Internet: Psychological Perspectives

From its beginnings in the late 1960s as a US government research project, the Internet has evolved into a privately operated ‘network of networks’ that is having a profound effect on modern society. With the emergence of the World Wide Web in the 1990s, what began as a research and academic support tool has become a major economic force that has opened new channels of communication and information sharing on a global basis. Enabled by the societal penetration of personal computers, the Internet's rate of adoption since 1992 has exceeded those of other major twentieth century technological forces, such as radio, television, the automobile, and airline travel. In this article we introduce the Internet and the World Wide Web and then address their relevance to cognitive psychology and cognitive science: (a) the role of the Internet in support of cognitive science research (e.g., computer supported collaboration at a distance and issues in the use of the technology to support teamwork and distributed cognition), and (b) the influence of the Internet on modern society from a psychological perspective (e.g., both current issues and those that can be anticipated as the technology continues to advance and to reach a larger portion of the world's population).