Information Sources: the Internet and Computer-Mediated Communication

by John December (decemj@rpi.edu) Copyright © 1995 John December (decemj@rpi.edu). You may use this for any educational, personal, or non-profit purpose. For-profit distribution requires my permission. Provided "as is" without expressed or implied warranty.

PURPOSE

to collect, organize, and present information describing the Internet and computer-mediated communication technologies, applications, culture, discussion forums, and bibliographies. Areas of interest include the technical, social, rhetorical, cognitive, and psychological aspects of networked communication and information.

AUDIENCE

those getting started in understanding the Internet and CMC; for those experienced, it compactly summarizes sources of information.

ASSUMPTION

you have access to and know how to use finger, ftp, gopher, http, telnet, email, or Usenet newsgroups.

NOTES

Respect access privileges. (See Net Etiquette Guide, below.)
This information changes quite a bit; Additions/comments welcome.
Use Archie, veronica, or a Web spider to find a file if it is not at the site given here.
Learn to use Gopher, Veronica, WAIS, WWW, to find more information.
When using with WWW/Mosaic, sometimes an ftp link will not work; if it doesn't, try to access via ftp manually.

How to Use this segmented hypertext version

I call this version "segmented" hypertext because it has been generated from a database to create "segments" (pages), containing the same information, but of varying length to allow for flexible browsing and retrieval. You have access to the information on this list in a variety of segment sizes---either entire sections, sub-sections, or sub-sub-sections. Similarly, the table of contents can be viewed at varying levels of detail.

The top of every page has a title bar with these options:
- Information Sources Takes you to the page you are reading now
- Table of contents:
  - 1-level This shows the headers for just the sections; clicking on a section titles will bring up a page with all the text for that section.
  - 2-level This shows the headers for the sections and sub-sections; clicking on of the sub-section titles will bring up a page with only the text for that sub-section. In this same list, the section titles are available, which will give you all the text for the entire section.
  - 3-level This shows the headers for sections, sub-sections, and sub-sub-sections. Clicking on a sub-sub-section title will bring up a page with only the text for that sub-sub-section. In this list, the sub-section and section titles are available, and work just as described above.
- Search CMC A form for searching the entire database.
- Add to CMC A form for suggesting an addition to the database.
More information on other formats and supporting documents for this information is in the About this Information section.
As a "front door" to this list, I think the 2-level table of contents works well, giving enough information, but not too long of a list.
The footer of every page has the last date this information was updated and the release number.
If you want to, you can go to the whole list in one file.

John December (decemj@rpi.edu) / 13 May 1995