Has Internet research come of age?

Citation

Schwartz, D.G. (2003), "Has Internet research come of age?", Internet Research, Vol. 13 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.2003.17213aaa.001

Has Internet research come of age?

Has Internet research come of age?

Welcome to a new volume of Internet Research. As we enter the Journal's 13th year, it is hard to say what has changed the most over the past 12 years. Is it the Technology? Management? Design? Commerce? User behavior and expectation? The availability of information? The Internet itself?

This issue of Internet Research contains a representative from each of the above areas of exploration. On the technology front we have Yu, Chen, Wang, and Tseng, "Improving Internet archive service through proxy cache". Their work expands on some of the innovative ideas for the use of proxy systems that Yu et al. presented previously in Internet Reseach.

Management aspects are central to del Águila, Padilla, Serarols, and Veciana's work on the "Digital economy and management in Spain". Here we see the broad impact of Internet technologies on the Spanish economy and the direct impact on the management of individual enterprises.

Effective Web site design continues to be a difficult, poorly understood process. In "Web site design benchmarking within industry groups", Kim, Shaw and Schneider study 12 different industries to determine six cross-industry evaluation criteria that can be used to help benchmark website design.

Fiore and Jin introduce us to a new aspect of e-commerce design in "Influence of image interactivity on approach responses towards an online retailer". Broadband will have a striking impact on the e-commerce "shopping experience" offered by online retailers, and the "humanizing" of customer support for a wide range of businesses. Both of these activities require high-resolution video, voice, simulation, and imaging technologies to be effective – and those technologies are bandwidth intensive. Understanding the influence of image interactivity will help us focus our efforts on technologies that are effective and not just eye-catching.

User behavior is the subject of an article by Cho, Byun, and Sung on the "Impact of the high-speed Internet on user behaviors: a case study in Korea". Their work provides us with the dual insights of the emerging Korean market and the influences of high-speed access.

As information proliferates on the Internet, so does a disproportionate amount of objectionable information. "A structural and content-based analysis for Web filtering", presented by Lee, Hui and Fong, provides a new methodology for dealing with the filtering of objectionable material. While it is not our editorial mission to debate what may or may not constitute objectionable material, finding that there are mechanisms for an individual to better deal with what he or she may deem objectionable is surely a welcome development.

The responsibilities that we as a research community bear in helping realize the full potential of the Internet are a heavy burden. As we enter Volume 13, it is abundantly clear that the challenges we face on technological, organizational, and human levels continue to grow in both quantity and complexity. The start of a new volume is also an opportune time to express my thanks to the members of our Editorial Advisory Board and management team for their devoted efforts in ensuring the quality of the papers we publish, as well as to our many contributors from around the globe.

David G. Schwartz