Why do I lump email, instant messaging/internet telephony, web cams , file sharing, newsletters, newsgroups, blogs, computer gaming, and VR, ? Because if you spend much time on the internet exploring these you will discover they are very interrelated and will become more so as time goes on and the internet (and society) evolves. They are all part of new forms of socialization or ways of augmenting society in important ways. Each are parts of a puzzle that is defining our future.
Instant Messengers are like the pagers and phone systems of the internet. Now many might question the 'phone system' part of it as there are specifically 'Internet Phone' providers now that offer a full range of services one expects from a phone system. It is important to note however that video internet telephony predated all of these providers as the original application of 'web cams' and was attached early on as a feature of Instant Messaging. While it may seem simplistic to say so, the important aspects of Instant Messaging are in the name, ie.. 'Instant' and 'Messaging.' That is to say, one can see who on their list is online at the time (if the other party didn't enable 'hide' feature) and send an 'Instant' message. These also allowed one to start a video/voice conversation with the other party, but was often complex to set up. That is where the 'Internet Phone service providers' come in, they provide a comprehensive package that is easy to connect to other users and more importantly, to connect to phone systems off the internet (standard telephone network) seamlessly.
Web cams have actually maintained many of the same basic functionality as when they were originally introduced but have increased in quality and become more functional as connections to the internet became fast enough to allow their use. Video uses a good amount of the available connection speed of a high speed connection and was pretty much useless on a dial-up connection. Web cams like VHS in the early days have found a primary function in a businness application where people fund their lifestyles by sharing out parts generally kept private. It's only a matter of time (like with VHS) where that portion of their use is only a sideline.
One area of interest are public cams of remote places like Paris or Sweden which offer a virtual tourist aspect. The quality of the images are usually low though, and since it's live, may be dark (if it's night there.) A decent quality webcam of Tokyo shows what we can hope for as basic quality in future webcams, perhaps even panoramic like the QuicktimeVR examples, but in real time.
Another is in home security.
File sharing is one of the original applications on the internet. It proceeded email or any other. In fact, the original email system was simply a method of putting a file in a remote system for a user on that system. FTP evolved as a common standard for file sharing and is still used to this day. Often when people go to web sites they can download a file using their web browser which does an ftp or ftp like function for them. But this only allows one to get files, not put them out. Full FTP applications allow people to 'put' files out on the internet as well as retrieve them. Why not just use email? Well email sends a file or document to a particular user whereas file sharing with programs like FTP are meant to put files up for others to find and download at any time in the future. A constantly available resource. To do this, you need to have some place to store the file on a system that is accessible on the internet. One solution is to have a place like Apple's iLife. Of course it's up to you to make sure that you have the proper legal rights to be sharing the file, which is where a lot of the problem with file sharing comes in. A song is actually a file, a video is a file. If someone puts a copy of a commercial song up for sharing they are actually infringing on whoever holds the copyrite to the song's rights and can be sued. The same goes for any copyrited material. It's also important to understand that copyrite laws are usually written to favor the creator, which means if you're not sure you're probably infringing. Certain types of files are availble for public sharing, referred to as copywrite free, freeware or shareware, but even these may have limits on their use attached. For instance, some musicians may put up links for you to download their song for free, but if you share out the song yourself from your own website it might not do the function of introducing people to the musician's other music s/he has for sale. S/He therefore might put a condition on the download that you don't share the song out in a public forum but instead refer to the original site. A side note, it is better to refer to the original site for downloading something anyways for many reasons, for instance the original item may be updated or it's legal status may change and it might become a for-pay item.
File sharing was somewhat limited in the past to email or newsgroups because people didn't have other places to place the shared file. Newsgroups by their complexity limited file sharing somewhat and email by the fact that its a person-to-person form of communication for the most part.
What most people refer to as file sharing is actually a specific form of file sharing known as peer-to-peer file sharing. This form of file sharing uses an application the user loads on his/her computer (called a client) that connects up across the internet to the file sharing system where they can then access and share files. This has various legal concerns that are discussed in the wiki link above. File sharing 'clients' also often expose computers they are installed on to security and privacy issues that go beyond the typical ones people run into by just web browsing since the client system is usually more 'opened up' so that the user can 'share' files. Also, these sharing networks are often monitored to the extent they can be by commercial groups concerned about infringements on their rights and by governmental organizations worried about other forms of abuse.
Newsletters are internet based but presented as a standard 'newsletter' like one would see in the standard printed form. Usually they are mass mailed out but can refer to a web site that is updated regularly. They can be by public organizations, by commercial groups giving information about products or by individuals providing some form of ongoing 'newsletter' type of communication. The newsletter is sent out to everyone on a list. If you want to get the newsletter you need to get your name put on the list and if you want to quit getting sent the newsletter, you need to get your name off of the list. Newsletters are delivered via standard email. What makes them a community item is the 'list of members' that it gets sent to vs. emails being individual mailings. Spam advertising uses the list format of newsletters but their purpose isn't informational but rather blatant unsolicited advertising. The unsolicited and unwanted part being the differentiating aspect. A common way to find newsletters that apply to your interest is to search on 'interest newsletter' in a search engine such as Google. i.e.. diabetes newsletter. Where newsletters are helpful is in getting relatively up-to-date information on a topic. Web pages that appear to have been created yesterday might actually be old information that is no longer accurate. A weak point in newsletters is the same in any internet based communication media, it's only as accurate as the person who typed it's knowledge. Often, official sounding newsletters or web pages for that matter have been created by someone who may be presenting unqualified opinion as convincing fact.
These are synonymous for the most part but at one time were distinct entities. Bulletin Board Systems were the original and were computers set up to answer when people dialed into them across phone lines. They were the precursor to the internet. Individuals or organizations would build a computer and plug it into the phone network so others could save, retrieve and share data, files, pictures, software etc.. Since this this was before the internet existed, to get to many systems, one would have to set their computers up to dial up and connect to each computer they wanted to access. Eventually, BBS systems developed a way to allow a system to them to be redirected to another system, hopping as it were from one system to the next. They also developed mechanisms to share information between or refer to material on another system. All of this was replaced for the most part by the internet when it came out. There are some dedicated BBS systems out there to this day I'm sure.
It's important to understand that the 'internet' is the interconnecting system for computers to communicate across. The Web is only one application on the internet. Email and Instant Messaging are other separate common applications that go across the internet. Original newsgroups evolved as an application on the internet which used a separate reader, not a web browser. They had rich linking and search features for carrying on ongoing discussions. Newsgroups got a bad name from the abuse that happened over their life in sharing 'dark' material (hacker information, cracked software, 'pictures,' etc..) Newsgroups have been overshadowed by web based 'discussion groups' that are commonly also referred to as newsgroups. News readers had advantages over web based discussion groups but the web based discussion groups are catching up. The trend of going to web based discussion groups over 'newsgroups' has to do with the complexity of setting up and learning to use one more application when the average user would prefer everything to be a variation of a web page for simplicity.
Web based 'discussion groups' are usually a subsection of a web site where people can add comments, questions and sometimes related files for others at the site to see. They are an important community building aspect of an internet site and provide a method for the people that visit a site to share information and resources.
Blogs are basically online journals put up by individuals. Some are for educational/support purposes, others are purely social. There are many discussions as to how blogs effect our society as many people are putting parts of their life up for public consumption. On a personal note I remember a blog (sort of, it was an 'online journal' from before blogs existed... what blogs came from) where I was vicariously following one woman's life for an extended period of time, getting an interesting and very personal view of her life. After reading for about a year, she made an entry about how her husband had found the journal through a friend of theirs and she was now in divorce proceedings. She didn't sound disappointed. I had to wonder what it would have been like being in his situation, finding that people out on the internet were getting a more intimate glimpse into his wife's mind than he was. In other situations, people keep blogs while they travel, do complex projects or deal with difficult situations like cancer. These examples point out how these tools will shape our society in unique and unforeseen ways.
Let me preface the following with a brief statement of why I find online games interesting. There is of course the obvious aspect of them being an entertaining diversion but for me they are an exploration of online communities. We can often learn more about social environments in a relaxed environment than anywhere else. With online environments due to play a continually more important role in society I find learning about them a glimpse into aspects of the future. Games in general often procuresses much of the development in 'real world' applications for many reasons including: less complications if/when they fail in areas, the user base is willing to pay for development work that would not provide a practical 'real world' application and it is easier to develop a 'play version' of something than a real world application of the same level of complexity. So if you want to know the future, look to games. (Why else would the military play 'war games?)
For those that don't know, MMORPG = Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. If we start with the early basic computer games like pong, packman etc... these games allowed a person to entertain themselves in a simple fashion. Following these there were more involved games that required complex strategy like Civilization, or allowed one to enter a story as an interactive character like many of the computer based D&D games. Eventually, these grew to allow multiple players (real as apposed to computer generated) join the same game. The culmination of this is the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games which allow 1000's of people to join the same game environment, creating an online world or even universe.
Some notable examples are Anarchy Online, Eve Online and Ryzom.
There are many more commercial online games like Star Wars Galaxies and World of Warcraft but I tend to avoid these. The commercial aspect of them tend to focus them on spending more time on advertising and finding a 'target market' than on gameplay aspects that are unique and evolved. This often lends the games to a more simplistic and repetitive gameplay and tends to draw younger (less mature) audiences. I will often research a game in it's online forums before I spend time in the game. The major complaint I find in StarWars forums is the extensive focus on one area of the game (Jedis) to the cost of attention in most of the other areas of the game which makes the gameplay unbalanced. As for WoW, their forums mostly complain about the lack of maturity of the other players. One could say that this isn't WoW's designers fault but time in online environments have shown me that the community that evolves is quite dependant on the designers who shape that environment for those inside the environment. While a community is made up of the people/players who make it up, the support or lack thereof by the shapers of the environment will push forward or to the background various aspects of the social environment and will eventually push certain people out and draw certain (types of) people in.
Virtual worlds are online 3D environments that are specifically geared towards social aspects of online communities rather than gaming of some type. They started with VRML which is now being replaced by X3D. Both of these are an open standard for developing 3D environments that commercial companies have developed tools to create. Probably the best known of this has been Caligari Truespace. VRML suffered from various issues which will hopefully be resolved in X3D. Note, since X3D is still being developed, no commercial product outputs it yet as far as I know and if they did it wouldn't be stable as the standard itself isn't stable yet.
Commercial VR universes that don't use VRML or X3D are out there and offer some combination of building or social interaction that is usually not available in the gaming (MMORPG) environment. At a time when standards are evolving and still unstable, commercial alternatives often are more stable and feature rich. Examples of these include ActiveWorlds and Second Life. A good resource of 3D online environments is available at Virtual Worlds Review which gives descriptions of and links to these and other communities. The Sims Online is borderline between a straight virtual world and an online game.
Cybergeography.org has some interesting information on visualization used in internet environments. There has been ongoing research on visualizations aspects like those presented here that will definitely contribute to new ways to look at information and the virtual world.
Microsoft has continually involved themselves in various VR society research projects. One being a 2D visual chat environment that was entertaining for the period they had it up. Their current work is listed as Social Group Computing.
The real estate industry, construction industry and others have started using VR technologies for 'virtual flythroughs.' These often use Apple Quicktime VR, which used to be a standalone product but is now part of basic Quicktime. Some beautiful examples at VirtualGuidebooks.com : Formation Spring Cave and Snake River Plain in Idaho.
Alternative technologies as shown here Virtual Worlds (UK) are available for internet and DVD presentations.
This brings up issues where virtual world property becomes as tangible of an asset as RL (real life) assets complete with legal issues to defend and assets to sell.
Open-Source advocates will be glad to see various Open Source Projects getting started to rival some of the commercial offerings.
VR of course means different things to different people and to academians, it often refers to large environments with 3D goggles called caves. These tend to be more for visualization purposes like this one a pharaoh's tomb than of than direct social interaction currently. Where visualization is important they are finding valuable applications from treating phobias to treating Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (other examples: here and here. Commercial treatment centers have even evolved using this form of treatment. This is such a rich evolving area that searching google on 'VR Treatment' will return a flood of interesting links. An area of VR referred to as Teleimmersion allows a 3D form of video conferencing meant to overcome some of the inherent negative aspects of the disconnected lifestyle we are all subjected to more and more as we communicate through a disconnected media such as email rather than face to face interactions. Teleimmersion and 3D visualization applications overlap in technical and theoretical aspects.
It's important to realize that the 'internet' as we know it is a confined thing that our computers connect to. It's tentacles into the real world are somewhat contained. But even this is less so than most people realize. For instance, most credit card theft isn't from people using their cards on the internet but from companies who have databases of credit cards on internet accessible computers, therefore exposing people who have never used their cards for online purchases. The same goes for medical, personal and legal information. As we move forward with things like RFID are becoming ubiquitous without us even being aware of it. RFID tags will potentially allow stores to manage inventories and sales across the internet with little human intervention or action. Even cash registers as we know them are potentially becoming obsolete as you read this. someone going through a checkout with items RFID'd could check themselves through like a more automated version of the self checkout we now see in stores. All of this automatically and instantly updating accounting, inventory and JIT purchasing systems.
Augmented Reality systems overlay information from computer systems or the internet over real world visual environments to 'augment' them. Surgical Imagery applications enhance medical imaging with computer data to make them more useful and easier to understand to doctors and patients. Now yes I did notice the 'disputed' discussion at Wikipedia and am declining to get involved in it. I'll leave it up to you to sort it out as these 'discussions' are common while something is very new and developing. There is the whole 'technically correct/common usage' argument that any scholar of language is familiar with. Augmented Reality is a subset of Computer Mediated Reality.
New devices that take information from the real world and input them into the virtual are constantly being developed. An example of a virtual floor allows one to walk as they would normally and have the virtual space update as if they were walking through it. Similar to the computer based dance games but with more general real world applications.
Devices that reach out into the real world across the inernet include pushing information out to a wide range of devices other than just 'computers' (podcasting being a good example of that,) manned and unmanned robotics, the manned versions using telepresence for controlling the remote devices to perform tasks like surgery, hazardous tasks or tasks otherwise inaccessible such as space research and deep sea activities. These and applications like those that allow computer control of extremely large or small environments all take developments from the gaming environments as well as standard research environments.