• influencing political parties platforms  
• the Net as a tool to have greater imput from special interest groups  
• the Net as a tool used by politicians. 
• See  jesseventura.com
• the Net as a way of letting everybody know about popular issues, and scandals
• many online magazines have excellent articles about the Internet's role in politics

• article on CNN web site titled

Will the Internet change media's role in politics?
• go here to read the full article

 http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9601/cyber_politics/
• a key point of this article is
• "the Internet offers a chance for candidates "to move beyond soundbites," ... the new medium is a route for candidates to "get their messages directly to the voter."

 
• "The impact of the Internet on Society", in this context, is that political candidates do not have to be so carefully to please the newspapers and TV, they can get their message to you directly through the web site

WTGR

 http://www.drudgereport.com/
 
 

• read  Cyberspace opens the political arena by Andrew Glass- this was discussed inclass  
• check out  www.daltonmcguinty.com "Dalton Cam"  
• a hijacked domain name www.mikeharris.com/ by the liberals  
• or the opposite www.notuptothejob.com(no longer active)  
• the conservatives www.OntarioPC.on.ca/  
• the conservatives satire site  www.liberalsforharris.com/(no longer active)  
• the NDPs  www.ontariondp.on.ca/ 

"Estimates suggest that only 10 percent of the population has ever been on the Internet -- and had the chance to see politics newsgroups and freewheeling debate. Yet nine Republican candidates -- and the
main contender from the Democratic side -- have all mounted a presence on the World Wide Web with campaign home pages."
Brian Nelson for CNN
 http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9601/cyber_politics/
 

www.georgewbush.com

 

Read this article by Marjo Johne

"Bill St. Arnaud, senior director at Canarie Inc., a non-profit Internet development  organization based in Ottawa, points to file-sharing models such as Napster and Gnutella as examples of where the Internet is headed. These decentralized "peer-to-peer" frameworks, which allow Internet users to share content with each other without a main controlling gateway, will become more common in the future. "It's getting away from  control and authority," he says. "New ways of delivering content will be established, and  we will be doing things like downloading movies for free, allowing non-traditional moviemakers to get a worldwide audience, but the bottom line for users is that there will  be a greater richness and availability of information and content, from music to videos and so forth."

High-speed broadband connections, which can transmit higher concentrations of data at a faster clip, will further encourage this proliferation of media-rich content. Consequently, says Markus Hoffman at Lucent Technologies, the Internet will become less text-heavy and more audiovisual.

Anthony Anirud, a senior telecommunications analyst with IDC Canada, envisions the Internet of tomorrow as a truly visual and interactive medium that goes beyond just leaving video messages on someone's e-mail. At present, video conferencing over the Internet is a slow and awkward business, with slow-moving images and delays in  transmission of both audio and visual data.

The convergence of voice and data networks will radically change how we use the Internet, says Mr. Anirud. "Once this takes off, we could be visually corresponding back  and forth in real time. In fact, any kind of visual content on the Internet will become interactive."

While it all sounds exciting, there is a downside: As peer-to-networking and high-speed broadband connections make information even more easily accessible than it is today, content on the Internet will inevitably become downgraded, in both actual and perceived quality, says Mr. St. Arnaud."
 

Weak?

.	Read this article by Robert Wright Feb. 22, 2001

"But a couple of recent studies point to the possibility that Internet growth is slowing down, perhaps even levelling off."

"The first hint was when December [2000] figures showed that, for the first time, the number of hours people spent online had fallen -- from 19.2 to 17.6 hours per month. But researchers concluded that it had more to do with families spending more time together during the holidays than with any real slow-down. But the trend has continued. According to PC Data Online figures, 36 of the 50 most popular Web properties actually experienced a decline in traffic in January. Among the Top 10 sites, for instance, Yahoo.com's traffic fell 2.3 per cent and AOL.com's fell a mere 0.5 per cent, but others experienced greater declines, including Passport.com (4 per cent), Geocities.com (3.8 per cent), eBay.com (2.8 per cent), Lycos.com (6.2 per cent) and Amazon.com (19.6 per cent). Traffic at some sites in the Top 100 fell by as much as 62.2 per   cent. PC Data Online didn't provide aggregate figures for Net traffic."

"last week,[Feb 15, 2001]  research firm Ipsos-Reid released a study that concluded Internet growth is slowing down and even stalling in parts of the world. The study, The Face Of The Web, shows that Internet usage is highly concentrated in a few countries -- particularly in North America, Europe and a few pockets elsewhere -- but is slowing in most others. In fact, it found that up to a third of the world not only has no intention of going online, it has never even heard of the Internet. The study says there are about 350 million regular Internet users, about 6 per cent of the world's population. That's up 16 per cent over 1999, but well below previous annual growth rates. If the trend continues, the Net's population won't come close to the 1 billion total predicted by a number of industry analysts."
 

Weak?

.	the article by Robert Wright is based on a study done by market research firm Ipsos Reid, sooo, we'll go direct to the Ipsos Reid website to see the information directly

"Internet growth is slowing and even stalling in parts of  the world, according to Ipsos-Reid, a leading international research firm. The company's study, The  Face of the Web, shows that usage is highly concentrated in a few countries, exhibits signs of slowing  growth in several others, and that up to a third of the world has neither heard of the Internet nor has any intention of going online anytime soon.  The Face of the Web's projections peg the worldwide Internet population at about 350 million regular users, up about 16% year-over-over, which is a decent showing but far below growth levels in  previous years"

Slower Growth Doesn't Mean Demise 

"Some of the company’s [Ipsos Reid] ongoing global Internet research shows that:
 

• Online talk is cheap: Nine-in-ten young Internet users have used e-mail, and seven-in-ten  participate in chat rooms regularly. 
• Music downloading: 36% of all adult Internet users and 41% of teens and young adult Internet  users have downloaded music from the Web in MP3 or similar formats. 
• Research tool: More than nine-in-ten teenagers in U.S. and Canada use the web to help with homework. 
• E-commerce: Nearly 120 million Internet users worldwide have already made a purchase or transaction online, with as many as one in four purchases made on impulse. 
• Banking and investing: Internet users in Europe are among the world's most enthusiastic online banking customers, ahead of those in the United States. "

Weak?

Outside
of
urban
areas

Internet 
needs 
space 
to grow
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Internet 
needs 
space 
to grow

.	the well researched article by Tyler Hamilton in the Toronto Star

"It's 2020 and, like electricity and running water, the Internet has come to power, and flows through every aspect of your life. Your personal computer and mobile phone aren't the only devices connected to the World Wide Web. Your microwave now surfs for recipes based on the ingredients in your cupboards. Your grocery orders are automatically placed online as food and drinks are taken from your fridge. Your dishwasher, before turning itself on, negotiates the cheapest energy rate for the day, thanks to a software agent known as a hydrobroker. Minivans. Air conditioners. Picture frames. Digital books. MP3 players. Palm computers. BlackBerry pagers. Smart cards. Pop machines. Motor boats.... They will all have a 24-hour, always-on connection to the Internet one day and, like the devices I mentioned above, they will all require Internet Protocol or IP addresses to identify them as unique online ``beings.''  Many experts suggest that the average person will need more than 100 IP addresses for his or her own use within the next 20 years. Herein lies the problem. The Internet, as it exists today, can't support 600 billion IP addresses. If we're lucky, it's capable of assigning 4.3 billion addresses. And if that's the case, we've already used up more than 60 per cent of the capacity, meaning we'll likely run out within the next few years. Can anybody say crisis? If you thought the Y2K bug threat was a major headache, then get ready for a migraine."

"Every device that links to the Internet needs its own IP address so that other online devices can find and communicate with it.  Today, when a device such as a laptop dials up to the Internet, it is assigned a temporary IP address for that specific online session. But in the not-so-distant future of always-on, ubiquitous Net access, most IP addresses will be permanently assigned -  kind of like a telephone number.

  ``If we don't do anything, then we have a similar problem to Y2K,'' says Latif Ladid, president of the IPv6 Forum, a global consortium of more than a 100 telecommunications carriers, Internet service providers and network equipment makers"

"The current generation, known as Internet protocol version 4, or IPv4, has been in place since 1983. It was co-created by Dr.  Vint Cerf, known affectionately as ``father of the Internet.'' Before IPv4, we had APARnet, a network of about 300 mainframe computers that was built by the U.S. government and operated between 1969 and 1983. Ladid says it's time to move forward with Internet Protocol version 6, or IPv6, in development since the early 1990s and was approved as a global standard in 1999. Soon after, Ladid founded the IPv6 Forum. The group was in Ottawa last week [2001 May] as part of a worldwide awareness tour.  As far as Ladid is concerned, if we start embracing IPv6 now, we are more likely to avoid the last-minute crunch we  experienced with Y2K."

Internet 
needs 
space 
to grow

.	the 1999 article by Joe McGarvey of ZD Net Inter@ctive Week raises the question of IP addresses limitations and challenges faced by the IPv6 Forum

McGarvey explains,

"The major shortcoming of the current version of IP, IPv4, is that it is running out of available IP addresses.  Designed when the Internet was still a data-sharing  network for research facilities and the military, IPv4 was given a 32-bit addressing scheme, which was capable of assigning a few billion unique addresses. IPv6, on the other hand, is beefed up with a 128-bit addressing scheme, which enables it to spawn many more billions of additional addresses."

McGarvey notes the first meeting of the IPv6 Forum, an international advocacy group dedicated to advancing the next generation of the Internet Protocol (IP), was held in Paris in October 1999.