Topic 1: Digital Visitors and Digital Residents

Different societies and communities constantly evolve over time. New rules and customs appear everywhere, receiving its appreciators and followers. Some of those customs can transform into a standalone societies or communities, where people would differentiate themselves from others, have their own way of communication and behavior. At first stage the same happened to the Internet at the beginning of it’s gaining popularity. At first, it was only used by certain people whether they were required to utilize it for professional use and by those who were into this new technology and wanted to study it thoroughly.

Since then more and more people became acquainted with Internet and nowadays it’s difficult to find a person who wouldn’t know what it is. As this type of technology is appreciated by most of the people and rarely get rejected by them, there was no doubt that it would eventually become worldwide and be used by mostly everyone.

Even though most people know what it is, it doesn’t mean everyone knows all its aspects of how to use it properly. There are a lot of things you would gradually learn by working with Internet. Yes, with Internet. It’s not just a way of mass media or communication. At this stage it is more like a huge world with tons of information filled by people and used by them as well.

As for the type of users – there are Residents and Visitors. When you first start working with Internet you are obviously a visitor, who is only opening those big doors entering this enormous world and receiving knowledge of what is happening around the web. There are thousands of questions at this first stage – Where should I go to download that? Where can I watch this? what can I read about that? and so on

It’s hard to define when you are actually becoming a resident, as new Internet knowledge is appearing everyday, while some of which becomes irrelevant over time. It’s more about whether you are aware of what in particular you do on your daily Internet work and whether you are doing it right. But most people would start learning more about living in the Internet environment, expanding their “house” and connecting it to others houses and filling it with information.

It’s not about content creating, it’s about your own knowledge which you posses and utilize on the webpages and in real life as well. Even though it’s hard to actually measure and compare our Internet knowledge, it’s possible to say that most of the people nowadays are Internet residents in different way and there are still visitors to come to us.

Vlad; #UOSM2008