Social developments on the net

This can be seen in a number of ways

Community networks

A listing of community networks and freenets is maintained by Peter Scott

The Association of Community Networks also has extensive resources

"Neighborhoods"

The Sprawl is a collaborative hypermedia environment distributed over several media servers in Honolulu - USA, Sapporo - Japan, and Sydney - Australia by SenseMedia Netcasting of Santa Cruz, California

The Sprawl is a virtual community where users chat, create web pages and extend the cyberscape in an unrestricted manner, creating a huge and sprawling virtual reality

Portals

Portals are doorways to the net

They seek to provide a range of resources and services to that users see them as "one-stop" web sites

Many of the big web sites are making "portal plays"

Chat rooms

These web spaces offer real time textual and graphical interaction

There is increasing pressure to bring more of our routine social activities onto the net

Education

There is tremendous competition among providers of net-based educational alternatives

There is also the national initiative to wire schools and libraries

Business

The Industry Standard reports that businesses are outspending consumers by a margin of more than 2:1

Business to business ecommerce amounted to 7.4 billion ($US) in 1997

Business to consumer ecommerce totaled 2.9 billion ($US)

Retailing

The Industry Standard also reports that online grocery sales are expected to top at least $1 billion by the year 2000

Andersen Consulting estimates that the online market for groceries and related expenditures,such as stamps, dry cleaning and film developing, could reach $85 billion by 2007.

The home

There is strong competition among entertainment companies to bringing digital entertainment into the home

This includes such possibilities as movies and music on demand, real-time multi-player games and the provision of a range of digital goods

There is also serious money being invested in smart house technologies with terribly clever information appliances

The net is fragmenting into a commercial and public network and a restricted research and education network