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Internet

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The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private and public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a broad array of electronic and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast array of information resources and services, most notably the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support electronic mail.

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  • Caution: Do not mistake the Internet for an encyclopedia, and the search engine for a table of contents. The Internet is a sprawling databank that's about one-quarter wheat and three-quarters chaff.
    • The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law, (2007), Basic Books, p. 267.

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  • The index of a search engine can be thought of as analogous to the stars in sky. What we see has never existed, as the light has traveled different distances to reach our eye. Similarly, Web pages referenced in an index were also explored at different dates and they may not exist any more.
    • Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto, in Modern Information Retrieval (1999), Addison-Wesley/ACM Press, p. 382.
  • Considering that the internet has greatly increased our access to unreliable information, and that bullshit still passes through more traditional channels such as newspapers, magazines, television, radio, and face-to-face conversations, it seems reasonable to suggest that people today are inundated with more bullshit now than ever before. The internet has ushered in the Age of Bullshit.
    • Nathaniel Barr, [1]
The web setting out as something which was universal, something which anybody could use, I felt was very important. It's no good having something which will run on any platform if, in fact, there is a proprietary hold on it. ~ Tim Berners-Lee
  • "The web setting out as something which was universal, something which anybody could use, I felt was very important," he said. "It's no good having something which will run on any platform if, in fact, there is a proprietary hold on it."
    Berners-Lee eventually convinced CERN to release the World Wide Web into the public domain without any patents or fees. He has since attributed the runaway success of the web to that single decision.
  • When you go out there, the webpages you see are written by people. You're looking at a certain sub-set of the churning mass of humanity out there. So it's not that the web itself is an animal, but it's that society is this really exciting, decentralized thing, and the web, fortunately, is more or less able to echo it.
We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now. ~ Ray Bradbury
  • We have too many cellphones. We've got too many Internets. We have got to get rid of those machines. We have too many machines now.
Everything you put online is your professional face. …whatever you want that to be. ~ Noah Bradley

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  • There are some people who imagine that older adults don't know how to use the internet. My immediate reaction is, "I've got news for you, we invented it."
    • Vint Cerf, a "father of the internet," quoted at age 73 in "Your Life: Vinton Cerf" interview by David Frank in AARP Bulletin (December 2016, Vol. 57, No. 10, p. 30.)
The Internet is like a vault with a screen door on the back. I don't need hammers and bombs to get in when I can walk in through the door. ~ William R. Cheswick
  • Only 12 years ago the networks were fragmented, today the Internet unites the world.

“Communication Technology And Social Change” (2007)

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“Communication Technology And Social Change” Carolyn A. Lin, David J. Atkin – 2007; Ch.3 Computer-Mediated Technology and Social Interaction; Scott E. Caplan, Elizabeth M. Perse, and Janice E. Gennaria

Young (1998) reported that dependent users mainly utilized the social and interactive functions of the Internet, whereas nondependents used the Internet more for information gathering. Similarly, Young and Rogers (1998) note that problematic or abusive Internet use involved primarily socially interactive uses, which also appear to be associated with low self-esteem. In another study, Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) found that the social aspects of Internet use consistently differentiated those with more Internet use problems from others, as the former were more likely to use the Internet for seeking emotional support, talking with others, and playing highly socially interactive games. LaRose, Lin, and Eastin (2003), based on uses and gratifications as well as operant conditioning theory, argue that when individuals have received repeated expected grafifications (or rewards) from Internet use over time, their Internet use behavior can turn into a conditioned habit (operant conditions). If these individuals subsequently preoccupy themselves with this habit due to deficient self-regulation of their Internet use behavior, they can go one step further and isolate themselves from society to the extent of becoming addicted to Internet use.
In terms of communicating social support, Burleson and Goldsmith (1998) argue that the type of conversational environment most conducive to effective comforting requires reducing the distressed other's self-presentational anxiety. Caplan and Turner (in press) propose that establishing such an environment might be easier and more effective if the conversation is computer-mediated. They further assert that computer-mediated social support interactions might be especially helpful at creating a conversational context that is less socially risky than its FtF counterpart. For example, Walther and Boyd (2002) contend that computer mediated discussions of stigmatized topics are likely to be perceived as less threatening than their FtF counterparts due to their increased anonymity and increased social distance, which facilitate better stigma management. These findings that reflect how CMC social support affords its users reduced social stigma and increased anonymity were further validated by other similar studies (Gustafson et al., 19999; McKenna & Bargh, 1998; White & Dorman, 2001; Wright, 2002).
  • Researchers have sought to understand and explain the core differences between computer-mediated and FtF communication processes (for reviews, see Caplan 2001, 2003; Hancock & Dunham, 2001; Ramirez, Walther, Burgoon, & Sunnafrank, 2002; Riva, 2002; Walther, 199,, 2004; Walther, Anderson, & Park, 1994; Walther & Parks, 2002). Among the earliest theories to emerge was the cues-filtered-out perspective (Culnan & Markus, 1987; also see Walther & Parks, 2002), which suggested that some forms of CMC are less personal than FtF activity because of the reduced number of contextual and nonverbal cues available in text-based online social interaction. The cues-filtered-out perspective asserts that the diminished available cues available in CMC create a heightened sense of anonymity, which leads to a more impersonal communication exchange than is present in FtF interaction. As Ramirez and Burgoon (2004) note, however, researchers have moved away from early perspectives focusing solely on cue deficits, toward more sophisticated theories that consider the cognitive and behavioral mechanisms people use to compensate for the lack of cues available in text-based CMC.
    One particularly influential theoretical perspective that describes how CMC and FtF processes differ is Walther's (1996) hyperpersonal communication perspective. According to Walther, interpersonal CMC can become hyperpersonal because it affords message sender a host of communicative advantages over traditional FtF interaction. Compared to ordinary FtF situations, due to the reduced number of available nonverbal cues, a hyperpersonal message sender has a greater ability to strategically develop and edit self-presentation, enabling a selective and optimized presentation of oneself to others (Walther, 1996, Walther & Burgoon, 1992). This process then allows senders to selectively control the quantity, quality, and even validity of personal information available to other participants (e.g., age, race, physical appearance, sex), to form idealized impressions of their partners and, consequently, engage in more intimate exchanges than people in FtF situations (Tidwell & Walther; 2002; Walther, 1993, 1996 Walther & Burgoon, 1992).
    • p.44
  • The social identification model of deindividuation effects (SIDE) proposed that, despite offering fewer interpersonal cues (e.g., Culnan & Markus, 1987), CMC is not necessarily impersonal; rather, impression formation online results in more socially categorical, rather than personal, impressions of others (Lea & Spears, 1992; Reicher, Spears, & Postmes, 1995; Spears & Lea, 1992, 1994; Spears, Postmes, & Lea, 2002). Similarly, social information-processing (SIP) theory (Walther, 1992, 1993; Walther & Burgoon, 1992; Walther, Loh, & Granka, 2005) also takes issue with the notion that CMC is necessarily impersonal; instead, SIP theory suggests that online interpersonal relationship development might require more time to develop than traditional FtF relationships.
    • p.45
  • In addition to research on CMC and relational communication, in general, other studies have examined therapeutic relational communication online. There is a good deal of evidence suggesting that online support and therapeutic discussion groups are an important positive aspect of the Internet (e.g., see Caplan & Turner, in press; Walther & Perks, 2002; Wright, 1999, 2000, 2002; Wright & Bell, 2003). To date, researchers have not firmly established whether participation in online emotional support has therapeutic value that is less than, equivalent to, or beyond that obtained via FtF support (Finfgeld, 2000; Owen, Yarbough, Varga, & Tucker, 003; Walther & Boyd, 2002). The few studies that have compared computer-mediated and FtF psychotherapy sessions have reported that participants in both groups exhibited relatively equivalent outcomes (e.g., Cohen & Kerr, 1998; Day & Schneider, 2002; for a review, see Rochlen, Zack, & Speyer, 2004). To advance understanding of online emotional support, Walther and Parks (2002) recommend that researchers begin to develop explanations for why CMC might be particularly effective as a support medium.
    • p.45
  • [I]n one study comparing FtF to CMC romantic relationships, Cornwell and Lundgren (2001) found that CMC partners engaged in greater misrepresentation during self-presentation than their FtF counterparts. They attributed the difference in levels of misrepresentation to a lower level of relational involvement among CMC romantic partners, compared to those using an FtF channel. In another study, Joinson (2001) reported that levels of spontaneous self-disclosure were greater in CMC exchanges than in FtF interactions when there was a heightened sense of private self-awareness and a lower sense of public self awareness associated with CMC exchange.
    Other researchers have reported that, compared to FtF interactions, CMC exchanges include more direct and more intimate uncertainty reduction strategies (e.g., greater proportions of direct questions and self-disclosing statements; Tidwell & Walther, 2002), along with less detailed and more intense impressions of communication partners (Hancock & Dunham, 2001). As Rabby and Walther (2003) explain, “The development of relationships online may simply be temporaraly retarded in comparison to FtF relationship development” (p. 148). Empirical evidence supports this hypothesis. In one study of CMC and impression formation, Walther (1993) found that members of FtF groups developed impressions of one another more quickly than their CMC counterparts. But after a 6-week period, the CMC groups formed impressions that were as well developed as those exhibited by the FtF participants.
    • pp.47-48
  • In terms of communicating social support, Burleson and Goldsmith (1998) argue that the type of conversational environment most conducive to effective comforting requires reducing the distressed other's self-presentational anxiety. Caplan and Turner (in press) propose that establishing such an environment might be easier and more effective if the conversation is computer-mediated. They further assert that computer-mediated social support interactions might be especially helpful at creating a conversational context that is less socially risky than its FtF counterpart. For example, Walther and Boyd (2002) contend that computer mediated discussions of stigmatized topics are likely to be perceived as less threatening than their FtF counterparts due to their increased anonymity and increased social distance, which facilitate better stigma management. These findings that reflect how CMC social support affords its users reduced social stigma and increased anonymity were further validated by other similar studies (Gustafson et al., 19999; McKenna & Bargh, 1998; White & Dorman, 2001; Wright, 2002). Online health applications are discussed further in chapter 12 by Whitten (this volume).
    Caplan and Turner (in press) also point out that computer-mediated emotional support allows support seekers who have limited mobility to participate in groups that they would be less willing, if at all able, to attend if offered in an FtF format (Braithwaite, Waldron, & Finn., 1999; White & Dorman, 2001; Wright, 2002).
    Along a similar line, online conversation partners are not bound by proximity and geographical barriers; individuals can communicate with a seemingly limitless number of diverse people who would be difficult or impossible to locate in most FtF cases (Barrera, Glasgow, McKay, Boles, & Feil, 2002; Braithwaite et al., 1999; Finfgeld, 2000; Finn, 1999; Sharf, 1997; Walther & Boyd, 2002; White & Dorman, 2001; Wizelberg, 1997; Wright, 2002).
    • p.48
  • Young (1998) reported that dependent users mainly utilized the social and interactive functions of the Internet, whereas nondependents used the Internet more for information gathering. Similarly, Young and Rogers (1998) note that problematic or abusive Internet use involved primarily socially interactive uses, which also appear to be associated with low self-esteem. In another study, Morahan-Martin and Schumacher (2000) found that the social aspects of Internet use consistently differentiated those with more Internet use problems from others, as the former were more likely to use the Internet for seeking emotional support, talking with others, and playing highly socially interactive games. LaRose, Lin, and Eastin (2003), based on uses and gratifications as well as operant conditioning theory, argue that when individuals have received repeated expected grafifications (or rewards) from Internet use over time, their Internet use behavior can turn into a conditioned habit (operant conditions). If these individuals subsequently preoccupy themselves with this habit due to deficient self-regulation of their Internet use behavior, they can go one step further and isolate themselves from society to the extent of becoming addicted to Internet use.
    • pp.49-50
  • In conclusion, computer-mediated social interaction technologies have facilitated significant changes in how people relate to members of their personal and professional social networks. For example, physical distance or proximity between network members is becoming increasingly less important. Thus, as Meyerowitz (1985) observes, “Where one is has less and less to do with that one knows and experiences. Electronic media have altered the significance of time and space for social interaction” (p. viiii). These changes in social interaction channels also create new challenges for parents. Growing concerns about children's safety online, for example, stem from the increasingly permeable physical boundaries that once separated families from the larger community. Meyerowitz (1985) notes that “the walls of the family home, for example, are no longer effective barriers that wholly isolate the family from the larger community and society. The family home is now a less bounded and unique environment” (p. viii).
    As computer-mediated social interaction becomes more widespread, we can expect that physical location will become an increasingly less salient predictor of with whom we interact. Hampton and Wellan (2000) make a similar point, observing that “whatever happens, new communication technologies are driving out the traditional belief that community can only be found locally” (p. 195). Clearly, communications scholars will need to adapt communication theories to evolving technologies and changing contexts in order to understand the uses and effects of computer-mediated social interaction technologies.
    • pp.50-51

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  • NPR's coverage of the post-web era describes a "great online awakening" driven by an explosion in the number of internet-connected people. "The result is more chaos than you can imagine and literally thousands and thousands of websites," Rich Dean reported for NPR in 1996.
    By the end of 1995, more than 24 million people in the U.S. and Canada alone spent an average of 5 hours per week on the internet.

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  • Doing research on the Web is like using a library assembled piecemeal by pack rats and vandalized nightly.
  • Things have been going in the wrong direction -- more surveillance, more control of everything we do on the net and also stricter copyright laws -- that's the wrong course for Europe. We want to set a new one.
    • Christian Engstrom [3]
  • High-speed internet has a positive impact on poverty reduction.
  • Better access to information increases farmers' effectiveness in agriculture. And fintech [financial technology] can make transactions more effective and less corrupt.

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The Internet, in particular, offers immense possibilities for encounter and solidarity, this is something truly good, a gift from God. ~ Pope Francis

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  • As customers embrace the Net for real business, they're doing something much more than posting a Web site, offering their brochure or 800 number on the Web. "E-Business" done well involves every process of their business -- from order entry to inventory, to fulfillment, to distribution, to customer care. Consequently, it challenges, and in some cases overturns, very established ways of doing business in financial services, in distribution, in almost every industry.
  • The main point here is that there will be lots of ways -- lots of low-cost ways -- for people to get on the Net and participate in this new economy. So, together we will have a greater opportunity to take unprecedented levels of service and information to the entire world regardless of an individual's social or political standing, or personal buying power.
  • Today, almost everyone is talking about the Internet as the ultimate medium of business. And so now we find ourselves in 1999 taking an equally unconventional position: Today it's clear to us that the greatest value being created by this networking technology is not in these new "dot-com" Internet companies that a lot of people seem to believe are going to redefine the world of retail, of Wall Street, of the media industry, and gobble up everyone's business. These are interesting companies, and maybe one or two of them will be profitable someday. But I think of them as fireflies before the storm all stirred up, throwing off sparks. But the storm that's arriving -- the real disturbance in the force -- is when the thousands and thousands of institutions that exist today seize the power of this global computing and communications infrastructure and use it to transform themselves. That's the real revolution. ...Right now, there's a lot of focus on e-commerce -- on Net-based buying and selling. But we think that equally important, if not more important, are the staggering investments our customers are starting to make in what we call "e-business." E-business includes e-commerce, of course. But it's about a broader set of transactions and important applications that will go to the Net in supply chain, in customer care, in e-service; and internally in applications from product development to logistics to employee training to knowledge management inside enterprises. In fact, our view is that the Web enabling of these core business process will deliver returns on investments that will equal or exceed the returns on investments coming from e-commerce.
  • The NET is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.
    • William Gibson Title of an article for New York Times Magazine (14 July 1996).
  • The Internet has created a seismic disruption to the balance of power in the media. It is getting easier and easier to post your thoughts, photos, or videos. Yet the Wild West of the Web is being tamed. Small Internet service providers are being driven out of business, with corporations like Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T dominating the market. Privacy, security, and the freedom to publish without fear of censorship are dwindling with each merger, with each effort by corporate lobbyists to further restrict the open Internet in favor of a narrow profit advantage.
    • Amy Goodman The Silenced Majority: Stories of Uprisings, Occupations, Resistance, and Hope with Denis Moynihan (2012)
  • During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's economic growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.
    • Al Gore, in a statement often misquoted as "I invented the Internet." CNN Late Edition (9 March 1999).
  • In the next century, planet earth will don an electronic skin. It will use the Internet as a scaffold to support and transmit its sensations. This skin is already being stitched together. It consists of millions of embedded electronic measuring devices: thermostats, pressure gauges, pollution detectors, cameras, microphones, glucose sensors, EKGs, electroencephalographs. These will probe and monitor cities and endangered species, the atmosphere, our ships, highways and fleets of trucks, our conversations, our bodies — even our dreams.

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"A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB AND THE INTERNET" (Oct 24, 2003)

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Conrad Johnson and Brian Donnelly, "A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE WORLD WIDE WEB AND THE INTERNET", Columbia Law School, (Oct 24, 2003)

The first ARPANET transmission occurred when Kleinrock logged on from a UCLA computer connected to a Stanford computer and typed the word "login." Although the system crashed as he typed in the "g" of "login," the Internet revolution was born. By 1973, a total of 37 nodes were in operation.
In 1982, the Department of Defense adopted the use of TCP/IP protocols on ARAPANET, which by this time, consisted of more than 100 nodes.
In June 1999 NUA Internet Surveys estimated that 179 million people are connected to the Internet worldwide. A recent study by the University of Texas sponsored by Cisco Systems estimated that the "Internet Economy" generated $300 billion in revenue in the United States alone.
  • In 1962 Paul Baran of the RAND Corporation published, "On Distributed Communication Networks" in which he formulated the concept of packet-switching networks having no single outage point. With these theoretical concepts in place, others could develop workable concepts. Two additional key elements, re-routing around outages and access by other networks, helped lay the necessary groundwork to create the theoretical basis for the inception of an Internet.
    The underlying motive for developing this technology was to streamline communication between military command centers, remote missile bases and other installations in the event of a preemptive nuclear attack. DARPA funds for developing packet switching in the late 1960s accounted for 60% of the computer research done in the United States at that time. Much of the concern during this period of the cold war was based upon a study done by the RAND Corporation that cited the lines of communication as the most vulnerable portion of U.S. military command.
  • In late 1962, civilian contractors developed the network technology that grew into the Internet. The first network to use the packet switching technology was not actually built until 1969, however, and it contained only four nodes. This network was used by the Department of Defense and was known as ARAPANET. The first ARPANET transmission occurred when Kleinrock logged on from a UCLA computer connected to a Stanford computer and typed the word "login." Although the system crashed as he typed in the "g" of "login," the Internet revolution was born. By 1973, a total of 37 nodes were in operation.
  • In 1982, the Department of Defense adopted the use of TCP/IP protocols on ARAPANET, which by this time, consisted of more than 100 nodes. The military felt that separate resources were needed for research and military uses. Thus, MILNET was established for the exclusive use of the military while ARAPANET continued to be a tool dedicated to government related research. ARAPANET and MILNET became separate networks when the term "Internet" was expanded to include the academic and research computer networks that were emerging. The proliferation of the IBM compatible personal computer, which sold over 75 million machines in the early 1980s, provided an increasing number of researchers and scholars access to computer networks. Groups of universities within various regions of the country began to form networks, some with fiber optic lines, to exchange E-Mail and other computer data.

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  • What I wrote was that the internet and dreams share the same quality of giving rise to the repressed subconscious. I think in countries like Japan and America and other countries where internet is prevalent, people can anonymously seek or release things they can't speak of offline, as if there's a part of the subconscious that's uncontrollable and comes out on the internet. That is very much like dreams. This may be a very visualistic analogy, but I've always thought we drop down into dreams, and when you're sitting in front of your computer and connect to the internet, you're also going down into some kind of underworld. I've always thought those two images had something in common. I'm not trying to say that dreams and the internet are good or bad, I'm trying to saying that there's good and bad that cannot be judged in both worlds. Some people say that in the virtual world, different rules exist or try to say that a lot of vicious things happen there, but I don't think there's a reason to differentiate the virtual world from reality because reality includes that virtual world.
    • Satoshi Kon, [4]
Most of us employ the Internet not to seek the best information, but rather to select information that confirms our prejudices. ~ Nicholas D. Kristof
The internet is like a big circus tent full of scary, boring creatures and pornography. ~ Richard "Lowtax" Kyanka
  • The internet is like a big circus tent full of scary, boring creatures and pornography.
  • You should view Internet arguments as a really crummy fighting game: only the utter idiots bother pressing the "block / defend" button. While your enemy cowers in a corner with their arms raised above their face to futilely protect them, real men pull off complex 408-move combos that involve transforming into a fiery phoenix of doom and releasing unrelenting waves of liquid napalm Satan clown death upon them.

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  • The internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that is used by billions of people worldwide. In the 1960s, a team of computer scientists working for the U.S. Defense Department's ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) built a communications network to connect the computers in the agency, called ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet. It used a method of data transmission called "packet switching", developed by computer scientist and team member Lawrence Roberts, based on prior work of other computer scientists.
    This technology was progressed in the 1970s by scientists Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, who developed the crucial communication protocols for the internet, the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the Internet Protocol (IP), according to computer scientist Harry R. Lewis in his book “Ideas That Created the Future: Classic Papers of Computer Science” (MIT Press, 2021). For this, Kahn and Cerf are often credited as "inventors of the internet”.
  • For hundreds of millions of years, Sex was the most efficient method for propagating information of dubious provenance: the origins of all those snippets of junk DNA are lost in the sands of reproductive history. Move aside, Sex: the world-wide Web has usurped your role.

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Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. ~ Mariana Mazzucato
  • I'll probably be the last to know, because I don't get on the internet no more.
  • When you picture the tech industry, you probably think of things that don’t exist in physical space, such as the apps and internet browser on your phone. But the infrastructure required to store all this information – the physical datacentres housed in business parks and city outskirts – consume massive amounts of energy. Despite its name, the infrastructure used by the “cloud” accounts for more global greenhouse emissions than commercial flights. In 2018, for instance, the 5bn YouTube hits for the viral song Despacito used the same amount of energy it would take to heat 40,000 US homes annually.
    This is a hugely environmentally destructive side to the tech industry. While it has played a big role in reaching net zero, giving us smart meters and efficient solar, it’s critical that we turn the spotlight on its environmental footprint. Large language models such as ChatGPT are some of the most energy-guzzling technologies of all. Research suggests, for instance, that about 700,000 litres of water could have been used to cool the machines that trained ChatGPT-3 at Microsoft’s data facilities. It is hardly news that the tech bubble’s self-glorification has obscured the uglier sides of this industry, from its proclivity for tax avoidance to its invasion of privacy and exploitation of our attention span. The industry’s environmental impact is a key issue, yet the companies that produce such models have stayed remarkably quiet about the amount of energy they consume – probably because they don’t want to spark our concern.
And I believe that sooner — rather than later — these changes will be mapped onto society as a whole.~Paul McCloskey
  • A year ago I was the original Internet Dummy. [...] Then while I was on vacation, a colleague ran some telephone wire into the back of my computer, loaded a communications package, and left me a note about how to launch the operation.
    Readers, that note is now framed in my office. Eventually that telephone wire led to the Internet and the single most amazing, entertaining and educational experience of my career.
    Quite simply, the Internet has revolutionized the way I interact with the outside world, altered my work habits, and burst the bubble around my PC. It has also challenged my thinking about the future of personal communications technology. And I believe that sooner — rather than later — these changes will be mapped onto society as a whole.
    • Paul McCloskey, executive editor of "Federal Computer Week", in the introduction to The Internet for Dummies (1993)
Riley Freeman: I just can't imagine what life must have been like for granddad growing up without the net.
It's like...
How did kids meet and talk to complete strangers when he was young?
This is a little known fact technological about the Internet, but the Internet is actually made of words and enthusiasm.~Erin McKean
  • This is a little known fact technological about the Internet, but the Internet is actually made of words and enthusiasm.
  • It's strange — you know, the Net is denounced as austere, the product of the engineering mentality, so forth and so on. It's the most feminine influence that Western civilization has ever allowed itself to fall under the spell of. The troubadors of the fourteenth century were as nothing compared to the boundary-dissolving, feminizing, permitting, nurturing nature of the Net. Maybe that's why there is an overwhelming male preference for it, in its early form, because that's where that was needed. But it is Sophia, it is wisdom, it is the penetrating archetypal female logos of the world-soul, leading us away from what was very sharp-edged and uncomfortable and repressive to our creativity and our sexuality and our relationships to each other and to the Earth.
It's very sad how in the information age you cannot get information into people's heads — as long as you write something on the internet and do not add LOL — it is true : "I'm not sure he's a Christian." — I'm not sure he's a mammal, Jay. He could be a werewolf. ~ Bill Maher
  • It's very sad how in the information age you cannot get information into people's heads — as long as you write something on the internet and do not add LOL — it is true : "I'm not sure he's a Christian." — I'm not sure he's a mammal, Jay. He could be a werewolf.
    • Bill Maher, on growth of rumors and reports of Barack Obama being a "secret Muslim", in an interview on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno (13 September 2010).
  • I have a theory that the Internet makes people stupider — and also FOX News makes people stupider. You know the Pew group did a study recently and they found out that 10 years ago, Democrats, Republicans and independents basically got their news from the same sources, probably more from CNN, for example. Then we had this polarity. ... We do have two Americas. We have the America that's living in reality. The people who understand that Obama is a centrist liberal from Hawaii who is trying to dig us out of the hole we're in. And then we have this other FOX/Matt Drudge/Rush Limbaugh reality where he is a Muslim sleeper cell, Manchurian candidate who was sent over by his Kenyan father...
Surrogates and also a pretty fascinating aspect the internet. Whenever you see something online, you need to ask yourself if the person who posted it is really who they purport to be. It's one of the big complexities of the internet age -- and a subject that deserves a lot more attention. ~ Jonathan Mostow
  • Surrogates and also a pretty fascinating aspect the internet. Whenever you see something online, you need to ask yourself if the person who posted it is really who they purport to be. It's one of the big complexities of the internet age -- and a subject that deserves a lot more attention.
    • Jonathan Mostow [6]
I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.~ Bill Murray
  • I think that the online world has actually brought books back. People are reading because they're reading the damn screen. That's more reading than people used to do.
    • Bill Murray, Interview with Jessica Lee Jernigan (May 1999).

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  • The Internet has come to resemble an enormous used book store with volumes stacked on shelves and tables and overflowing onto the floor, and a continuous stream of new books being added helter-skelter to the piles.
    • Robert Pool, "Turning an info-glut into a library." Science 266, no. 5182 (1994): 20-22. doi:10.1126/science.7939636.

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  • There is nothing that is truly free nor democratic enough. Make no mistake, the internet did not come to save the world.
  • I was attacked via nearly every facet of my online life by a loosely coordinated cyber mob. All of my social networks were flooded with a torrent of misogynist and racist slurs as well as threats of rape, violence and death. The wikipedia article about me was vandalized with similar sentiments. When I publicly shared what was happening to me, the perpetrators responded by escalating their harassment campaign and attempting to DDoS my website and hack into my online accounts. They also tried to collect and distribute my personal info including my home address and phone number. They made pornographic images in my likeness being raped by video games characters which they distributed and sent to me over and over again. Attempts were made to discredit me and my project by creating and posting false quotes or fake tweets attributed to me. There was also a flash game developed where players were invited to “beat the bitch up”. Unfortunately I still receive threats and explicit images on a semi-regular basis. In December 2012, I gave a TEDxWomen talk where I discuss in more detail what happened, and how these large scale loosely organized Cyber Mob attacks operate.
  • There's a boys'-locker-room feel to the internet, where men feel they can show off for one another. A lot of the harassment is tied to this toxic masculine culture of ‘Look how cool I can be.’
    • Anita Sarkeesian, as interviewed by Valenti, Jessica, "Anita Sarkeesian interview: 'The word "troll" feels too childish. This is abuse'". The Guardian, (August 29, 2015).
  • We must filter the Internet to win over online file sharing. But politicians don’t understand that file sharing is bad, and this is a problem for us. Therefore, we must associate file sharing with child pornography. Because that’s something the politicians understand, and something they want to filter off the Internet.
    • Johan Schlüter, [7]
  • I yearned for that future. I wanted to live in the illusion that persuades us that true-life experience can be obtained on the Internet.
  • The members of the Invisible College did not live to see the full flowering of the scientific method, and we will not live to see what use humanity makes of a medium for sharing that is cheap, instant, and global (both in the sense of 'comes from everyone' and 'goes everywhere.') We are, however, the people who are setting the earliest patterns for this medium. Our fate won't matter much, but the norms we set will. Given what we have today, the Internet could easily become Invisible High School, with a modicum of educational material in an ocean of narcissism and social obsessions. We could, however, also use it as an Invisible College, the communicative backbone of real intellectual and civic change.
Ack. There is no "emoticon" to express what I am feeling right now. ~ The Simpsons/Season 12
  • (The Springfield Police Department web page is shown.)
Chief Wiggum: If you have committed a crime and want to confess, click 'Yes'. Otherwise, click 'No'.
(Homer clicks 'No'.)
Chief Wiggum: You have chosen 'No', meaning you have committed a crime but don't want to confess. (A van symbol is shown.) A paddy wagon is now speeding to your home.
Homer: Hey!
Chief Wiggum: While you wait, why not buy a police cap or T-shirt? You have the right to remain fabulous!
  • Comic Book Guy: Ack. There is no "emoticon" to express what I am feeling right now.
On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. ~ Peter Steiner
  • Some complain that e-mail is impersonal — that your contact with me, during the e-mail phase of our relationship, was mediated by wires and screens and cables. Some would say that's not as good as conversing face-to-face. And yet our seeing of things is always mediated by corneas, retinas, optic nerves, and some neural machinery that takes the information from the optic nerve and propagates it into our minds. So, is looking at words on a screen so very much inferior? I think not; at least then you are conscious of the distortions. Whereas, when you see someone with your eyes, you forget about the distortions and imagine you are experiencing them purely and immediately.
  • The Internet is a hole you pour your friends into for a never-ending stream of kitten photos and porn. Of course, that's quite a bargain, for some of us.

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On the Internet, nobody can hear you fart .~ Jonas Whitespore
  • We've heard that a million monkeys at a million keyboards could produce the complete works of Shakespeare; now, thanks to the Internet, we know that is not true.
    • Attributed to Robert Wilensky, speech at a 1996 conference

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  • Disregard the physical distance and cherish those online relationships. Tell your friends you love them every day. Behind each of these screens is a real heart that just wants as much love as the person sitting next to you in the real world. Love your neighbor, even if you're in Louisiana and he's in New Jersey.

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  • Today, you wander off the safe paths of the internet and it's like a trap. You know, you click on the wrong thing, suddenly fifty pop-ups come up, something says, hey, you've been infected with a virus, click here to fix it, which of course, if you do click on it, it does infect you with a virus, it's teeming with weird listicles and crazy things like, reason number four and how you can increase your sperm count or something, and you have to kind of constantly control yourself. You have to be on guard, it's worse than, it's a mixture of being in a bad neighborhood and a used car sales place and a casino and a infectious disease ward, all combined into one, and that is not relaxing.
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