The purpose of this field trip is to explore some of the spaces of the Internet and to practice some searching techniques. While you are all familiar with e-mail and the World Wide Web, there are some other spaces you should be aware of. As you visit these sites think about how they are like and not like spaces and places.

Assignment

For this assignment, browse the web sites and services indicated below and answer the questions. You may be tempted to just cut and paste your answers from web sites. Don't. I'm interested in what you have to say rather than in your cutting and pasting skills. Send your answers to me at mlongan@valpo.edu. You may want to paste the questions into an MS word document, answer them, and then just copy the whole thing into an e-mail message. Please don't send your assignment as a Word attachment. Due by the start of class on Tuesday. Be sure to save freqently so that you don't lose your work. Talking with each other about what you observe is encouraged!

E-mail lists or Listserves

E-mail. E-mail is perhaps one of the core uses of the Internet. You have likely been an e-mail user for some time. But there are some other applications of e-mail that you may or may not be aware of that constitue important public and private spaces on the net.

While traditional e-mail allows communcation between two people, an e-mail list allows for one to many communication as well as many to many communication. As a VU student you are likely signed up for a few e-mail lists on campus that send out regular announcements, but these really aren't very active lists for discussion. It functions like other more traditional media in that it broadcasts information. It basically allows for one to many communication, much like a lecture in our classroom. One application of e-mail lists that is particularly interesting in Minnesota E-democracy. It is a non-profit organization that exists to facilitate discussion about Minnesota politics, at both the state level and at the local level. Users subscribe to these lists and can both send and receive e-mail messages. It allows for many to many communication--kind of like a discussion we'd have in our classroom. Take a look at Minnesota E-democracy and answer the following questions.

1. What is the mission of Minnesota E-democracy?

2. Take a look at the Minnesota Announce and Discuss list guidelines. What limitations do participants have on posting messages to the e-mail lists? Why do you think these limitations are imposed?

3. What do you think are are some of the advantages and disadvantages of this form of political discussion versus face-to-face debate and discussion?

Newsgroups/USENET

Newsgroups were one of the first applications of many to many communications on the Internet. You can check them out by opening Newsgroups on the Communicator menu of Netscape (or whatever you happen to have installed on your computer). Institutions such as VU or an Internet service provider subscribe to a particular body of newsgroups. The messages are transmitted around the world to all institutions that are subscribed to a particular newsgroup. This network is called USENET. In order to view newsgroups you have to subscribe to them. Instructions for setting up newsgroups are available from EIS. These days it is much easier to access newsgroups through web based interfaces. Probably the most prominent is on Google at Google Groups. This is a service that archives newsgroups on the WWW. 

4. What is the most obscure topic that you can find in the Usenet Newsgroups (Hint Look in the alt or alternate category)?

5. Read some of the messages in one of the newsgroups. What is being discussed? Is the discussion very valuable? Is it polite?

6. What is going on in soc.culture.iraq these days?

Web Discussion Forums/Communities

Newsgroups are relatively ancient technologies in Internet terms. The latest thing are web forums which are often called communities or clubs. These are web-based rather than text-based, making them easy to used. Take a look at Yahoo! Clubs and asnwer the following questions.

7. Pick a club of interest to you and browse through its contents. What are members of a club able to do besides discussion? (Note: To see some of the features you may have to sign up. There is no need to do that for this assignment.)

8. How do these clubs facilitate community building? Is this type of community likely to replace face-to-face forms of community based on what you observe?

9. These day's it is even possible for individuals to set up and run their own personal discussion forums. Check out the Ubiquitous Wookie. Who is using this site? Is it a wide public or a small group of friends?

Blogs

Blogs or "weB logs" are an advanced form of the personal homepage. Blogs have likely been around for a long time but they have become especially popular in the last four years or so. Blogs come in many flavors. Some Blogs are simply online personal diaries where individuals share their thoughts with the world. Many focus on political discussion and encourage feedback. Often blogs are places for sharing (through links) and commenting on material found on the Internet. Typically blogs rely on specialized software that allow them to be updated through a web browser interface. A variety of service providers offer space to host a personal blog, or you can set up the software and host a blog yourself. The blog has become so popular that they may even be influencing professional journalism.

10. Go to Blogger.com a popular web log hosting service (so popular that it is owned by Google) and click through the links that describe what a blog is. What is a blog? What can you do with a blog?

11. Let's take a look at a personal blog picked almost at random. What kinds of things is this person sharing on his/her blog?

12. Check out http://www.thememoryhole.org/ What is the purpose of this web log and what is its claim to fame?

Web Archives

One difficulty with the internet is that it is always changing. One effort to archive the Internet is the Wayback Machine. This is a great archive to use to better understand the historical development of the world wide web.

13. Use the Wayback Machine to find out what the VU home page looked like in 1996. What do you think?

MUDs and Virtual Worlds

MUD stands for Multi User Dungeon or Multi User Domain. Basically MUDS are are programs that allow bunches of people to interact in a text-based interactive space. They're kind of a primitive (yet still rich) form of virtual reality. We won't look at any today, but if you're interested in the future you can find out more informaiton about them from the list of links on Yahoo. We may do more with these later in the term. I thought we should at least introduce you to them.

More recently MUDs have evolved into Virtual Worlds or Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or MMORPGs. Two popular examples are Ultima Online and EverQuest which you can access by going to your local software store, purchasing the software, and paying the monthly fee. We won't do that today, but we can look at the Ultima Online Visitor's Center. UO was one of the first of these commercially available virtual worlds. Go there and answer the following questions.

14. What makes the virtual world of Ultima Online a different kind of space than say a Discussion Forum/Club or an e-mail list? What does it add that is different? (take a look at some of the screen shots)

15. How do you think the kinds of community one might form in a Virtual World like UO might compare to a face-to-face community?

You'll find some more examples and maps of some of these MUDS and Virtual Worlds on the MUD and Virtual World page in the Atlas of Cyberspace.

Intranets and other Private Cyberspaces

There is much information online that you can not access. This so called "private interent" consists of corporate networks and other private spaces behind security walls. VU has four different kinds of Intranet space that you probably interact with everyday. The first is the VU Intranet, the second is the Course VU system, the third are the libraries article databases, and the fourth is the DataVU system. You'll note that this class does not use any of these private networks. Another form of cyberspace you can not access is the "dark internet," consisting of all those websites that are not linked to anything. Since internet search engines find sites through links, pages that are not linked to any other page are invisible to the world at large.

16. Go to the VU Intranet. What kind of data is available here? Why is it stored here rather than on the public internet? Should it be there or should it be more public?

17. What are the benefits and costs of having a course on a private network versus on the public internet?

Searching the Net

The Internet is basically a big boiling soup of both information and junk. One of the interesting questions that some geographers have asked is how does one find their way around an information space. You can see some attempts at mapping information spaces on the Atlas of Cyberspaces' Information Space Maps page. Take a look at some of these. You don't have to answer any questions here, just ooo and ah at the pretty pictures. I don't hear any ooing and ahing.

OK, now that you're done looking at the pretty maps, let's try a scavenger hunt. You are probably familiar with what a search engine is. They are services that help you to find resources on the Internet. You probably know about Google (who doesn't these days) but there are others including Yahoo.com, Hotbot, Lycos and Alta Vista among others. There are also more specialized search engines out there. Scirus for example is a search engine that specializes in scientific information. Use one or more of these search engines to find the answers to the following questions. List the URL or URLs (that's its address--you know the http:// thingy) where you found the answer. Try some different search engines and see how the results compare. These are all questions about some interesting places in the world.

18. What is the name of the man who created the biggest ball of twine in Minnesota (the second largest in the world) and in what town is it located?

19. Where is carhenge located and what is it?

20. What is the name of the big tourist attraction near Kearney Nebraska along Interstate 80?

21. Where will you find the world's largest Holstein Cow and what is her name?

22. Who won the largest watermelon prize with a 165 pound entry in 2003 and where was the watermelon festival at which the prize was awarded?

23. Approximately how many towns coam to have the world's largest watermelon? List their names here.

24. What famous person is from a town that claims to have the world's largest watermelon?