Future of the Internet | Introduction
In 1969, the U.S. Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) inaugurated ARPANET, a small network of high-speed supercomputers designed to withstand military attack. The purpose of ARPANET was to enable researchers and scientists to share one another’s computer facilities by long distance for national research and development projects. However, writes author Bruce Sterling, “The main traffic on ARPANET was not long-distance computing. Instead, it was news and personal messages.”
Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, ARPANET grew, accommodating many different types of computers, until it was incorporated in 1989 within the National Science Foundation’s own computer network, which became known as the Internet. According to Sterling, “Its users scarcely noticed, for ARPANET’s functions not only continued but steadily improved.” As the availability of personal computers increased, the Internet gradually progressed beyond the purview of military and research institutions into schools, libraries, and the business world.
The Internet has since become the world’s fastest-growing communications medium, surpassing fax machines and cellular telephones. What was once a network of four computers in December 1969 is now a vast amalgam of more than forty thousand computer networks accommodating more than fifty million users as of the beginning of 1997.
The development perhaps most responsible for the Internet’s astonishing growth was the creation and immediate popularity of the World Wide Web (also called the Web or WWW) in 1991. The Web is a collection of commercial, educational, and personal “Web sites” that contain electronic pages of text and graphics. Other popular features of the Internet include e-mail, an electronic system that now delivers more messages and files than the U.S. Postal Service; and MUDs and MOOs (multi-user dungeon and MUD object oriented, respectively), which are domains where users can chat and play games interactively.
Individuals can spend extraordinary amounts of time and money exploring the Internet. Some users “surf the Net” for as many as eighteen hours in one day, resulting in monthly telephone bills that exceed four hundred dollars. Extensive Internet use is often compared to chemical dependency and gambling and, like these disorders, has prompted the creation of self-help groups, such as Interneters Anonymous and Webaholics. The phenomenon of heavy Internet use inspired Tripod, an on-line membership company, to survey its users in June 1996. Responses from fifty members produced no consensus on whether inordinate Internet use is a serious problem. Respondent Doug Padgett confessed, “My ex-wife tells me she divorced me because I spent more time on the computer than on her!” However, another member maintained that “the Internet is definitely addictive, but it makes the real world a better experience.”
Many observers warn that heavy use of the Internet can have dire, sometimes irreparable, consequences. Lured by the Internet, some users have neglected their relationships and careers, sometimes resulting in ruined marriages and lost jobs. “It’s as addictive as alcohol or drugs,” according to one forty-three-year-old woman, who told Newsweek magazine that her Internet compulsion led to her divorce and estrangement from her children. “I believe it could be really bad and really dangerous for this country,” she said.
Students with access to the Internet can also find themselves hooked. Ohio University graduate student Rich Barette states that one reason he started his Webaholics group is that he has two close friends whose academic careers went “down the drain” due to excessive Internet use. In 1996, faculty members at New York’s Alfred University found that “nearly half the students who quit [school] had been logging marathon, late-night time on the Internet.”
Many mental health professionals and others who had previously doubted whether Internet use could actually be addictive now wholeheartedly believe it is as real an addiction as alcoholism or drug abuse. According to University of Pittsburgh clinical psychologist Kimberly Young:
I didn’t believe it. But I’ve now heard the same stories from so many people. Use of the Internet can definitely disrupt one’s academic, social, financial, and occupational life the same way other well-documented addictions like pathological gambling, eating disorder, and alcoholism can.
Young studied 396 Internet users and presented her findings on what is known as Internet Addiction Disorder (IAD) at the 1996 convention of the American Psychological Association. According to Cyberia Magazine writer James Snodgrass, “Internet addicts display the classic symptoms of addictive behavior. They go on-line to escape real-life problems, are unable to control their Internet use, and feel restless and irritable when they try to cut their use.”
However, many other experts and computer users deny that IAD is a true disorder or that excessive use of the Internet is much of a crisis. Some observers maintain that most Internet users are nowhere near becoming compulsive users of the medium. Newsweek writers Kendall Hamilton and Claudia Kalb point out that “the average TV viewer spends more than 28 hours a week in front of the tube, while the average Interneter burns a comparatively measly five and a half hours.” Many users assert that they can easily reduce their Internet time if required. According to a Salem, Massachusetts, computer technician, “I am a cybersurfer down to the marrow, but I could definitely stop if it was doing more damage to my marriage.” Other users contend that logging onto the Internet is no more of a problem than spending time on the telephone. As Tripod member “LowKeyCat” notes, “The Internet is a communication tool, just like the telephone, television, and the postal service. I’ve never heard any of these officially classified as a disorder.”
Ardent users contend that exploring the Internet is an extremely enriching experience, a daily ritual that they eagerly look forward to. One benefit of the Internet, proponents maintain, is the development of on-line relationships among users. Tripod member “Quanta” extols the social aspects of the Internet, especially the ability to maintain closer ties with geographically dispersed family and friends:
In a couple of e-mail discussion groups, strong personal friendships have formed because of the feeling of being connected through various life events experienced by the members of the group. These are the things that create the bonds of community, and this medium has its own unique ways of forming them.
Millions of users are also enthralled by the trove of educational and other useful information available on the World Wide Web with a click of a desktop mouse. Responding to Tripod’s survey, a user named “Orbot” wrote, “We don’t talk about information addicts when they go for a useless Ph.D. We always understood that the life of the mind is the really important one. How can a society discourage the inquisitiveness of its members?” Fellow member “MarsFire” adds, “There is a wealth of information for me to explore. Let me freely enjoy this.”
As in the case of other potentially addictive activities, many observers maintain, whether Internet use becomes detrimental depends on an individual’s capacity for self-control. For users who lack adequate self-control, mental health experts recommend setting a daily on-line time limit and sticking to it. They also suggest that users resolve any underlying problems or conflicts that may compel them to spend too much time on the Internet.
As the Internet grows exponentially—“by at least another factor of 100” by the year 2001, according to software developer Charles H. Ferguson— concern toward problematic use of the Internet promises to increase. According to Viktor Brenner, a Marquette University assistant professor of ed- ucation, “Virtually everything that exists can be found in cyberspace, so the range of persons who use—and might abuse—computers and the Internet is wider than ever before.” Nevertheless, Brenner concedes that “we have no data on what types of behaviors would constitute this ‘addiction,’ its prevalence, or who ‘gets addicted.’” Internet addiction is among the issues explored in The Future of the Internet, in which authors discuss the phenomenon of the Internet and its impending effects on individuals and society.
