Well, that is a very good question. In conducting research on-line
to determine people's uses for the 'Net in early 1990s, I became very
excited at the prospects of this new social institution. In response to the
excitement others had (and which I also had), I felt that the
people I was writing about were citizens of the Net. Sometimes
people on the Net would call the users of the Net, a net.citizen
(read net citizen) as newsgroups were all originally net.x, where
x was the subject and this was used in describing net entities.
This idea I changed into the english Net
Citizen, which further led to Netizen.
Here are some More thoughts on Netizens. Also, a speech I gave in Japan about the origins of Netizen, and an info page for the Netizens Association Mailing List.
Those interested in reading the results of my research can retrieve my paper "The Net and the Netizens: The Impact the Net has on People's Lives" from:
E-mail me (Jay Hauben) at hauben@columbia.edu if you have any thoughts or concerns about this concept, and thank you for reading! :-)
Return to the Netizens Cyberstop, or the Netizens Association Mailing list web page.