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Who owns the Internet? -- No one.
Who controls the Internet? -- No one.
Where is the Internet? -- Everywhere.
Can you understand all and penetrate all with the click of a mouse?
To produce things and to make them well,
but not to sell them,
rather to give them away freely to all,
and by giving to become known and valued;
To act, but not to rely on one's own ability,
to build on the works and lessons of others,
and to let others do likewise --
this is called the Way of the Web.
The best is like water.
Water benefits all things and does not compete with them.
Water dissolves barriers.
Water reaches out and covers the earth.
This is called the Way of the Web.
[The above is the epigraph for the book The Way of the Web by Richard Seltzer]
from the Samizdat Express --
Edmund Spenser home page ("under construction") with Books I-III of The Faerie Queene and pointers to other Spenser works.
Pointers to on-line editions of works which at one time or another have been suppressed:
Natural Magic by Giovanni Baptista Porta (1537?-1615)
Pointers to dozens of historical archives on the Internet, ranging from the Gerald Ford Presidential Library to Civil War Photographs.
gopher://UMSLVMA.UMSL.EDU:70/11/LIBRARY/GOVDOCS/OOHA/OOH
Occupational Outlook Handbook 1994-1995 -- The same text that you can get here for free, with stats on how various careers are likely to fare in the near future, sells in bookstores for $18.95.
For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available at a nominal price from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, a project of The Samizdat Express. For further information, send email to samizdat@samizdat.com or check our Web site http://www.samizdat.com/
Check the September issue of Net Guide (a CMP publication). The cover story is "The Ultimate Hot list -- the 50 Best Places to Go Online." "The 50 Best Web Sites."
On p. 52, it reads --
What: Samizdat Express
Where: http://www.samizdat.com
Why: Time's Pathfinder site (http://www.pathfinder.com/ ) demonstrates why the megalith media companies will remain influential. This sites is the Web home of Samizdat Express, an e-mail newsletter that points to many of the more idealistic efforts that flourish on the net even as jazzier commercial areas proliferate. Here you'll find pointers to new e-texts available by FTP, gopher, WWW and listserv at such sources as The Gutenberg Project (http://jg.cso.uiuc.edu/pg_home.html ) and Columbia University's Project Bartleby (http://www.columbia.edu/~svl2 ). There are also references to sites devoted to the blind and disabled and an archive of back issues of Samizdat Express, with links to all the sites mentioned.
Wonk Factor: Richard Seltzer, the newsletter's creator, realizes that not everyone has full access to cyberspace, so he has put classics such as The Red Badge of Courage on floppy disks that can be purchased for $10. He encourages copying.
Wow Factor: More literature can be accessed from these 10 megabytes of server space than our great-grandfathers were likely to find in a lifetime.
This honor came as quite a shock. Not only do I operate this on minimal free Web space, but also I have no graphics at all. This is an all-text, all-content Web site. And I do the html conversion using free software (Microsoft's Internet Assistant). It's good that the little guys can still get recognition on the Internet.
PS -- The no graphics is not a matter of principle, but rather of necessity. I run this on a shoestring.
Check The Adventures of LiteStar, "an interactive story." Readers are invited to send email and request a link to their own continuation of the adventures from any point in the story.
Try Stellar Crisis, a free multi-player strategy game. Players compete to build galactic empires. Each game involves 5-10 players, and there are typically dozens of separate games running at once from this Web site. They use RealAudio (see our issue #11) for sound effects.
Under construction and very promising, follow the U.S. presidential campaign here. In addition to news and candidate info, this site will soon have a variety of on-line interactive forums that will allow citizens to discuss the issues with one another, submit questions to candidates and view on-line debates among the candidates. These are not the real-time, one-liner chat kind of discussions which are common on the Internet. Rather the responses remain on-line for others to read and/or respond to later, with search tools to help you maneuver through the threaded discussions. For these discussions, they'll be using a new product form Digital called Workgroup Web Forum.
Everything you ever wanted to know about a TV cartoon show you've probably never heard of. My five-year-old Timmy stumbled upon this site and with its help we were able to figure out the channel and time for local broadcast here. Timmy's now totally hooked on the Gargoyle TV show and the action figures that go with it, despite the fact that the program isn't on a network, and isn't advertised.
Ethiopia Page http://www.cs.indiana.edu/hyplan/dmulholl/ethiopia/ethiopia.html
Ethiopia Page at U. Penn. http://www.sas.upenn.edu/African_Studies/Country-Specific/Ethiopia.html
Things Related to Ethiopia http://rpinfo.its.rpi.edu:80/~demeke/
This project is sponsored by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and CNIDR (Center for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval). It's an excellent starting place for tracking down educational resources on the Internet.
Your best source for what's new and what's happening all over the Internet (not just on the Web -- newsgroups, distribution lists, etc., too).
Pointers to numerous distance learning resources.
In our last issue we mentioned the Zip drive from Iomega which uses 100 Mbyte removable disks. Now that same company is coming out with a new drive called "Jazz" which uses 1 gigabyte removable disks. The availability of such storage devices at reasonable prices is sure to inspire a variety of creative Internet-related applications.
Already some companies are experimenting with mixed media, where CD ROMs are used in conjunction with Web pages. Such applications could be even more interesting with writeable, removable disks, such as those from Iomega. It is possible to include a Web browser on a disk and use the html format for the files so users can navigate through the local files just as they do on the Internet. That capability opens the opportunity to put large graphics, video, and audio files on a disk, and use the Internet to access updates and the latest information.
A disk could come with the basic structure and storage-intensive elements of a catalog, interactive book, interactive video experience, or interactive game, and a Web site could provide added content. That way the content provider has a tangible information/entertainment product to sell and yet can take full advantage of the Internet to provide enhancements and updates, and to enable groups of customers to jointly participate in the same experience.
For instance, such an environment could be used to distribute follow-ons to popular videogames like Myst. If the initial game were designed this way, the makers could -- for a price -- make available on the Web additional graphics and code that takes advantage of many of the elements on the original disk to open new related worlds and experiences. Such extension could conceivably be added to indefinitely, building on the audience the intial game attracted and providing them ever more imaginative involvement. Hence what was a market for discrete products -- a one-shot market, with sequels coming months or even years later and as discrete products -- could become a series of experiences that gorws and evovles, with the continuity of a prime-time television series or soap opera.
Students from Bucknell provide this free service which lets you tailor your own selection of Internet-based news sources. You choose from a menu of sites in such categories as: World News, Weather, Business Reports, Technology Reports, Editorial/Opinions, Arts and Entertainment, Sports, and Funny Pages. You immediately see a hypertext list of the sites which you have chosen -- a list which you can download and file locally for daily reuse.
This technique would be very useful to commercial Web sites and Internet access providers who want to build user loyalty. They could allow registered users to profile themselves (providing demographic information as well as selections) and then based on that information generate a tailored menu of choices. The next time the user logs in, the user name would trigger the tailored menu -- an individualized home page.
Full text search of an index of sites mentioned in Yahoo. Useful for finding a particular site or piece of information, and also for checking to see what other sites point to your own.
If you have a Web site and want to publicize it, this is a good place to start. Using forms, this free service lets you, in one process, submit information to a dozen major Internet search sites: Yahoo, Starting Point, Web Crawler, EINet Galaxy, Lycos, Harvest, What's New Too! Infoseek, Whole Internet Catalog, Open Text Web Index, World Wide Web Worm, and Apollo.
"Our whole world is sitting there on a computer," explains the heroine of "The Net." That means that if bad guys get access to critical systems -- like government records, medical records, and air traffic control computers -- they can erase your identity or even kill you with a few keystrokes. And by altering police records they can prevent you from turning to the police for help, giving you a criminal history and making you a desperate outlaw.
This is not sci-fi, although many viewers will probably think it is. All the capabilities in the rich texture of everyday uses of the Internet -- from ordering pizza, to socializing in chat groups, to making air line reservations from your desktop -- are available right now, and are used regularly by people like the main character -- a computer programmer/hacker in Northern California.
The plot also is quite credible. Hackers could selectively cause paranoia about computer network security, inducing governmentagencies, banks, etc., to adopt a particular security solution in which they have planted a "Trojan Horse," hidden code that will later allow them to gain access to those systems whenever they wish.
In an interesting twist, the hackers are the bad guys, and the government is vulnerable and gullible. There's no specter of Big Brother here. There are no competing super-sleuth governmentagents a la James Bond. The Cold War is over and forgotten. And like the old New Yorker cartoon, "no one knows you're adog on the Internet." A few hackers in collusion with thepresident of a small Internet software company (that has a securityproduct), are poised to take control of and reshape big businessand government.
The woman at the center of the story is a loner ("Computers are your life." "Yes, the perfect hiding place.") who loves her work beta-testing and troubleshooting software ("Business or pleasure?" "Is there a difference?"). When trouble struck, there was no one she could depend on, no one who could come to her rescue. She had to -- and did -- do everything herself; and she was very credible in doing so. Hackers created the problem and she, a hacker, acting alone, could put an end to it; before police and government agencies even had a clue that anything was amiss.
Computers and the Internet are presented as tools that ordinary people can and do use all the time. The heroine and her nemesishave relatively deep knowledge and talent to accomplish featsthat most others would not be able to, but while "the wholeworld" sits on a computer, the whole world uses computersas well. In the world of "The Net," computers and the Internet are familiar and comfortable, not alien and confusing. It strikes the viewer as a revelation that something so commonplace as the Internet could in the hands of a small band of hackers be turned into an instrument of destruction and subjugation.
There's no mention of international threats or implications. They could have added a line in the script to explain that sophisticated security software such as the fictitious "Gatekeeper" product is currently subject to export controls and hence the problem would (at first) be limited to the US. But they didn't bother because that information wasn't central to the plot. Similarly, they could have raised issues related to encryption and decoding (which was central in the movie "Sneakers.") But they by-pass that, with communications appearing as clear text -- presumably the results of decoding, without all the rigmarole of how itwas done. Throughout they provide just enough tech to be credibleand interesting, without confusing matters.
[This movie review is scheduled for publication in Media Wave magazine. For information on that publication, contact the editor, John Shinnick, Shinnick@mindlink.bc.ca ]
We need to remind ourselves that rapid change is part of the human condition. Our current accelerated pace seems especially frantic because our society is emerging from a period when change was relatively predictable. However, in the broad perspective of history, the "future shock" we are now experiencing is not the exception, but the rule.
For those of us growing up in middle-class America, the period of twenty years after World War II was an anomaly. The world of "Father Knows Best" and "Donna Reed" and "The Nelsons" was a world where change was incremental and predictable. Cars would get bigger and faster, and highways would be built to accommodate them. Airliners would get bigger and faster, and airports would be expanded to accommodate them. When in the 1950s, General Electric proclaimed, "Progress is our most important product," they meant steady, incremental, predictable progress. The original Tomorrowland in Disneyland -- both the theme park and the television show -- was a friendly, familiar place, a way of life you could easily extrapolate from the world you lived in.
We came to presume that such a level of social, economic, political and technological stability was the norm. As the pace of change has accelerated in recent years, we have had to scramble to cope. And we have come to believe that our situation is unique -- that we are being forced to face more rapid change and more difficult changes than previous generations.
But read Mark Twin's Life on the Mississippi and consider how rapidly the Mississippi steamboat industry rose and fell. Check on the Pony Express which only lasted 17 months before new technology made it obsolete. Read panoramic novels set in the 19th or the early 20th century, and see the world transformed again and again by technology or war or depression.
Rapid and unpredictable change is the norm. Future shock was a shock to those of my generation because we had the luxury of growing up in a time of extraordinary stability and came to expect that similar conditions would continue for the foreseeable future. We didn't develop the skills and attitudes needed to deal with rapid change. We didn't learn to expect the unexpected, to anticipate the rise and fall of entire industries.
Now we live in a world where the growth opportunities are in industries like computers and biotech that barely existed when we were in college. And the basic skills expected in most any job today were not taught when we were in college.
What's happening on the Internet today is both a symptom of the times and an opportunity for many of us to learn, to grow, and to reinvent our lives in greater harmony with the times. This is not a dehumanizing technology, but rather one with the capacity to help us rehumanize life -- the chance for a fresh start.
[The above article is the introduction to the book The Way of the Web by Richard Seltzer]
Email: paciello@yuri.org PH/FAX: (603) 598-9544
WebAble! http://www.yuri.org/webable/
This is the first of a series of three articles which will describe many of the barriers people with disabilities experience as they try to use the World Wide Web. Additionally, I will provide potential solutions.
The goal of each article is simple: AWARENESS. If I can succeed in educating webmasters, Internet service providers (ISPs), and web designers regarding the needs of people with disabilities, then I believe the greatest barrier will have been broken. Note too that these articles are generally "high-level" descriptions. You can find the deeper, more technical information at http://www.webable.com . This article will focus on the needs of the "print impaired".
Print-impaired persons include the blind and low vision users. However, the term is not limited to individuals who experience sensory loss in their eyes. Print-impaired people also include those who have limited or no use of their hands or fingers in order to turn pages of a book or to access a keyboard or mouse interface for electronic documents. People with cognitive disabilities (for example, dyslexia) are sometimes included within the print-impaired category.
It's important for the sake of information and client design that you keep in mind the broader category of the print-impaired. By doing so, you're sure to design user interfaces and information that is accessible to the blind and visually impaired.
Blind users generally will have either a synthetic speech synthesizer or refreshable Braille display attached to their PC. The speech synthesizer vocalizes the onscreen data. Refreshable Braille displays convert ASCII character streams to Braille and then output that data to a Braille display. (If you've never seen a refreshable Braille display, rent the movie "Sneakers". The movie character "Whistler" is blind. He uses an ALVA refreshable Braille display to read the imbedded code on a computer microchip.)
The key to reading a web document or displayed server messages is that the output stream is ASCII text. Since many blind users rely on character-cell browsers (LYNX, W3, CERN Line Mode Browser) that read the ASCII in conjunction with their synthesizers and Braille displays, it is critical that imbedded images also contain meaningful text descriptions. This is accomplished by using the ALT attribute to the <IMG> in HTML.
If you cannot use the ALT attribute (probably for aesthetic reasons), try to include a description of the image, picture or graphical element somewhere physically close to the image as possible. This is even more important when the image intent is to convey a concept. Be sure to use text to convey conceptual images.
Never use bitmap images of text. They are impossible for the blind to read. Low vision users can enlarge them, but persons who are legally or totally without any sight, can never read text images.
Navigation is a challenge for blind and visually impaired users. Wherever possible, try to minimize the number of multiple hypertext links that appear in a single line of text.
Navigation is also difficult in web pages that feature multi-column displays. These are a nightmare for the blind. In addition to speech synthesizers, blind users require application software called "screen access" or "screen reader" software. Most of these applications (including those for GUI interfaces) are only capable of reading one line of text at a time. Thus, when the browser displays a multi-column document, the screen reader reads each line, jumping from column to column until it reaches the end of the line. This makes it very difficult for the user to follow, since there is no logical construct for the screen reader to follow. If you are a publisher of on-line journals, newspapers, or magazines, consider providing an alternative view of your text that is not multi-column in format and that can be downloaded.
Client (particularly browser) developers should look at opportunities to include hooks for screen readers and screen magnifiers. Additionally, in every case, include keyboard equivalents for mouse commands.
Lastly, the richness of the description of the document structure is the greatest friend of the blind user, particularly those who use Braille displays or print documents that must be translated to Braille. As a result, HTML is ideal because it provides knowledge about a document's construct that is important to the Braille translation software. Titles, paragraphs, lists, tables, etc..etc.. all contain their own formatting constructs. Braille translation software identifies the entity, associates that with a format, and then does the proper translation for the blind user.
Documents that contain no tangible entity or formatting information are useless to blind users. Recently, this issue was raised to Adobe concerning their Portable Document Format (PDF), which is becoming increasingly popular on the Web because of it's appealing visual appearance through a browser. This is ideal for a sighted user, but the source document provides no internal element descriptors that can be easily accessed and subsequently translated for the blind user. The good news is that Adobe is aware of the problem and has recently responded with an accessibility plan to deal with the inaccessibility of PDF.
Arguably, the blind could be more at home in cyberspace than the sighted.
As a sighted person, I can only try to imagine adapting to living in a world that is always dark or near dark. To maneuver successfully through a dark room you need to carry in your head an image of the space around you, which you edit as you encounter the unexpected. From experience, you expect the unexpected, are aware of what might be encountered, how to evaluate it on the fly, and how to adjust and continue.
To relate to this mode of perception, I try playing blindfold chess and am soon bewildered by the challenge. Try carrying an image (which may not even be a visual image) not only of the board and the current position but also of the expected continuations: the likely next moves and their evaluation and consequences, and also a healthy awareness of the unexpected: the potential for sacrifices and deep combinations, for positional as well as material threats and opportunities. Some of the best chess players actually go through this exercise to train their minds for this kind of multi-dimensional awareness, to get beyond knowledge that relies on vision.
The sighted person gains confidence and the leisure of complacency from what he or she sees. To see is to believe. To perceive that an object is in one state or position rather than another is to eliminate from consideration that it might be otherwise, to limit the possibilities. The sighted person -- above all the person who relies heavily on visual perception and visual modes of thought -- expects clarity, stability, and predictability, and hence may be less aware of ambiguity and latent potential, and less able to respond when what seems to be the case proves mistaken or uncertain. The blind person requires a multi-dimensional awareness and an openness to react quickly to the unexpected simply to maneuver safely through ordinary space. These are qualities that can prove quite valuable when maneuvering through cyberspace.
On a different but related plane -- I once at a chess tournament encountered a teenage boy who had no legs. His arms were very powerful, and rather than use a wheelchair, he operated in his own unique and, to me, disconcerting mode. I first saw him at a cafeteria table playing chess with a friend. His elbows were on the table. He was completely absorbed in the game. He looked seated like everyone beside him and across from him. But he had no chair. There was nothing under him. His torso was suspended from his elbows. He moved with the grace and speed of someone totally adapted to his environment.
I couldn't help but think that someone such as him would have enormous advantages in the weightless environment of outer space, where legs would be useless and the ability to maneuver by hands alone with acrobatic ease could be of great value. Plus, in the cramped quarters of a space ship or space station, legs, with their bulk and weight, would simply get in the way. Yes, I could easily imagine a special cadre of legless astronauts, able to perform in ways that no one else ever could.
Likewise today I could easily imagine a special cadre of sightless cybernauts.
Yes, in cyberspace (and the related concepts of virtual reality and alternate reality), the blind should be considered as a special resource. Companies that want to be on the leading edge in that field should go out of their way to recruit the blind -- not to conform to laws about hiring the handicapped and not because it is politically correct, but rather because their minds are not totally dominated by visual paradigms. They could imagine, and with computer technology could simulate, what to the sighted is unimaginable. And in the vast, ever-expanding, and always unexpected realm of the Internet, they could conceivably learn to be first-class navigators, superbly able to recognize new business opportunities -- far beyond the traditional nine dots -- and able to adjust to new circumstances on the fly.
For starters, companies designing next-generation virtual reality environments should recruit the blind. Visual simulation is relatively easy today, and everybody is doing it. The non-visual is where the breakthroughs will come.
And given this potential, those same high tech companies should give serious consideration to the needs of the blind early in their design cycles rather than as an afterthought. Because otherwise, by putting the blind at a disadvantage, by limiting the best access routes to cyberspace to the sighted, they cut themselves off from the resource that could take them a step beyond the competition and help them move far into the future.
From: daniel@sierra.net
Recently I had an online dialogue with a fellow who wants to do for music what you are trying to do with the printed page. He calls his idea the Free Music Philosophy. Like you, he is filled with a kind of idealistic fervor about music being above or beyond money, and about how great it will be for musicians when all music is finally free. Like you, he points out that very few musicians make money anyway (in your case, you state that very few writers make money anyway) and that free distribution can only improve their chances of finding a paying audience.
In the course of my professional musical life, I have watched whole musical communities decimated by the impact of electronic technologies. This is, of course, inevitable. But where is the need to paint this picture in Panglossian pastels? It is true that very few musicians make their living in music. It is also true that a vastly greater number made their livings in music before electronic technologies made music virtually free to the consumer.
In fact, all of the optimistic statements you make about the future of the writing profession as reshaped by the "free" word would well be examined in the light of what has happened to the musician during the last four and five decades. I hope you won't think that the all too real course of history is irrelevant to the value of what you are promoting. It is one thing to imagine, even with logical trappings, what you think should happen as a result of making the printed word free. It is another thing to actually live the life of a writer, or musician, in a world where his product, unlike all others, is incapable of creating a material reward.
Nevertheless, with appreciation for your newsletter, I am
Yours truly,
Daniel
Date: Mon, 5 Jun 1995 14:41:02 +0000
I am weighing in with my two-cents worth in your discussion about whether or not author's work should be distributed on the Internet for free.
Do you envision a time when electronic texts would be "distributed" in a way akin to television now where the viewer is not paying for each "show" (perhaps they pay for cable tv, just as they would pay an Internet provider)? To further the analogy, then, do you envision the possibility of "sponsors" or advertisers, which would provide the income for Internet "studios" (the electronic publishers), which, in turn, would mean there could be full-time Internet writers?
At some point, distributing "information" for free does not apply to writing. I am a writer. My skill is not the information I have; it is the ability to tell a story, a skill which I expect to be compensated for in some fashion. What motivation is there for writers to write full-time for publication on the Internet? I know that it is good exposure for so-called "literary" or "academic" writing, like small journals and zines are now. But eventually a writer may "graduate" from those forms. How do you propose to keep writers from "graduating" from the Internet?
Just to make myself clear, this is not criticism. I love your project and make great use of your web page and links. These are just questions that interest me and that I believe will have to be asked as the Internet grows and re-defines itself.
Thanks.
Kirk Laughlin
From: Boris.Vidovic@public.srce.hr (Boris Vidovic / HUPE)
Thank you for putting our Web site in the June issue of your newsletter (Internet-on-Disk). I've got a great response [by email] from the States: people could not get through either. There was a slight mistake in the address. The CORRECT ADDRESS is: http://bjesomar.srce.hr:1920 The same thing is also on: http://www.fesb.hr.1920
Could you post this correction, please.
Thank you very much for your assistance.
Boris Vidovic
From: Richard Evans <devans@equinox.shaysnet.com>
You appear to be an extremely net-savvy guy. Can you answer a question?
A big area of interest of mine is parliamentary procedure. (I am the Moderator in a small town in western Mass.)
Intrigued with the prospect of REAL electronic town meetings (where business gets accomplished through the democratic process, not the Ross Perot variety), I'm writing to ask if you are aware of any groups that are applying Robert's Rules (etc.) to their electronic deliberations, and/or whether anyone is working on protocols for doing that?
Thanks!
Dick Evans, Ashfield, Mass.
Editor -- This looks like an important need. We'd appreciate pointers to anything of this kind.
Published by Samizdat Express, 213 Deerfield Lane, Orange, CT 06477. (203) 553-9925. seltzer@samizdat.com
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