Social Implications of a Distributed Network

There are several key implications that result from the Internet's design. The first one is that no single organization or government can control it. As no one can control it is impossible to totally censor information once it is on the net. An example is Scientology's futile efforts to censor anything negative to their organization, it is doomed to failure because of the essential nature of the net.

Related to this, no one can stop anyone, with one exception, from publishing or broadcasting anything they wish on the net. The one exception is advertising in newsgroups, in which case the users on that group will harass the offending user into compliance with the newsgroup netiquette.

This is not to say that there is information which has no place on the net, everything has its place; what is not suitable for newsgroups is suitable for the WEB. The WEB give a voice to those people who otherwise have no voice. Though the WEB one can present one's message, art, or product to an audience of millions. This powerful democratic force.


WEB Paradigm Why. Media Theory. History and Prehistory Print Paradigm.
Multimedia Paradigm. Hypertext Paradigm. Docuverse Paradigm. Interactive Paradigm. Conclusions