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In the 1970s experimental networks emerged from the university and were, at first gingerly, picked up by thegeneral public. At this stage the most interesting applications for these networks came out of the university world: the Ethernetprotocol was developed in Robert Metcalfe’s (initially unsuccessful) Harvard dissertation (1973); twenty years later, inApril 1993, Mosaic―the first graphical web browser, from which are descended all other browsers that we use today―was released fromthe National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. In the next year, Webtraffic grew at an annual rate of 341,634%.
On a typical day at the end of 2004, some 70 million American adults logged onto the Internet to use email, getnews, access government information, check out health and medical information, participate in auctions, book travel reservations,research their genealogy, gamble, seek out romantic partners and engage in countless other activities. That represents a 37%increase from the 52 million adults who were online on an average day in 2000 when the Pew Internet&American Life Project began its study of online life. . . . The Web has become the “new normal”in the American way of life; those who don’t go online constitute an ever-shrinking minority.
By 2005, the Pew Survey reports, the percentage of American adults online had increased—in one year—from60% to 73%.
But it is teenagers (12-17) who have the highest share of Internetparticipation (87% are online): they regard e-mail as “something for ‘old people,’” and they have “embraced the online applicationsthat enable communicative, creative, and social uses. [They] aresignificantly more likely than older users to send and receive instant messages, play online games, create blogs, download music,and search for school information.”The challenge for scholars and teachers is to ensure that they engage this outpouring of creative energy, seizethis openness to learning, and lead rather than follow in the design of this new cultural infrastructure. And, in fact, over thelast fifty years, a small but growing number of scholars in the humanities and social sciences have been using digital tools andtechnologies with increasing sophistication and innovation, transforming their practices of collaboration and communication.Some have been true media pioneers, testing the limits of the systems, policies, and funding sources that support digitalscholarship. These digital groundbreakers have provided breathtaking views into what could be achieved with a more robusthumanities and social science cyberinfrastructure. What new heights would be reached if a leveraged, coordinated investment, asoutlined in this report, were undertaken?
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