The ins and outs of Internet

[Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au]

Tom Worthington replied to Crispin Hull
>there wouldn't be all that old newspaper to get rid of (I use mine for
>garden mulch, but the roses can only take so much).

So much for the theory that Tom's garden is unkempt.


>* INTERNET CONTAINS JUNK: You make the point that the Internet contains
>material which is self published and so contains no stamp of approval.
>Sorry, but hat's what you get in a democracy: with freedom of speech the
>citizens must decide for themselves what to believe.

Crispin, are you seriously suggesting that the sub-editors at The Canberra
Times or anywhere else represent a 'seal of approval'??  You're
self-regulated;  so are the people who publish via the Internet.  Quality
assurance, like many other things, is in the eye of the beholder.


>* INTERNET HARD TO NAVIGATE: As you suggest, the Internet is difficult to
>navigate. This partly because the tools to do this are still being developed
>and partly because there is so much information. You gave the example of the
>topic "arsenic contamination and Nepal" and said it would be difficult to
>find out everything about this on the Internet. So I checked and I couldn't
>find any entry for it. But I did find lots about arsenic contamination in
>other places and several UN/World Bank reports on environmental issues in
>Nepal. Don't know where else I could have found this information on a Sunday
>night.

And, what's more, the Oz this morning reports that Nepal now has its own
domain (.np), administered by an Australian provider.  So watch that
space!!


>* COEXISTENCE: I agree that old and new technologies can coexist. One example
>is that you can easily (and cheaply) send faxes from the Internet. There are
>some things we can do to make coexistence work better in Australia. One
>would be to have gateways between the Web and older technology, such as
>e-mail.

One of the key points about web-servers and web-browsers is that prior
forms are supported, e.g. it's easy with Netscape to send an email, and
easy with HTML to make it easy for the browser user to do so.


Regards  ...  Roger

Roger Clarke                       Email: Roger.Clarke@anu.edu.au
Reader in Information Systems      URL:   http://commerce.anu.edu.au/comm/
Department of Commerce                    staff/RogerC/RogersHome.html
Australian National University
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