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Internet science

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Many disciplines support Internet science with different analysis tools, designs, and languages. To have a productive and effective dialogue between disciplines requires incentives for cooperation. The three main elements of Internet science are: multidisciplinary convergence, observability and constructive experimentation.

The European Commission funded a Network of Excellence on Internet Science (project acronym EINS Archived 2013-06-08 at the Wayback Machine) over the period December 2011-May 2015 under the FP7 funding programme. The Network in May 2015 had 48 member universities and research organisations and 180 individual affiliate researchers. Two major international Internet science conferences were held in April 2013 and May 2015 together with an unconference at the University of Bologna in May 2014 and official workshops at international academic conferences such as Human Behavior and the Evolution of Society and international inter-governmental and multistakeholder conferences such as the 2013 United Nations Internet Governance Forum.

Research

Significant areas of current Internet science research include:

Net neutrality

Net neutrality is the rule where Internet service providers should treat all the traffic on their networks equally. This means that companies should not slow down access or block any website content on the Web. In the United States, high-speed Internet service providers (ISPs), including AT&T, Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon, have sought support for a two-tiered Internet service model.

In 2014, President Obama announced a new plan to preserve "net neutrality" and to prevent Internet service providers from blocking or slowing websites or creating different tiers of speed. He said-, "No service should be stuck in a ‘slow lane’ because it does not pay a fee," he wrote in a statement. "That kind of gatekeeping would undermine the level playing field essential to the Internet’s growth."

Internet privacy

Internet privacy (online privacy) is an opportunity of individuals to regulate the flow of information and have access to data, which is generated during a browsing session.

Internet security

Internet security includes things like phishing, spyware and malware.

Sustainability

Google has signed two contracts with wind developers to power its data center in Finland with 100% renewable energy. Facebook decided to build a data center in Iowa, and has helped drive the local energy provider to scrap plans to build a nuclear power plant, and instead build a $2bn(£1.23bn) wind farm, which has led to the biggest single order of wind turbines on record.

Internet as a socio-technical critical infrastructure

Infrastructure provides a large range of vital services—such as the ability to move goods, people, and information. Infrastructural services like gas, electricity, water, transport, and banking are highly interconnected and mutually dependent in various complex ways. They are linked physically, and through important ICT systems, to prevent breakdowns from escalating into whole infrastructure failure.

There is ongoing activity on the development of Internet Science curricula, initially on a postgraduate level.

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