A century before the internet,
the telegraph, the railways, the radio and the telephone have
been similarly heralded as "global" and transforming.
Every medium of communications goes through the same
evolutionary cycle:
Anarchy
The Public Phase
At this stage, the medium and the resources attached to it are
very cheap, accessible, under no regulatory constraints. The
public sector steps in: higher education institutions,
religious institutions, government, not for profit
organizations, non governmental organizations (NGOs), trade
unions, etc. Bedevilled by limited financial resources, they
regard the new medium as a cost effective way of disseminating
their messages.
The Internet was not exempt from this phase which ended only a
few years ago. It started with a complete computer anarchy
manifested in ad hoc networks, local networks, networks of
organizations (mainly universities and organs of the
government such as DARPA, a part of the defence establishment,
in the USA). Non commercial entities jumped on the bandwagon
and started sewing these networks together (an activity fully
subsidized by government funds).
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