What is it?
The Internet is the Future. We hear it all the time. It’s true enough, but what does it mean? And how do we prepare for it?
Already the web is a source of information vastly more powerful than anything ever assembled in a single place; it is growing larger and more powerful every day. It’s also an amazing economic phenomenon. It has made some companies extraordinarily efficient and profitable. It offers individual consumers a range of products, and possibilities unthinkable in an earlier era. And the Internet has altered the way governments organize themselves, and their relationships with their citizens.
Yet the Web is also dangerous. Online information is now so extensive that it is overwhelming. Much of what is on the web is not straightforwardly reliable, and many of the old systems we used to evaluate information simply do not work online. The pervasive network offers governments, businesses and malicious individuals very powerful tools to invade our privacy, giving them direct access to our homes and offices. And the new, networked economy has proven very hazardous, producing lay-offs and bankruptcies in numbers that exceed the dot.com millionaires and Internet startups of the late 1990s.
The point is simple: The Internet demands very careful attention.
That is precisely what this major is about. It will consist of five key areas.
1) Understanding the Internet. We will examine the people, institutions, networks, machines and software that make it work. Students majoring in Internet Studies will embrace the web in all its aspects, from the government institutions responsible for the early development of the network to the major corporations and political organizations fighting for control of its future.
2) Learning new tools. Students will be trained in the use of the most powerful Open Source software tools for Internet publishing. Working with the Information and Communication Technology Division we will also make every effort to provide students with the finest hardware and networking facilities.
3) Measuring the Internet’s effects on our own society. Students will work on a set of research and writing skills that will equip them to understand and critique the ways in which networking technologies are shaping South Africa. Part of this training will be the development of the design and presentation skills necessary to find and implement solutions to problems.
4) Organizing our understanding of this process. The heart of this new major will be the fostering of data and information management skills using relational databases. These tools for knowledge management are indispensable in the effort to produce useable information, and they, also, provide a flexible and efficient foundation for most contemporary web sites.
5) Understanding Internet Data. Students will learn to find, interpret and analyze the most valuable sources of statistical information online. Here we will look closely at the data sets produced by web servers, work with web mapping tools, and focus on the problems of tracking deleted content.
The courses in this major will change as the Internet does, and the best place to keep up with them is probably on this web site.
