Entered by Gio Wiederhold, updated 11 Jan 2002.
Discussion; understanding what's going on; analysis; business trade-offs, making predictions, but not telling what the future will bring.
Student participation: reading, arguing, writing of Web pages for an Internet Handbook.
Wide variety of backgrounds, expertise, goals. All names
should be on the classlist, please check it. Soon
there should be also some pictures. Since there were several students who can't
make it, all of the waitlisted students are admitted to the class.
If any participants are not on the classlist, let to: gio@cs.stanford.edu know soon.
Long development cycle:
1960's: Reliable communication for defense purposes
1970's: Shared usage of resources by some academics, research orgs with military contracts
1980's: Many competing networks, partially to offset advantage of military contractors IBM, UUnet, NASAnet, ...
late 1980s': Consolidation and new scalable technology supported by NSF: Internet
1990's: web protocols (HTML, HTTP) -- to be discussed..
1995+: Commercial paricipation
2000's ?
Expectation versus reality: Powerpoint Figures or HTM Figures. Motivation for changes in the communication infrastructure: reliability in the presence of threats through redundant paths, nodes; then access for all academics, commercial operation and participation for viability.
Areas: Retail Commerce (B2C), B2B, G2C, Education, Healthcare, ...