Look after you leap?

Citation

Schwartz, D.G. (1999), "Look after you leap?", Internet Research, Vol. 9 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/intr.1999.17209eaa.001

Look after you leap?

Look after you leap?

Look before you leap used to be a wise precept. But not all ancient wisdom can make the transition to the Internet age. Things just move too fast. Consider the following diverse fields significantly impacted by Internet technologies: distance learning; distributed systems management; Web site evaluation; and security. If there is one underlying message that ties together the articles in this issue of Internet Research, it is look after you leap behavior.

The Internet has enabled colleges and universities around the globe to develop new markets, investigate new pedagogies, and begin changing the ways in which future generations will study and learn. This is action research at its finest. We know so little about how the Internet can and should effect educational norms that it is far more effective to "try it out" and learn from experience, than to theorize about what may happen if we reach out to students through the Web. I myself am guilty of the same behavior having just now launched Bar-Ilan University's entry into the realm of Internet-based distance learning www.bar-ilan.edu. Because of the rapidity and need to "be there", Internet-based distance learning has generated more of a "Look after you leap" mode of operation. In this issue of Internet Research we bring you two papers that look at this growing phenomenon. The first paper, by Saunders and Weible, examines e-courses from the universities' perspectives, surveying department heads on their opinions and acceptance of accountancy courses on the Internet. The final paper, by Morss, is one of the first detailed studies on student populations that have had broad ongoing exposure to Internet-based courses using the WebCT system. Morss' study covers three semesters of activity with over 1,000 students participating in 60 courses. It would seem, in retrospect, that the leap has been justified - but there is still much to understand about the ways in which the Internet is leading us toward a metamorphosis of traditional academic environments.

Fraud and security are the two complementary topics dealt with in papers by Baker, and Furnell and Karweni. Baker, in "An analysis of fraud on the Internet", approaches Internet fraud from three different angles, covering securities sales and trading; electronic commerce; and the rapid growth of Internet companies. Each of these areas presents different fraud risks and it is not at all clear whether we will ever be able to completely avoid those risks. Baker analyses each area and presents concrete directions for reducing exposure to Internet-related fraud. In "Security implications of electronic commerce", Furnell and Karweni present a user survey of reaction to the dangers implicit in e-commerce, including those of fraud. Among their conclusions is a surprising lack of awareness among users as to both the dangers and simple ways to protect oneself. One direction picked up on in this paper is that of the importance of trust in electronic commerce - an issue that has been dealt with previously in Internet Research. Note, however, that trust is the antithesis of fraud - obtaining trust is fundamental to committing fraud. These two papers have a lot to tell each other, and there will continue to be a large gap between the secure trading environment we strive for, and the realities of an environment where the human capacity to commit fraud is amplified. Fraud is often the unexpected outcome of not looking before the leap. The difference when fraud is concerned is that looking first won't necessarily help - what you see is not what you get.

The elusive goal of proper Web site evaluation is brought a step closer in Misic and Johnson's paper on benchmarking. Their use of benchmarking provides a framework for comparing individual Web sites with sites occupying the same competitive space. The paper explains the methodology and presents a case study showing how benchmarking is used to provide ongoing evaluation of a Web site. Benchmarking is a well-known evaluation technique. In order for it to be applied in a new area, it is crucial to determine the proper metrics for evaluation. By formalizing benchmarking metrics for Web site evaluation, and showing how they are applied, Misic and Johnson have made this proven methodology accessible to Internet researchers and Web site managers. Benchmarking, by its very definition, necessitates doing something before you evaluate it - once again, we need to jump right in and only then consider what we've done in relation to others.

Managing distributed and heterogeneous systems in a large organization is a complex task. The mobile agents for the management of applications and systems (MAMAS), described by Paolo Bellavista, Antonio Corradi, Fabio Tarantino and Cesare Stefanelli, takes a distributed approach to a distributed problem. Mobile agents are used extensively in the area of content discovery and indexing, as well as in a number of e-commerce comparison shopping systems. The approach taken by Bellavista et al. treats the Internet as a systems domain rather than a content domain, where the items of interest are not individual Web pages or e-commerce quotes, but rather individual computer systems that need to be managed and controlled. We tend to forget that if you look behind all the content clouding our screens, that's what you're left with. More and more organizations have intranet and extranet connected core business applications. New Internet-based business computing architectures provide unprecedented access for our users, employees, customers, and suppliers. They carry with them, however, the heavy burden of distributed systems management. The MAMAS system supports the definition and creation of mobile agents that act on behalf of system administrators, moving and residing in the network to operate on individual systems, managing distributed computing resources. In this field, as in the area of distance education discussed above, we are playing catch-up. Organizations have leapt into the realm of distributed Internet-based computing, now it's time to look and see how we can properly manage it.

Are we moving too fast for our own good? I don't think so. But perhaps looking first isn't such a bad idea after all. Where Internet systems are concerned spending a lot of time looking is becoming a luxury few can afford. But of course that's what the Journal of Internet Research is here for - to share with you the insights of those who have made the leap. With a little guidance you may just like what you see after you've jumped in. Leap wisely.

David G. Schwartz