Snapshots
of the Electronic Commerce World
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The
electronic commerce world is evolving…before the age of the Internet,
there were electronic transmissions called EDI (electronic data
interchange) which allowed for the electronic transmission of data
between computers.
Some examples of the original EDI transactions included wiring
money and EDI between banks. Currently,
the Internet is still in its infancy and we are “still getting our
toes wet and the current e-commerce industry is what this course is
about.”
The
next stage of the Internet evolution includes the use of metadata
(machine understandable information on the web).
Metadata will assist with the continuing development and
evolution of areas including:
According
to the W3C (Worldwide Web Consortium) website, the PICS
specification enables labels (metadata) to be associated with Internet
content and was originally designed to help parents and teachers control
what children access on the Internet.
It also facilitates other uses for labels, including code signing
and privacy and the PICS platform is one on which other rating services
and filtering software have been built.
The W3C also addresses the P3P
(Platform for Privacy Preferences Project) which is emerging as an
industry standard providing a simple, automated way for users to gain
more control over the use of personal information on Web sites they
visit. |
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| How Did We Get Here? | |||||||||||||
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In
our first class, we reviewed the history of commerce and money as well
as the elements of payment systems.
In this class, the topics for discussion included the start of
the Internet (predecessor networks and timeline of significant events),
the Internet today (what is the Internet, how does the Internet work,
differences from the original net and differences from the traditional
world out there) and lastly, the Internet in the future. |
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