the possibility of a postmodern society."20 What was characteristic of the modern, at least for Poster, is not characteristic of this second media age. The ability for subjects to interact in new ways for Poster at least opens up new ways of "being" in the world if we may borrow Heidegger's terminology.

So, not only does the Internet as a communication technology promise to change the nature of what information makes up our world, and perhaps the potential reorganization of society, but the Internet as an information technology provides for radically new opportunities in constituting oneself. Much in the same way that our subjective experience might differ if we were to live in an oral culture, this second media age, if Poster is correct, could have the effect of changing reality as we know it. As we can see the Internet indeed is more than an idea, a protocol, an extension or more efficient means to improve upon current communication technologies, but introduces something new into the life-world of human existence. As has been pointed out by Couch and Shen as well as Maines and Couch along with other communication scholars, communication itself is more than the sum of its parts. Communication, and communication technologies, while not a necessarily a deterministic factor of human organization and experience, they do play a major role in the human experience. While it may be too early to tell what the advent of the Internet will bring, whatever it may be, it promises to be profound and substantial.

  1. This is of course a simplistic assessment of the contributions made by computer networking pioneers such as Paul Baran (considered by many to be the father of computer networking). To see the complete collection of Baran's papers see http://www.rand.org/publications/RM/baran.list.html.
  2. Geoff Huston "ISP Survival Guide; Strategies for Running a Competitive ISP," (John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, 1999) p. 16.
  3. For a more complete discussion of Shannon and Weaver's communication model, its influence and its place among the discipline of communication studies, see "Introduction to Communication Studies" by John Fisk (Routledge, London, 1982).
  4. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 155.
  5. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." In reference to Innis. p. 160.
  6. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 162.
  7. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 162.
  8. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 157.
  9. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 161.
  10. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 162.
  11. For more information about the emergence of possibly new types of communicative experiences see Walther's work on hyper-personal communication.
  12. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 168.
  13. David R. Maines and Carl J. Couch "On The Indispensability of Communication for Understanding Social Relationships and Social Structure" Communication and Social Structure. p.12.
  14. A burgeoning industry has arisen to answer to the call for highly trained information technology specialists where certification in the latest technologies is the most prized possession. Consequently the fastest route to these certifications is increasingly becoming Internet based and electronic variants of training. For an example of one such company that has taken on the challenge of high-tech Internet based education, see http://www.knowledgenet.com.
  15. Carl J. Couch and Shing-Ling Chen "Orality, Literacy and Social Structure." p. 168.
  16. For a complete account of Heidegger's philosophy of being, see his most notable work, "Being and Time."
  17. David R. Maines and Carl J. Couch in discussing the relevance of Einstein's theory of relativity to communication study. David R. Maines and Carl J. Couch "On The Indispensability of Communication for Understanding Social Relationships and Social Structure" Communication and Social Structure. p. 3.
  18. Mark Poster "The Second Media Age," (Polity Press, Cambridge, MA 1995). p 24.
  19. See "The Mode of Information" by Mark Poster. (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1990).
  20. Mark Poster "The second Media Age" (Polity Press, Cambridge, MA 1995). p. 59.

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