Back to basics: technology, application, and policy

Citation

Schwartz, D.G. (2002), "Back to basics: technology, application, and policy", Internet Research, Vol. 12 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.2002.17212aaa.001

Back to basics: technology, application, and policy

Back to basics: technology, application, and policy

The mandate of Internet Research spans the daunting triumvirate of technology, application, and policy. Over the past year, alongside our regular issues, we have been able to bring our readers two special issues, one on eCommerce Management and the other on Networking technologies. I am pleased to begin Volume 12 with what investment managers would term "a well diversified portfolio of papers".

On the technical side, Loo and Choi present, "A peer-to-peer distributed selection algorithm for Internet", opening up what will certainly be a fruitful discussion of the adaptation of classic data retrieval algorithms to Internet distributed data stores. Also in this issue, Siyal and Barkat approach the issue of trust in electronic commerce, which has been addressed in these pages from theoretical and social perspectives in the past, from the algorithmic angle.

Is trust a commodity that can be bought and sold? Perhaps not, but the advent of trust service providers (TSPs) has certainly productized this most intangible of assets. Creating a trusted intermediary for transactions is an age-old concept, performed by human agents since Abraham negotiated the purchase of the Hebron Makhpela Cave from Efron the Hitti, enlisting the Sons of Het as a trust agent (Genesis, 23:3). Of course things have changed a bit since then. Siyal and Barkat, in "A novel trust service provider for Internet based commerce applications", develop a TSP framework in which a network of trust is created by linking principal entities along a trust path resulting in a quantifiable transaction risk. As an advanced form of trusted intermediaries, the TSP network can support large-scale multi-party distributed commerce transactions.

A new approach to "Improving the performance of Web access by bridging global ranking with local page popularity metrics", is demonstrated by Garofalakis, Kappos, and Makris. Their simple set of algorithms for reorganizing Web sites are shown to result in significantly improved access times with minimal overhead.

An application system appears in this issue, ProxyBreaker, Yu and Tseng's solution to proxy server abuse. The abuse of Internet access and networking facilities poses a growing challenge for systems administrators. Yu and Tseng, in "Abnormal Web usage control by proxy strategies", present a new approach based on the use of proxies.

On the policy and usage analysis side, we have papers by Zubey, Wagner, and Otto, "A conjoint analysis of voice over IP attributes"; and O'Neil who addresses community informatics policy issues.

A recent study on the Internet usage habits of youth, teens, and young adults, reported the predictable result that physical recreational activity is waning. The surprising finding in that report was that community awareness and involvement is on the rise among the Internet-active. One hypothesis arising from these results is that community activism is being energized and enabled by the Internet-connected generation. The trend is both positive and welcome but it opens up a host of research issues related to the role of community informatics in our society. In "Assessing community informatics: a review of methodological approaches for evaluating community networks and community technology centers", O'Neil presents an in-depth review of the issues and literature related to community informatics which should serve as a powerful resource for continued research in this important area.

In this issue's case study, Moodley reports on how Internet access to global markets is changing the nature of the South African wood furniture industry. Third World producers represent a key link in the global value chain and the push for connectivity is crucial to maintaining and improving the performance of this important industrial sector of the South African economy. The implications of the South African case for other industries and other developing economies are manifold as Moodley illustrates.

I welcome you back to a new issue and new volume of Internet Research. As always, I look forward to receiving your contributions as we continue, with your assistance, to move the journal of Internet Research in three fascinating directions at once.

David G. Schwartz