Defining the Internet

In terms of media type

[Nick_W]

Hi all,

How would one define/catagorize the internet in terms of media type?

• One-to-one media (no idea what this means)
  
• Liquid media
  
• Or what?
  

We have Print media, screen media, radio etc, right? So what is the Internet in this context?

Many thanks...

Nick

[Hawkgirl]

"...the Internet is rapidly becoming the global medium. Not a medium. *The* medium. We already see that e-business is dependent on the Internet, and we're starting to see people around the world relying on it for education, disease management, entertainment, real-time communications and collaboration, and even government services, to name just a few uses."

-John Patrick
Vice President - Internet Technology
IBM Corporation

[Duckula]

You have a few dozens of different clients that connect to that what you call "internet".

The internet by itself doesn't mean anything but a channel for exchanging data packets. The software client that exchange those packets is what defines the media.

Then, if you have an internet phone app, the internet is a direct aural media; if you have an internet radio appliance the internet is just like radio; if you have a client to automatically download news once a day the internet is like printed media; and so on.

The computer by itself is more frequently used as an emulator for something else in the real world; avoiding that fact it's just as hard to define what kind of tool a "computer" is.

[andreasfriedrich]

Hey Nick,

donīt you know that a fellow Brit (Ronald Dworkin) rightly pointed out that "it is better to look at theories than labels"?

A definition of the internet in term of media types seems next to impossible to me, since the internet encompasses email, World Wide Web, gopher, ftp. It could be seen as a tcp/ip/ and udp application.

The medium is not a definition at all. Since Aristotle definitions are deemed to follow this rule: Omnis definitio fit per genus proximum et differentiam specificam. We need to name the category (genus proximum) a term belongs to and then some characteristics (differentiam specificam) that differentiate it from other things within this category.

From a positivistic point of view: RFC2045 and RFC2046 specify media types will be assigned and listed by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Have a look at all the great Media Types [iana.org]. So you might ask them for a definition of the internet in terms of media types. Or even better use this form [iana.org] to register your own media type with the IANA. ;)

Hope this helps. ;)

Andreas

[lorax]

Perhaps we could consider the Internet as a media service - loosely analagous to the radio spectrum where different bandwidths of the spectrum are used for different purposes like TV, FM, AM, GPS, etc... But there the similarity ends. With the internet there are no assigned bandwiths - just addresses - and even those aren't all dedicated to a particular service. Plus the services available on the Inet are not neatly organized nor cataloged in one location as is the radio spectrum.