Summary
Contents
Subject index
Internet Society investigates Internet use and its implications for society through insights into the daily experiences of ordinary users. Drawing on an original study of non-professional, 'ordinary' users at home, this book examines how people interpret, domesticate, and creatively appropriate the Internet by integrating it into the projects and activities of their everyday lives.
Virtual Togetherness
Virtual Togetherness
Introduction
Two distinct models have emerged in the last decade as the main contestants for defining the social character of the Internet. I will label them ‘the consumption model’ and the ‘community model’. The germs of the consumption model can be found in the early visions and subsequent efforts to put research centres, libraries and other information-generating and storing institutions online so that initially professionals, and later the wired public, could tap into an unlimited stock of data. This model further took shape in conjunction with the growing adoption rate of the new medium. As more and more comfortable middle-class users hooked up to the Internet, it dawned on businesses that a promising new virtual market was opening up. The conceptual step from ...
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