Sam Francis Fitness

Archive for November, 2009

Adam Landry , a 15-year-old son of Lotus chief technology officer John Lancby, has built his own Home Page, complete with pictures (from a photo CD) and curriculum vitae (sports, music, travel, etc.). His CV highlights, in particular, those interests he feels would be attractive for consumption by browsers of the opposite sex. He’s debating whether to put in “No Girlfriend, Yet!” And, of course, Adam can track interest in his Home Page. Of special interest to him is the number of hits from young ladies. (This gives a whole new meaning to “being hit on”)
According to Dad, “Adam is no geek, but he does know how to compose HTML pages because he downloaded the instructions off a server on the Net. Compose the page with any text editor, tag it with HTML, and link it to another page and voila, you’re a Webster!”
So Adam Landry, sophomore at Wayland High, is now an information publisher, and his interests, opinions, image, and voice, as well as links to things that he thinks are “cool” on the Web, are available effortlessly to millions of people worldwide, And the value of that experience for him is incalculable, and for Dad, unforgettable. And although Adam hasn’t realized it, he is an early example of an incredible worldwide phenomenon that will revolutionize learning, work, and living. As Dad puts it: “This is the new information publisher—Adam Landry
One turning point for the commercial use of the Net was the formation in 1991 of the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), a group of commercial Internet providers that established cooperative agreements to let users communicate with others, regardless of which network provided their Internet connection.
But nobody owns the Net. Every participant owns it. The Net is about giving something back as much as it is taking advantage. Intrusive ads, gratuitous junk mail, and nothing-for-nothing attitudes will do a disservice to any organization that contemplates using these tactics on the Net (in fact, such users risk being heavily criticized and ostracized faster than they can say “I’m sorry”).
Internet-related standards are truly global and are advancing at a rapid rate to meet the demands of the participants. The users of the Net are deciding the viability of Net services (voting by their use). We are entering a new era of truly open systems in which all technology platforms can participate and all users can have a say.
This is not to say that there are no problems. There are huge issues regarding security and authentication on the Net. The expression used to be, “Doing that is like putting it in the New York Times.” Now it is, “Doing that is like putting it on the Internet.” But the genius of tens of thousands of companies and hundreds of thousands of people from the converging industries of computing, communications and content (entertainment and publishing) is being applied to transforming our nascent networks into a robust information highway. And every day the situation changes and improves.
Other concerns center on control of the Net. The introduction of Microsoft Network in late 1995 was seen by many as an effort to take over the Net, although arguably the company is now just another player (albeit a significant one).