Interested in Starting Canadian Chapter of the Internet Society?

Over the past couple years I have been interested in starting a Canadian and/or an Ontario Chapter of the Internet Society.

The Internet Society is an international, non-profit organization devoted to making the "Internet for everyone".  They do this through chapter work promoting standards (e.g. IPV6), facilitating global access particularly in developing countries, advising and arguing for policy that supports the open nature of the Internet, and other related work.

Currently, the Internet Society is reaching out to Canadians to help organize a national chapter and/or provincial chapters - currently there is only a Quebec chapter. 

If you are interested in helping start any of these chapters Internet Society, you can start by becoming a member. It's free and quick to do.

The Internet Society also has a short survey that they are asking interested Canadians to fill out as expressions of interest. 

Please consider joining and filling out the short survey before Dec 16, 2012 to help get chapters here.

Top 20 Most Important Developments of the Internet

The Internet Society is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. They are a global organization devoted to maintaining a free, open, accessible, and viable Internet.

I've recently blogged about the Internet Society's call for people to submit ideas for a new Internet Hall of Fame they are establishing.

Internet Society is also marking their anniversary with a listing of what people think are the 20 most significant developments in the history of the Internet, whether an innovation, event, or product.

So I figured I would offer my top 20. I tried to combine technological inventions, commercial product launches, and events that have shaped the Internet.  I've linked to Wikipedia (#16) for more information on the topics.

Top 20 Internet Developments:

1. ARPANET - the military research network of the 1960s that became the Internet
2. Hypertext - interlinking of digital text and media, predicted by Vannevar Bush in the 1940s, developed by Ted Nelson and Douglas Engelbart in the 1960s
3. Email - invented in the 1970s and is the bedrock of Internet-based communications (honourable mention to Hotmail for making email more accessible in 1996 by offering the first free web-based email service) 
4. Domain Name System (DNS) -  gives us the ability to use plain language web addresses
5. MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon/Domain) - the first form of networked games, developed in the late 1970s and is the precursor to modern forms of collaborative and online gaming such as Massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) 
6. Archie - first Internet search engine (for FTP sites), developed at McGill University in 1990
7. World Wide Web (WWW) - Tim Berners-Lee creates the ultimate digital medium in 1991
8. Mosaic - user-friendly browser launched in 1993 that accelerated the popularity of the Web by displaying images and text together
9. Netscape's Initial Public Offering - the browser's phenomenal IPO propelled Internet development and usage
10. Secure Socket Layers - Netscape's encryption system, developed in the mid 1990s, helped make the web secure enough to allow e-commerce and e-banking to flourish
11. Travelocity - one of the first victims of e-business were travel agencies (who books in person anymore?) and Travelocity, which launched to consumers in the mid 1980s via CompuServe, was one of the first online travel booking sites
12. Internet Movie Database (IMDB) - launched first on USENET in 1990, IMDB was one of the first websites to popularize user-generated content, in the form of user ratings and reviews, thus being Web 2.0 years before the concept was created (honourable mention to Writing.com for also being one of the first UGC sites and one that encouraged more lengthy and collaborative content)
13. Classmates.com - widely popular website, launched in 1995, that was among the first to create what we now know as a social networking site (way ahead of Friendster, in 2002,  and MySpace, in 2003)
14. GeoCities - launched in 1995, popularized personal web publishing by offering free web hosting and  customizable homepages (honourable mention to Blogger with its 1999 launch it was one of the first and most popular web publishing tools and helped create the blog genre))
15. Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) - these guidelines, first published in 1999 by the W3C, have done more than anything else to enable websites to be accessible to people with various abilities 
16. Wikipedia - launched in 2001, two huge contributions: 1) open access to encyclopaedic information and 2) breaks down barriers of official knowledge by allowing anyone to participate in its creation
17. Delicious - launched in 2003, the social bookmarking site became possibly the first instance of folksonmies, that is collaborative user tagging of information objects (in this case bookmarks)
18. Streaming and downloadable media - from listening to the radio or watching video live (such as Victoria's Secret's annual fashion show, the first majorly successful webcast), to downloading music MP3s from Napster or iTunes, to watching videos on YouTube or through IPTV - the Internet has  fundamentally changed our media consumption and purchasing (or lack thereof) behaviour
19. Mobile Web and Internet-enabled mobile apps - mobile apps or mobile-friendly webpages have enabled ubiquitous access to the Internet, surpassing desktop access since 2008
20. Open-source software and standards - free programming languages, such as HTML, JavaScript, and XML (hence AJAX), and software, such as Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP and Perl (hence LAMP), have made it financially possible for anyone to build and host their own websites, breaking down prior elite forms of media production and distribution

Runner-ups:

• Open access publishing - the Internet made it effective to share information freely and widely, with resulting open access journals, such as First Monday (about the Internet) 
• Internet porn - legendary driver of online development and adoption
• Forums and chat rooms - excellent new forms of multi-person communication
• Recommendation systems - using our collective data to help identify things we may like, the music site Pandora is an excellent example of the power of this, the Netflix Prize contest helped propel development in this area
• Google - revolutionized search engines and the first great online-only company
• eBay & PayPal - perfected microsales and consumer-to-consumer commerce
• VoIP & Skype - no more long-distance telephone charges
• Craigslist - the first widely popular online classified website that assisted in the demise of newspapers
• Foursquare - the first geosocial network and location-based service to hit critical mass
• Internet of Things - everything will soon be wired to the Net from cars, refrigerators, and closets

As you can see I had a hard time, limiting myself to 20.

I'd love to hear other people's thoughts on what should be on the list (or off), and any corrections, such as missing predecessors or international developments that set the trend.

Internet Hall of Fame - Nominate First Inductees

The Internet Society, a global non-profit organization devoted to promoting open access and innovation for the Internet, is twenty years old this year.

To mark their 20 years they have started the "Internet Hall of Fame" to honour the contributions of individuals to the development of the Internet.

Despite the ubiquity of content on the Web, I have been surprised how little work there has been done documenting the history and achievements of Internet and digital media history. Granted, a few stars (including Internet Society founders Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn) are well-known for their contributions, but there are many more people who's contributions are not well-documented or significantly recognized. This led to my efforts to document Who's Who in Canadian Digital Media & Technology.

So I am excited to see the Internet Society launching the Internet Hall of Fame.

I'm also excited that Internet Society is allowing anyone to nominate someone. The final decision will be made by judges from a cross-section of related sectors.

Internet Society has published the nomination form online.

Here are their criteria for nominees:

Any individual who has played a key role in the conceptualization, building, and development of the Internet in any region/country will be considered for induction into the Internet Hall of Fame based on the influence and impact they’ve had on the Internet’s origins, growth, and evolution.

Other factors considered by the Internet Hall of Fame include the relevance and reach of a nominee’s contribution to the Internet, and the extent to which a nominee successfully took risks and challenged existing paradigms.

Further, the Internet Hall of Fame considers the originality, creativity, and innovation of a nominee’s contribution. In addition to those who have been more visible, the Internet Hall of Fame is seeking nominees who have made crucial, behind-the-scenes contributions.

The nominee’s work can include, but is not limited to, individuals who have played a key role in:

• Researching and/or building Internet infrastructure;
• Improving Internet access and/or functionality;
• Fostering growth of the Internet community; and
• Developing new Internet technologies and/or user interfaces that have had valuable and broad-reaching impacts on society.

I'm hoping to nominate someone - probably someone from my Canadian Who's Who list. But I can't decide who. Let me know below who you think should be nominated.

Nominations close February 13, 2012.

Internet Society Membership Drive

I've been a member of the Internet Society for a few years. They sponsored my participation in the Internet Governance Forum at Hyderabad, India. The Internet Society (ISOC) is a non-profit, international organization that helps develop and promote Internet standards and policy. They work actively with governments to ensure that the Internet remains free and open.

Here is a description of ISOC from their website:

The Internet Society is a cause-based organisation that works to ensure the open development, evolution and use of the Internet for the benefit of people throughout the world. The Internet Society works with help from its members and Chapters to provide leadership in Internet related standards, education, and policy. As the Internet continues to evolve, both technically and politically, the Internet’s unprecedented success is due to a decentralized, open, multi-stakeholder model, which relies on processes and products that are local, bottom-up and accessible to users around the world. The Internet Society's key initiatives target the critical issues that affect all aspects of Internet development and growth. They embody the Internet Society philosophy that the Internet is for everyone and they provide the organization with a solid foundation from which to positively influence standards development, access, business practices, and government policies.

Although, there is not a national chapter for Canada or one for Ontario (Quebec is the only region with a chapter), ISOC does offer the opportunity to join for free as a "global member". I have wanted to help start an Ontario chapter for the past two years. As my research focus is increasingly moving away from policy and standards (for example web accessibility guidelines) and my professional and personal life is rather over-taxed at present, I have been hoping someone would lead the charge to start an Ontario chapter.

Currently, the Internet Society is hoping to recruit more members. For those who work in the Internet field or digital media, I believe it is important to join, as well as for those who are concerned about protecting the central role the Internet has in our lives. ISOC offers ten tips on why to join that note the collective and individual benefits of joining such as more powerfully influencing Canadian policy and having a personal role in important developments.

I would love to see more people join from Ontario as I hope this could propel a chapter formation here. Also, ISOC is offering tech gadgets for prizes (which I'll donate to a local charity in the unlikely event I win).

So please consider joining. Please run any questions or comments by me here or by email.

Join the Internet Society today, it's free!