what does the internet look like?

A cyberplace where I gather information relevant to me about what the internet and technology looks like and social trends surrounding it.

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BT Infinity Broadband Study: We Reveal The Social Media Gender Divide

Brought to you by BT Broadband Speed Checker

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MIT techreview finds crowd sourcing sites in US and China often employ industry dupes to influence discussions on social media sites, paying people to 'crowdturf' (the cyber-version of astroturfing) specific brands via social media. Can I ever trust yelp again?

http://www.technologyreview.com/web/39304/?p1=MstRcnt

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There are, in essence, two Internets emerging in the United States. The first is the one that’s driven innovation and commerce for the past two decades: traditional Internet hookups that connect wires to desktop computers and allow users to work, play and explore from the comfort of their home. That Internet is regulated—loosely, but regulated—by the federal government, which has issued rules that prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with their users’ online access. Those rules exist as an implicit acknowledgement that the Internet isn’t just fun and games, but rather the central communication platform of the 21st century, an essential medium for everything from commerce to elections.

Meanwhile, mobile wireless is quickly taking shape as a second Internet, one in which people of color and users with little income are entirely dependent upon cell phone companies for access. That Internet is unregulated. Companies are free to do as they please with customers—they can control what users see, do and say online. And as the country grows more dependent on high speed Internet, the handful of companies who own its mobile version are steadily working to consolidate their power. Whether and how policy makers allow that to happen may determine who gets a voice in our 21st century economy, and who’s left as its prey

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The "tech world" is really more of a "tech family." Between digital giants' appetites for acquisitions and the tendency of their ex-employees to start new companies, it's easy to see how nearly every blip in the ecosystem is closely related. We've mapped just a few of these family ties between...

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Facebook announces a server town in Northern Sweden on the cusp of the Arctic Circle. A new form of corporate village. At least we found something to do with the Arctic, right? Finally.

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things that are frustrating

watching an old person use the internet watching someone else try to locate a link or button on screen waiting for anything to load waiting for a screen to load with someone else and that other person keeps clicking because they don't know sometimes you just gotta be smooth with the internet and let her come to you

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Would you laugh if someone seriously used the phrase 'information superhighway' in 2011? I think I would.

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WHAT DOES THE INTERNET FEEL LIKE?

how does that feeling feel to you?

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"what is the internet? it's invisible and it's open twenty-four hours? it's a weird ghost." - twitter's megan amram speaking to the awl

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26 countries answer the question 'could you cope without the internet?' From a BBC survey conducted in 2010.

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The Internet in 1969

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2000 v. 2010

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what is the internet anyway? today show, 1994.

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New technologies are wreaking havoc on employment figures -- from EZpasses ousting toll collectors to Google-controlled self-driving automobiles rendering taxicab drivers obsolete. Every new computer program is basically doing some task that a person used to do. But the computer usually does it faster, more accurately, for less money, and without any health insurance costs. We like to believe that the appropriate response is to train humans for higher level work. Instead of collecting tolls, the trained worker will fix and program toll-collecting robots. But it never really works out that way, since not as many people are needed to make the robots as the robots replace.

Douglas Rashkoff

Is technology making it impossible to create new jobs? I feel uneasy about what a lot of these rich white dudes are saying about job markets and job creations and the destruction of the middle-class (often, it's from a white middle-class position where jobs, comfort, and standard of living are taken for granted) but I agree that we need to re-examine the way we think about work and jobs as a necessity.