Int.-uni IUT 1 15.01.00 THE TAKE – OFF OF THE INTERNET UNIVERSITY1

• Main Author: Ulrich Peter Ritter
• Other Authors: The Pennsylvania State University CiteSeerX Archives
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Subjects: inuit; Alaska
• Online Access: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.617.755; http://www.wiwi.uni-frankfurt.de/professoren/ritter/publikation/take-off.pdf

A few weeks ago in Frankfurt an American banker asked, when I referred to the Internet University: "The Internet University! What is that? Does it really exist? I have never heard of it. Where is it and how can you find it?" My answer was: "Of course it exists; it is not a fantasy but rather the most dynamic and most rapidly developing academic phenomenon in our time. And as to your last question: it is literally nowhere and everywhere. It is present everywhere, where somebody has a computer and a modem and thus access to the internet independently of whether she or he is in the Sahara or the Gobi desert or in the center of New York or Frankfurt. Also the answer would be correct, if you said: it is nowhere. There is no definable location, where this university has its seat. Principally an internet-teaching offer can be made from every location in the world, which fulfills the technical conditions. With satellite-communication there is practically no location, which does not fulfill these technical preconditions. Thus, a guru an oasis of the Sahara is as much a potential professor as a wise man of the Inuit in Alaska or a world famous chemist at Harvard or BASF.”