THE VIRTUAL COMMUNITIES AND THE INTEGRATED VIRTUAL THEMATIC SERVICES

 

CONFERENCES
TOPIC: NEUROPSYCHOLOGY AND THE NET

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Abstract

The Internet and its inhabiting Information and Communication Society have to be considered as a smaller society evolving (some would say trapped) within our society. Therefore they have to be analysed not only from a technical and technological point of view but also in their human, cultural, social and intellectual dimensions.

Then the VCU (Virtual Communities of Users) concept is defined. Based on this concept, the focus is centred on the communities of scientists, professionals and academics in the Internet, with an analysis of their current situation, needs and problems.

This papers starts with a general overview of the current situation of the Internet. The VTS (Virtual Thematic Service) and IVTS (Integrated Virtual Thematic Services) concepts are introduced in this context as an approach for the solution of VCU's needs and problems. Finally a real pilot experience based on this IVTS paradigm and called UniNet is described.

Resumen

La Sociedad de la Información y la Comunicación generadas por Internet ha sido considerada como una nueva y verdadera sociedad que se desarrolla en el interior de nuestra Sociedad, podría decirse tambien, atrapada en nuestra Sociedad. El fenómeno es susceptible de ser analizado no solo desde una óptica técnica o tecnológica, sino tambien desde un punto de vista humano, cultural, social e intelectual.

Se define el concepto de Comunidades Virtuales de Usuarios, y se enfoca la atención sobre las comunidades de profesionales, científicos y académicos, en Internet, analizando su situación, problemática y necesidades que presentan en la actualidad.

A partir de una vision general de la situación actual de Internet, se introducen los conceptos de Servicios Temáticos Virtuales (VTS), Servicios Temáticos Virtuales Integrados (ITVS) como una via de solución a las necesidades y problemas de las Comunidades Virtuales de Usuarios (VCU's). Finalmente, en este contexto, se describe una experiencia piloto real basada en estos conceptos: UniNet.
 

The Internet is the most valuable field for knowledge acquisition about virtual and cyber society mainly because of its historical evolution (and a series of recent innovations, especially the World Wide Web), and also because of:

• The low prices of both its access and utilisation
• Its high quality services
• Its almost world-wide presence
• The economic and commercial interests it motivates
• Its easy access and simple use
• Its role as a democratic ideas' broadcaster
• Its platform and system independence as it is based on open systems services and protocols
• The amount of information if offers
• The number of users it gathers
• The organisations represented in it

 
Networking and especially internetworking have enhanced dramatically the capability of a user (or community of users) to
(1) communicate with other remote users (or communities of users), and
(2) access remote information.
They have built multipurpose and multimedia bridges between the so called islands of thinking and activity, i.e. humans. The Internet is the most representative showcase for this phenomenon and must therefore be regarded as a reference for analysis, deduction and experimentation.

Today connectivity and the Internet are peer concepts. After the decades of the closed and experimental ARPANET, the Internet has now become both the experimentation field and the innovation engine of many recent computer science and telecommunication revolutions.

From a technical and technological point of view, the Internet has matured considerably and has grown from a revolution phase to a (more stable and more productive) evolution phase. However, from a human, intellectual and social point of view, the Internet is still a growing and unstable child who is just beginning to have full consciousness of his/her identity and possibilities. The information and communication society inhabiting the wires, services and hosts jungle, with its own jargon, code of honour, and rules, is currently just beginning to define the basis of its role, behaviour and way of life.

Faces of Internet
 

Under its Babylon's appearance, this society presents actually only few (and usually rather incompatible) faces or profiles, which will be called from now on societies. Mainly four societies can be identified in the Internet:

• The scientists, professionals and academics society: it will be called K-Society, from Knowledge Society,
• The Internet for marketing and trade: it will be called E-Society, from Economic Society,
• The Internet for entertainment and leisure: it will be called F-Society, from Fun Society, and
• The Internet for delinquency and "abnormal" behaviour; it will be called B-Society, from Bad Society.

 
This classification is rather simplistic but helps to get a general vision of the groups of users evolving in the information and communication society.

Table 1 summarize the approximate proportion of user in each categories. In the early days of the Internet (it would be better to say ARPANET) K-Society predominates. The following figures could be an approximate representation of the percentages of users in each of these categories, before and nowadays

This work has focused on the K-Society analysing its current situation, needs and problems.

The VCU (Virtual Community of Users) concept

When compared with the three other societies, the K-Society presents a uniform aspect. However, if considered independently, it reveals lots of differences which make impossible a global homogeneous analysis. Therefore it must not be considered as a whole and must be split into different groups of members based on a clear and rational classification criteria.

The VCU (Virtual Community of Users) concept was introduced to classify the groups of users existing in the K-Society. The VCU concept could also be applied to the three other societies but obviously the classification criteria would vary significantly.

VCU (Virtual Community of Users): A Virtual Community of Users is a set of users of the Internet who share a set of common aspects which distinguishes this VCU from the others (classification criteria) and make it possible to target the members of the VCU as a whole and unique entity in order to fulfil its needs (customer services).

The classification criteria differs from one society to another. For instance, in the E-Society customer's profiles could be a relevant classification criteria, but it is useless for the K-Society, the F-Society and the B-Society. Focusing on the K-Society several classification criteria appear to be interesting:

• Professional activity (e.g. based on an international chart describing jobs' categories)
• Education background (e.g. based on an international map of education levels)
• Topics or knowledge areas of interest (e.g. based on the UNESCO's code of areas list)

In our work the first two criteria were discarded as they are too restrictive and limit the richness of the interchange of experiences, culture and knowledge. The last one was adopted. The approach focused on an initially informal definition of topics of interest which is expected to tend naturally and progressively toward more established and formal classification, e.g. the cited UNESCO codes.

The next issue to address are the customer services. The VTS (Virtual Thematic Service) and IVTS (Integrated Virtual Thematic Services) concepts focus on these customer services
 

The VTS (Virtual Thematic Service) and IVTS (Integrated Virtual Thematic Services) concepts

The customer services are covered by the VTS and IVTS concepts which are defined as follows:

VTS (Virtual Thematic Service): A Virtual Thematic Service is an Internet service which is designed for a concrete VCU.

IVTS (Integrated Virtual Thematic Services): The Integrated Virtual Thematic Services corresponds to the integration of all the VTS necessary to fulfil the needs of a VCU.

Once identified a VTU the aim is to define and activate its IVTS.

The analysis of the Internet reveals two types of virtual services:

Communication Services: They are used to enable the communication between two or more persons.

Information Services: They are used to enable the access of a person or group of persons to a source of information.

This classification needs to be further refined.

CSCW (Computer-Supported Co-operative Work) and Groupware represent an interesting reference to detail the types of communication services. Although actually these services are not only aimed to communicate, but also to co-ordinate and collaborate, we will refer to them as communication services. Database and (inter)networking working areas offer some interesting references for information services.

Proposed classification criteria for communication services are:

• Real-time versus differed-time communication
• One-to-one versus one-to-many versus many-to-many versus broadcast communication
• Simplex versus duplex communication
• Text versus audio versus video versus iconic versus pictogram based versus 3D channels communication
• Centralised versus distributed communication
• Public versus private communication
• Administered versus free communication
• Connected versus unconnected communication
• Encrypted versus unencrypted communication
• Others

The information services can be classified based on the following criteria:

• Database-centred versus file-centred versus message-centred information
• Pull versus push information
• Single versus multiple information
• Text versus audio versus video versus iconic versus pictogram based versus 3D channels versus standard format versus proprietary format information
• Centralised versus distributed information
• Hierarchical versus heterarchical information
• Query-enabled versus query-disabled information
• Public versus private information
• Encrypted versus unencrypted information
• Compressed versus uncompressed information
• Others

Needs of the VCU

A grid analysing the value/type of the existing services of the Internet (E-mail, World Wide Web, File Transfer Protocol, Internet Relay Chat, Telnet, Point-to-point Chat, Newsgroups, Channels, List-Service, etc.) for each communication and information criterion was developed. This grid is called the service classification grid. It is the starting point for the definition and configuration of the customers' services. A set of relevant classification criteria must be defined and will be used to select the convenient services for a VCU, i.e. the ones which best cover the needs of a concrete VCU.

The following statements were defined for the selection of a list of customers' services:

• A service which matches a number X of classification parameters must be preferred to a service which matches a number Y whenever X>Y
• There is a need for at least one information service
• There is a need for at least one communication service
• Two or more services which can be classified in exactly the same category are redundant. Redundant services imply an unnecessary effort and can be confusing for the users.
• The graph representing the value of the customers' services when the number of services increases is of type ex, i.e., after the inflection point, increasing the number of services is no more productive. Therefore the best number of services is the one corresponding to the inflection point of the graph.
• Etc.

 
A proposal for an IVTS definition tailored for the VCUs of the K-Society and known as the UniNet Project will be described later as a practical implementation of these concepts. In order to understand this proposal the current situation of the K-Society is described next.
 

Currently the K-Society has reached a key step in its evolution. Many VCUs (although sometimes not even aware of their VCU condition) have been created by natural inertia (and slowly), and are now beginning to become solidly established mainly thanks to newsgroups and list-services. They have gathered (and even have sometimes developed) around the information and communication services they are looking for. They are conscious of the huge potential of the Net both as a communication tool with their peers and as an information media [1,2].

The typical profile or classification criteria they have adopted implicitly is the one we have decided to adopt in our work, i.e. the "topics or knowledge areas of interest". existing VCU are formed by students, teachers, researchers, professionals, and other people interested in a concrete topic or knowledge area. They share their knowledge and experiences and assiduously use the information and communication services available in the Internet which best suit their needs [3].
 

Needs of the K-Society

• Basically the members of the K-Society want to [9]:
• Communicate with persons who share their same interest topics
• Communicate with persons who share their same interest topics and reside in other countries, in order to enhance their world-wide perception of the topic
• Communicate using the same language or with access to a translation unit
• Have access to information related with their interest topic
• Carry out efficient and complex searches on the information related with their interest topic
• And basically they don't want to:
• Communicate with members of the other societies of the Internet
• Receive information they are not interested in
• Loose time looking for the people they want to communicate with
• Loose time looking for the information they are looking for
• Be disturbed in their activity by undesired interference
Problems of the K-Society Internet has many positive aspects for the K-Society's members but several drawbacks and unsolved issues still limit the profit that academic groups, research centres and enterprise staff can take of it:
 
• Excess of information and people
• Lack of security
• Lack of organisation
• External interference
• Excess of information and people


Excess of information and people

Initially the users of the Internet were research centres, universities and leading enterprises and organisations. The users were the staff of these entities. The contents transported through the Net were in consonance with the identity of the users and fulfilled their needs. The progressive opening and extension (positive from many prospects) of the Internet has led to the multiplication and diversification of users and information. This leads to the creation of a labyrinth with its walls plenty of data, but in which the percentage of useful data existing for (and encountered by) the members of the K-Society diminishes dramatically. Access to information and people is more and more difficult and time consuming [7,8].
 

Lack of security

Another problem is security: the first steps of the Net purely experimental still have considerable consequences even nowadays. Moreover the will to maintain the openness of the Internet, its uncontrolled growth, the lack of a central organism with sufficient power, uncoordinated and sometimes incompatible initiatives, etc., contribute to create a sensation of deficient security (often justified) for the user. Recently a slow but firm tendency to enhance the security of services and users has been observed. But it is too slow in comparison with the expectations of the users because of the cited circumstances. Proposals for technical and organisational improvements exist but their global implantation is only expected at medium and large range. The direct consequence is that nowadays the members of the K-Society often feels he/she is lacking of security when he/she accesses the Internet.
 

Lack of organisation

Another aspect which limits the conception of an Internet perfectly fulfilling the needs of the K-Society is the lack of organisation, control and co-ordination in the architecture and evolution of the Net. This is due to its inherent nature (the Internet has no defined topology and it is changing permanently) and to the constant tendency to promote, globalise and extend it.

Some organisations exist which, within their limitations, are in charge of the control of the different computer networks, the creation of new domains, the construction of network statistics, the administration of the different technological innovations, the promotion of behaviour and ethic rules, etc. But most of these organisations are not really relevant as they are only consulted but don't have decision nor actuation privileges.
 

External interference

The "bad reputation" of the Net for many scientific and academic forums is mainly due to the existence of some undesirable (from the K-Society's members' perspective) users members of others societies (mainly from the B-Society), which interfere with the normal human relationships between the users of the K-Society.

Everybody is aware of the proliferation in the Internet of servers with contents that are not compatible with the image of seriousness and decency searched by the members of the K-Society. Representative examples are the pornography and terrorism sites. Associated with these servers are the users who are searching or broadcasting the contents.

A practical pilot experience:  The UniNet Project

The UniNet Project (University Network of Integrated Telematics Services) is the first real pilot experience which proposes an IVTS for the VCUs of the K-Society.

It began to operate by the end of 1996 and was launched co-ordinately by the Investigation's Unit of the General Hospital Yagüe of Burgos (Spain) under the auspices of the Burgos por la Investigación de la Salud Foundation, in collaboration with other academic and research centres and mainly the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain) and the Max-Planck-Institut für Verhaltensphysiologie at Seewiesen (Germany). It was officially presented in the Technical Days of RedIRIS'1997 (Zaragoza, Spain) [4,5,6,10].

The UniNet project defines a hierarchical approach to the definition of the VCUs and classifies them into:

Thematic Districts, i.e. a virtual and general VCU which is used to group more specific VCUs (the so called Thematic Streets). It can be considered as a VCU container.

Thematic Streets, i.e. a specific VCU. These are the real communities which group the K-Society's members.

Two different IVTSs are defined corresponding to the two planned phases of the project. The first one is less ambitious and corresponds to the first phase of the project (current phase) while the second is more complete and ambitious and is due to be launched in the second phase of the project (future phase) after the consolidation of the initiative.

The first IVTS is formed by the following VTSs:

Internet Relay Chat or IRC (Communication service)

World Wide Web or WWW (Information service)

List-service (Communication service)

The different services of the IVTS must be integrated following integration schemas so that the end-point of one service corresponds to the beginning of another. Both information (1) and communication (2) services are considered, each one of them presenting different particularities which have been taken into account in the definition of the IVTS phase [11,12,13,14].

The second IVTS is expected to be formed by the following VTSs:

Internet Relay Chat or IRC (Communication service)

World Wide Web or WWW (Information service)

List-service (Communication service)

File Transfer Protocol or FTP (Information service)

Audio-conferencing (Communication service)

Video-conferencing (Communication service)

Channels (Information service)

The second IVTS is much more complete and also difficult to co-ordinate, integrate and maintain. This list of services corresponds to the initial definition of services for the second phase IVTS. The experiences and results of the first phase of the UniNet Project may alter it in order to get a better tuning of the system.

The UniNet Project aims to be universal, linguistically and geographically, and open to all the members of the K-Society but it covers mainly scientific, academic and cultural topics. Currently the higher emphasis is posed on medical and health science VCUs. The project is based on the voluntary and altruistic co-operative work of scientists and professionals from 50 countries throughout the five continents [15-22].

The objective is to supply information and communication channels in the Internet for each member of the K-Society whatever his/her field or discipline is. One of the critical issues of the project is to provide the best resources for the user with the smaller requirements related with a computer science experience, so that the user can have little and even no knowledge of computers.

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