Group items tagged

The Internet significantly affects OECD economies at different levels and in numerous different / impact areas. In particular the Internet impacts firms in various sectors, individuals and governments. It / also has some observable general macro-economic effects. /  At the firm level, the restructuring of business models in association with use of the Internet has / led to improved efficiencies./ 1/  The impact of the Internet can also be seen in the rapid growth of new firms / founding their businesses on the Internet. The Internet's enhanced communication capabilities are affecting / nearly all sectors of the economy in ways that may be as subtle as making previously hard-to-find data / available online or as profound as transforming an entire market such as is occurring with music, video, / software, books and news.  /  The Internet is reshaping the way individuals live. It brings benefits of higher consumer welfare / (through a larger variety of digital goods and services, lower prices, improved information gathering, more / distribution channels and so forth). In addition, individuals benefit from a more efficient labour market/ 2/ and, on a broader level, from positive impacts on the environment/ 3/  and in education. /  For governments, Internet development enables better communication with citizens, industry and / other organisations. The Internet has also helped governments run more efficiently via improved / information sharing, increased transparency and the automation of various resource-intensive services.  /  The impacts of the Internet on the individual, firm and government level can be also observed at / the aggregated, macroeconomic scale. Existing empirical studies, including ongoing OECD work, suggest / a positive link between increasing Internet adoption and use and economic growth. Even though the / aggregated effects are still preliminary, the relationship between Internet development and economic / growth, as well as microeconomic ev

The Internet Age is here.  The effective use of this technology and all that it can provide is a key to success for businesses and individuals.  Knowing this, the Obama Administration seeks to ensure that all Americans have affordable access to broadband Internet services.  Accomplishing that goal, however, requires a set of facts about Internet use that can underpin and guide this policy objective. In Exploring the Digital Nation: Home Broadband Internet Adoption in the United States, the Commerce Department fulfills its promise to provide authoritative, nationally-comprehensive data on access to the Internet throughout the United States.  This new study follows the February 2010 NTIA research preview, Digital Nation: 21st Century America's Progress Toward Universal Broadband Internet Access. Both studies draw on the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey Internet Use Supplement, a survey of approximately 54,000 households conducted over one week in October 2009.  The Census data show increases in adoption of broadband services at home over time for virtually all demographic groups.  The data also reveal that demographic disparities among groups have tended to persist. Persons with high incomes, those who are younger, Asians and Whites, the more highly-educated, married couples, and the employed tend to have higher rates of broadband use at home.  Conversely, persons with low incomes, seniors, minorities, the less-educated, non-family households, and the nonemployed tend to lag behind other groups in home broadband use. The new study takes the analysis to another level.

 This report explores key trends and challenges to the right of all individuals to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of  all kinds through the  Internet. The Special Rapporteur underscores the unique and transformative nature of the Internet not only to enable individuals to exercise their right to freedom of opinion and expression, but also a range of other human rights, and to promote the progress of society as a whole. Chapter III of the report underlines the applicability of international human rights norms and standards on the right to freedom of opinion and expression to the Internet as a communication medium, and sets out the exceptional circumstances under which the dissemination of certain types of information may be restricted. Chapters IV and V address two dimensions of Internet access respectively: (a) access to content; and (b) access to the physical and technical infrastructure required to access the Internet in the first place. More specifically, chapter IV outlines some of the ways in which States are increasingly censoring information online, namely through: arbitrary blocking or filtering of content; criminalization of legitimate expression; imposition of intermediary liability; disconnecting users from Internet access, including on the basis of intellectual property rights law; cyberattacks; and inadequate protection of the right to privacy and data protection. Chapter V addresses the issue of universal access to the Internet. The Special Rapporteur intends to explore this topic further in his future report to the General Assembly. Chapter VI contains the Special Rapporteur's conclusions and recommendations concerning the main subjects of the report.  

"Who created the Internet and why should we care? These questions, so often raised during the Bush-Gore election in 2000, have found their way back into the political debate this season - starting with one of the most cited texts of the preconvention campaign, Obama's so-called "you didn't build that" speech. "The Internet didn't get invented on its own," Obama argued, in the lines that followed his supposed gaffe. "Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet." In other words: business uses the Internet, but government made it happen."

In a little over 20 years, the use of the Internet has become ubiquitous. Access to the Internet at increasingly higher connection speeds, is assuming a key role in guaranteeing both economic prosperity as well as social cohesion. The European Commission ("EC") has therefore set out an ambitious programme for increasing the accessibility of Internet provision in Europe under its Next Generation Access ("NGA"), a programme with ambitious roll-out targets that include improving download speeds so that all EU citizens will have Internet access at 30 Megabits per second ("Mbps") by the year 2020 and that 50% of households will have the ability to access the Internet at speeds of 100 Mbps or more. NGA will be key to the development of a European economy that is smart, sustainable and inclusive

GENEVA, Switzerland - The best revolutionaries eventually find themselves hailed in tributes and enshrined in museums. So it's almost inevitable that nearly 30 years after the official birthdate of the internet, some of the net's best-known pioneers, radicals, and troublemakers are being inducted into the Internet Society's Hall of Fame. The inaugural group includes 33 of the net's most influential engineers, evangelists and entrepreneurs including internet fathers Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf; internet standards guru Jon Postel; web inventor Tim Berners-Lee; encryption pioneer Phil Zimmerman; and Mozilla's Mitchell Baker.

Alors que de plus en plus de personnes souffriraient de "nomophobie", la peur de perdre son portable ou son accès à Internet, qui conduit par exemple à garder un filet de connexion (comme un portable de secours), des pionniers du numérique font le choix inverse. Richard Stallman, le gourou du logiciel libre, explique qu'il travaille désormais déconnecté. "La plupart du temps, écrit-il sur son site, je n'ai pas Internet. Une ou deux fois par jour, parfois trois, je me connecte pour envoyer et recevoir mes courriels. Je relis tout avant d'envoyer." Se déconnecter est devenu un acte volontaire. Aujourd'hui chercheur à la Carnegie Mellon University, Fred Stutzman avait pris l'habitude de travailler dans un café pour pouvoir rédiger sans être interrompu. "Il fallait que je m'échappe de la frénésie d'Internet." Sa méthode a pris l'eau quand un voisin s'est équipé d'un routeur qui a arrosé le café de sa connexion Wi-Fi. Voilà qui l'a conduit à développer Freedom, un logiciel, qui, pour 10 dollars, bloque votre accès à Internet jusqu'à huit heures de suite, et vous oblige à redémarrer votre ordinateur pour le réactiver. Son autre appli, Anti-social, permet d'avoir accès à Internet mais pas à toutes ses joyeuses distractions : Facebook, Twitter... "Les ordinateurs sont devenus des machines à distraction. On s'équipe aujourd'hui de fonctionnalités qui les ramènent à un usage de machine à écrire", note-t-il, amusé. Plusieurs navigateurs ont installé des options de ce type. "C'est une façon de s'acheter du temps. Internet est partout, la seule réponse possible maintenant est individuelle."

Netflix related traffic accounts for almost a third of all information downloaded in North America during peak usage periods, according to Sandvine, experts in analyzing Internet and broadband trends.   During the most recent period, Netflix's share of Internet traffic increased 44% from the last Sandvine report seven months ago, when Netflix represented approximately 20% of peak download traffic.  In the current report, Netflix traffic was responsible for 29.7% of all Internet related activity, surpassing even peer-to-peer (P2P) file-sharing technology BitTorrent. This makes Netflix traffic the single largest broadband consumer. When Netflix traffic is added to other real-time entertainment services, including Google's YouTube, the total consumption climbs to nearly half (49.2%) of all North American Internet traffic during peak periods.  The other applications rounding out the top five are BitTorrent (17%), HTTP (17%), YouTube (10%), and Flash Video (4%).  In comparison Facebook only consumed 2% and ITunes just over 3%.

Après Internet digital (celui que tout le monde connaît), voici Internet physique, un concept sur lequel travaille Benoît Montreuil, titulaire de la Chaire de recherche du Canada en ingénierie d'entreprises à l'Université Laval. «Partout dans le monde, tout ce qu'on appelle logistique, transport, approvisionnement est insoutenable d'un point de vue éco-socio-environnemental», affirme le chercheur qui prend souvent pour exemple les camions et les conteneurs qu'on remplit majoritairement d'air et d'emballages et qui parcourent le monde. À l'échelle des villes, cette aberration se mesure, entre autres, avec le flux de matières qui entrent et qui sortent. Ça va de la canne de tomates aux chaussures, en passant par les médicaments. «C'est un cauchemar dans toutes les grandes villes du monde», renchérit M. Montreuil. «Avec l'Internet physique, on va virer ça de bord», lance-t-il. Internet digital ne transporte pas de l'info brute, mais plutôt des infos encodées et structurées. Le système utilise un vaste réseau uniformisé qui permet à un courriel de partir de Québec pour aller à Shanghai en un rien de temps, efficacement et sans altération. «On veut faire la même chose avec les objets physiques», explique Benoît Montreuil. (Extrait)

Muse is a social utility that connects you with Internet2-enabled technologies and educators. Learn how next-generation Internet applications are being used to inspire educational excellence.

2022 is a long way off, but key digital developments are already in hand. The current explosion of mobile connectivity will surely exert an influence 10 years from now. Desktops and laptops -- even tablets -- may be hardware of the past, as we access the information stream using voice, gesture, and retinal displays. Immersion in this all-enveloping data field will change the way we work and think. The displacement of information from devices will be reflected in the displacement of the worker from the workplace. Accessing the collaborative environment anywhere, anytime, a nomadic workforce will expect IT to manage the streamlining of data through virtual platforms. As for social media, we're not going too far out on that unpredictable limb. Will Facebook (or perhaps a successor) swallow the Internet whole, locking us into a fully socialized online experience? Or will an adverse reaction set in, driving users back into isolated silos? Of course, what 2022 looks like will be governed in large part by the political and technological foundations of connectivity. Big changes are looming, but innovations in the basic architecture of the Internet -- like software-defined networking -- could be overtaken by diplomatic developments. Member states of the ITU, meeting in Dubai this December, are capable of throwing international network traffic, and even the domain name system, into utter confusion.

The Internet of Things can empower bottom-up community building, and it's already here, Guido Stevens reports in this article: The Internet of Things can be used to create a surveillance society, but also to empower bottom-up community building. Smart Cities is a catchy concept used by big IT vendors like IBM, to market their technology vision. A smart city is what happens when the city you live in (a dumb city?) is upgraded with a specific new infrastructure: The Internet Of Things.

En effet, un essai a été mené dans quatorze établissements scolaires de niveau "gymnasium" danois en 2011, soit dans 10% des établissements de ce niveau qui correspond au lycée français et au secondaire québécois. Cette expérience consistait à permettre l'utilisation d'internet pendant les examens écrits finaux menant à l'obtention du diplôme de fin d'études. Parmi les matières pour lesquelles on autorisa l'utilisation de l'Internet : sociologie, danois, mathématiques, administration et économie. Le test semble avoir été concluant puisqu'en février 2012, le ministère de l'enfance et de l'éducation a annoncé son intention d'ouvrir cette possibilité (article en danois), celle de pouvoir utiliser l'accès à Internet lors d'examens finaux, à d'autres matières dont l'anglais. Il est permis aux élèves d'utiliser internet pour chercher de l'information et se faire une opinion sur une question. La communication avec d'autres personnes demeure toutefois interdite - impossible donc de se tourner vers un parent ou un camarade pour obtenir une réponse ou une suggestion pour trouver une réponse.

"Declaring expansion of broadband Internet access the nation's next great infrastructure challenge, federal regulators on Monday unveiled an ambitious, decade-long strategy to make super high-speed connections available in every corner of the country. The plan by the Federal Communications Commission sets a goal of making sure at least 100 million homes have affordable access to networks that allow them to download data from the Internet at speeds of at least 100 megabits per second - at least 20 times faster than what most people get today. The proposal, which will be sent to Congress, also seeks to put ultra-fast Internet access of 1 gigabit per second in public facilities such as schools, hospitals and government buildings in every community."

Within the next decade, smart-device swiping will have gained mainstream acceptance as a method of payment and could largely replace cash and credit cards for most online and in-store purchases by smartphone and tablet owners, according to a new survey of technology experts and stakeholders. Many of the people surveyed by Elon University's Imagining the Internet Center and the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project said that the security, convenience and other benefits of "mobile wallet" systems will lead to widespread adoption of these technologies for everyday purchases by 2020. Others-including some who are generally positive about the future of mobile payments-expect this process to unfold relatively slowly due to a combination of privacy fears, a desire for anonymous payments, demographic inertia, a lack of infrastructure to support widespread adoption, and resistance from those with a financial stake in the existing payment structure.

Internet est de plus en plus utilisé par la population qui recherche de l'information sur la santé. Cette popularité en fait un outil très attractif pour les professionnels de la santé publique et communautaire, qui investissent Internet et les médias sociaux pour intervenir auprès des populations à des fins de prévention et de promotion de la santé ainsi qu'en appui à la prise en charge des maladies chroniques. On observe aussi un développement d'applications relatives à la santé sur la téléphonie mobile, notamment dans les pays en développement où les téléphones cellulaires sont plus accessibles que les ordinateurs.  Ces technologies interactives semblent prometteuses pour intervenir auprès de populations ciblées. Toutefois les pratiques et les expériences restent encore peu documentées et surtout peu évaluées.  Quels sont les acteurs à l'origine de ces interventions? Quels sont les domaines et les populations ciblés, les objectifs visés et les plateformes privilégiées? Enfin, quelles sont les interventions qui semblent les plus efficaces  et comment s'articulent-elles  aux modes plus traditionnels d'action? L'objectif de ce colloque, qui réunira chercheurs et praticiens, est de présenter différentes expériences d'intervention en santé des populations mobilisant Internet et/ou la téléphonie mobile au Québec et à l'international, de mettre en évidence les enjeux communs de ces interventions et d'identifier des pistes de recherche prioritaires.

The countless ways the internet and technology are creating new opportunities for artists is a topic very near and dear to our hearts, so we were very honored to be interviewed a few weeks ago for PBS Off Book's latest web episode, "Art In The Era Of The Internet."

eichtman Research Group (LRG ) recently published the results of a survey measuring the adoption of Internet connected televisions in the United States. According to the results of the survey, almost 40% of all U.S. households have at least one TV connected to the Internet. This is an increase from 10% last year, and 5% two years ago.

En mai 2012, 79,7 % des adultes québécois ont utilisé Internet au moins une fois au cours de la semaine précédant la mesure. Ce taux est demeuré très stable au cours des derniers mois. Le taux d'internautes réguliers est significativement plus élevé chez les adultes québécois de 18 à 24 ans (99,2 %), de 25 à 34 ans (93,8 %), de 35 à 44 ans (87,4 %), de même que chez ceux de 45 à 54 ans (86,9 %). Les adultes dont le revenu familial annuel est supérieur à 60 000 $ (93,7%) sont aussi proportionnellement plus nombreux à utiliser Internet régulièrement. Enfin, les étudiants (98,7 %), les professionnels (96,2 %) ainsi que les cols blancs (92,2 %) sont les catégories socioprofessionnelles où l'on retrouve les plus fortes proportions d'utilisateurs réguliers d'Internet. De même, on retrouve significativement plus d'internautes réguliers chez les adultes qui ont fait des études collégiales ou universitaires (89,7 %) Soulignons qu'en mai 2011, une proportion de 77,8 % des adultes québécois ont utilisé Internet au moins une fois au cours de la semaine précédant la mesure.

The US is a long way from its goal of making broadband Internet available to all 314 million Americans. In its third annual broadband progress report, the Federal Communications Commission says 19 million Americans have no option to buy fixed broadband Internet service, and an additional 100 million Americans that do live in areas where broadband is available are not subscribers.