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World-Infostructure Knowledge Base The objective of World-Infostructure's knowledge base is to bring focus to the human dimension of information and communication technologies in a dynamic world of vested interests. It is designed to provide an overview of the status quo, the development and the history of the Infosphere as well as to enhance the visibility of issues of public interest that arise in connection with the emergence of digital media and computer networks. World-Infostructure's research matrix focuses on digitization, globalization, consolidation, integration, concentration, commercialization, participation, cooperation, innovation, emancipation, democratization, diversification, convergence and empowerment and is divided into eight main areas: World-Infostructure: history of communication systems; slaves and expert systems; biometrics; biotechnology convergence Global Networks: development, functioning and administration of global data networks Global Markets: proprietary relationships; issues of regulation Global Brain-Ware: information politics; dynamics of opinion-making Global Content Channels: content production and distribution; public vs. commercial interest; digital copyright; PR and advertising Global Info-Rights: censorship; online activism; disinformation; digital divide Global Security: surveillance, security and control technologies; data protection and cryptography; ECHELON Global Data Bodies: virtualization of social identity; abuse and marketing of personal data All World-Infostructure content is cross-linked and supplemented by so-called Index Cards that provide more detailed information on specific terms and World-Information.Org's Link Base, which is a fast tool for locating independent information and critical analysis on the web and contains several hundred hand-selected URLs that are accompanied by short descriptions and categorized by the eight research areas of World-Infostructure. World-Infostructure presents the results of the research program that has been carried out in connection with World-Information.Org since autumn 1999.  INDEX CARD     RESEARCH MATRIX  World Wide Web (WWW) Probably the most significant Internet service, the World Wide Web is not the essence of the Internet, but a subset of it. It is constituted by documents that are linked together in a way you can switch from one document to another by simply clicking on the link connecting these documents. This is made possible by the Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML), the authoring language used in creating World Wide Web-based documents. These so-called hypertexts can combine text documents, graphics, videos, sounds, and Java applets, so making multimedia content possible. Especially on the World Wide Web, documents are often retrieved by entering keywords into so-called search engines, sets of programs that fetch documents from as many servers as possible and index the stored information. (For regularly updated lists of the 100 most popular words that people are entering into search engines, click here). No search engine can retrieve all information on the whole World Wide Web; every search engine covers just a small part of it. Among other things that is the reason why the World Wide Web is not simply a very huge database, as is sometimes said, because it lacks consistency. There is virtually almost infinite storage capacity on the Internet, that is true, a capacity, which might become an almost everlasting too, a prospect, which is sometimes consoling, but threatening too. According to the Internet domain survey of the Internet Software Consortium the number of Internet host computers is growing rapidly. In October 1969 the first two computers were connected; this number grows to 376.000 in January 1991 and 72,398.092 in January 2000. World Wide Web History Project, http://www.webhistory.org/home.html http://www.searchwords.com/ http://www.islandnet.com/deathnet/ http://www.salonmagazine.com/21st/feature/199...