REMEMBER PAYPHONES?

When was the last time you used a payphone? The ubiquity of cell phones has made them increasingly harder to find, and when you do find one you probably won't see anyone using it. The number of payphones in the U.S. has gone down from 2.7 million in the mid-1990s to just 1.9 million now, and the small companies that maintain those phones are going out of the business. So buy a few payphones, and see if you can sell them on the Internet for a profit. (Washington Post 30 Dec 2002)

Short Film Freely Available

The Prelinger Archives is a collection of over 45,000 short films (ads, educational movies, etc) by corporations, nonprofit organizations, trade associations, community and interest groups, and educational institutions. The films are all freely available for download and use. What an extraordinary resource!

Web logs keep media on it's toes

The trend of keeping a Web log, a personal online journal posted to an Internet site, is beginning to have an impact on the way in which news is covered. According to MSNBC.com executive producer Joan Connell, Web loggers have helped media outlets identify stories that might have otherwise gone unnoticed or inadequately covered. A recent example is Sen. Trent Lott's controversial remarks earlier this month, a story at which "[t]he mainstream media yawned, rolled their eyes and went on," Connell said. Web loggers opined on the issue for a full week, however, compelling the media to run the story. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Dale Dallabrida, Gannett News Service]

In-Room Chat as a Social Tool

Clay Shirky wrote (in what Jon Stahl of onenw.org calls "a great article") in his NEC Newsletter about his experiences using an online chat tool as a supplement to an in-person meeting. Produced some interesting positive social dynamics. Note that this is for a *large* meeting, not two or three people.

Study Tracks Americans Perceptions of Internet

According to a study conducted by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, self-described Internet "non-users" have high expectations of the information available to them on the Web, especially on topics such as health care, government, news and shopping. While 64 percent of non-users assume that they can research at least one of these topics online, 16 percent said that they would turn to the Internet first the next time they needed health care or government information. John Horrigan, a senior research specialist at Pew, stated that "[t]he Internet has become such a go-to tool in America that even non-Internet users think it's an effective way to get information," adding that nonusers may have either had access in the past or have someone else in their household who can gain access for them, clueing them in to what's available on the Web. The study also found that 97 percent of Internet users shared these expectations. [SOURCE: USAToday, AUTHOR: Associated Press]

Who Owns the Internet? You and i Do
By JOHN SCHWARTZ
New York Times

SOMETHING will be missing when Joseph Turow's book about families and the Internet is published by M.I.T. Press next spring: The capital I that usually begins the word "Internet."

Mr. Turow, a professor at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, studies how people use online technology and how that affects their lives. He has begun a small crusade to de-capitalize Internet and, by extension, to acknowledge a deep shift in the way that we think about the online world.

"I think what it means is it's part of the everyday universe," he said.

Capitalization irked him because, he said, it seemed to imply that reaching into the vast, interconnected ether was a brand-name experience.

"The capitalization of things seems to place an inordinate, almost private emphasis on something," he said, turning it into a Kleenex or a Frigidaire. "The Internet, at least philosophically, should not be owned by anyone," he said, calling it "part of the neural universe of life."

But, he said, dropping the big I would sent a deeper message to the world: The revolution is over, and the Net won. It's part of everyone's life, and as common as air and water (neither of which starts with a capital).

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