Blog 21: University of Minnesota class WRIT 3577W

What have I learned in WRIT 3577W? This has been a great experience. While reviewing certain topics, I definitely learned a lot. Topics that were more review for me were in the internet section in the beginning. I previously took history of computing at the University and it covered a lot of what we talked about. It was very interesting to get the facts from a different perspective though. The biggest topic that I learned about was rhetoric. Before taking this class I had always hear the term rhetoric but I do not think that I actually really knew what it meant. I certainly had never learned about rhetoric. I feel like rhetoric should be something taught to us at a younger age. It is a very useful tool that I will take with me throughout the rest of my life. The last topic was the most fascinating to me though when we talked about the Internet of Things. I had known about the different aspects of it but never really put a name to what it was. I feel like this is going to be a huge part of our future going forward. It was interesting to hear the perspective that other people had on the internet of things. It was interesting because that topic came up in a different class for me this semester so I was able to use the knowledge that I had from this class to help learn about it from a different perspective. Thank you for the great semester and I hope others gain as much information from this course as I did.

Blog 20: Virtual and Augmented Reality

I decided that I would like to write a blog post about my final project for WRIT 3577W. I decided to go with talking about virtual (VR) and augmented (AR) reality. I decided to talk about these two topics because of the importance that they will have in the future. First, it is good to recognize that these two topics are not new. For decades we have been predicting that the future may include holograms or some type of alternate reality. It is really cool to see something like this become a reality. Some new discoveries that I had while doing this project was what was in store for the future. The applications of these two technologies is endless. As one of the articles that I read said, the only thing holding us back is our imaginations. This is so true. Think of some of the applications that these technologies have, health, fitness, education, and more. Doctors could use it to help with taking vitals during a checkup. Surgeons could use it to help them while doing surgeries. People in school could use it to help with learning. You could have all of your books or important documents stored in the goggles and it could be projected onto your desk. More importantly, this could really help students that have disabilities. Another interesting application is video games. This is going to be one of the biggest markets in my opinion. Recently video games have become more popular and the applications for this topic are endless. Imagine playing Minecraft with AR or VR. You could literally build your cities around you in a room. The future is looking very exciting for AR and VR and I am excited to see where it takes us.

Picture taken from: https://startvr.co/wp-content/uploads/iStock_000085205875_Double.jpg

Blog 19: Self-tracking in the medical field

The more and more I read Self-Tracking, the more I understand how important some of these devices are going to become in the future. The example brought up in chapter 5 was about health tracking. This seems like a very important area in which to track information about people. Especially people with higher risk for certain diseases. We can also try and become more healthy if we are able to know what is going on in our body. This may also help with taking some burden off of doctors. If you are able to track things such as blood pressure or other vital things about your body, you may be able to get information about what might be wrong from the internet instead of making the trip to the doctor. This might be helpful for non-life threatening conditions that may be discovered. It may also save people money because going to the doctor is not a cheap expense. Being able to understand what some of the numbers mean on these devices will be important as well. I think we are going to need to educate people how to interpret the data they are able to collect from themselves. It is possible because people already do this. For example, people with diabetes keep track of how much insulin they will need to use for each meal that they eat. Knowing how to interpret information that you collect from yourself is going to be very important going forward with self tracking.

Questions:

Are you opposed to being able to track certain things about your body (ie. blood pressure)?

Is it going to be possible to educate everyone of how to interpret their own data and how they should use it?

Picture taken from: http://emberify.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/emberify_qs_medical_health_Cover.png

Neff, G. & Nafus, D. (2016). Self-Tracking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapters 5]

Blog 18: Habit hacking

A lot of interesting topics were brought up in these two chapters. It amazes me the amount of data that you are able to collect on yourself. Before we started studying self tracking, I did not realize the potential that some of this data could have. A long time ago, I used to try and track the food that I ate. As Gina discussed in chapter three, it is very difficult to do this. I myself had a hard time doing this. At most, I may have been able to track the types of food I was eating for a week. It is really hard to do this especially when you have to individually go in and find the food and record it. Gina brought up a good point about how this may discourage people from eating fresh food because processed food is easier to track. If you are able to stick with tracking, you can gain some very valuable information about a specific thing you tracked.

Another thing that was discussed was habit hacking. This was a very interesting topic. Basically, you track things that you do for example eating a cookie everyday and trying to figure out why you ate it. Was it because of boredom or was it because you genuinely wanted to eat a good cookie? Based off of this data, you could correct a habit that you have. To be successful with these things, the book recommend you start out tracking one thing and you track for a small amount of time. It is hard to break habits and these were some of the recommendations on how to track these.

Questions:

Have you ever tried self tracking?

Is habit hacking something that could potentially help people going forward?

Picture taken from: https://adobe99u.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/habits_550_rev.png

Neff, G. & Nafus, D. (2016). Self-Tracking. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapters 3]

Blog 16: Technology of the future

After reading this last chapter in Greengard’s book I have become excited. I am excited if any of the technologies that he envisions in the end come true. How cool would it be to wake up everyday and make your morning routine easier. I am not a morning person so anything helps. Walking from room to room without turning lights on or off, having the shower be the exact temperature that you want it to be, and having coffee ready for you right away would be awesome. Thinking about all of these technologies mentioned, it really does not seem like some of that stuff is far off. I know we talked about a coffee machine that will make coffee for you from the internet. It seems like installing sensors in every room may be not the best use of resources but that seems like something that is possible to have lights turn on and off as you walk in and walk out of rooms.

It is amazing to think of how things are connected today. It is even more amazing to try and envision how connected things will be in the future. We are actually giving some thought into the IoT. But in the future I feel like it will be a concept that is not new and it won't amaze some. I am excited to see where the IoT will take us in the future.

Questions:

What technology excites you most about the future?

Do you agree that we are not that far away from what Greengard describes in his last chapter?

Picture taken from: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/64975/file-15129370-jpg/images/future-city.jpg

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 7]

Blog 15: Making a universal remote and how to hack it.

Greengard goes into depth about how the IoT is becoming connected along with its vulnerabilities. It is weird to think of a time where people had to be using the same phone company to talk with each other. With the advancements of technology today, we are able to take this for granted and basically call on any device nowadays. Another example that he talks about which was interesting was how difficult it would be for everyone if we all had a different way to steer a car (steering wheel, joystick, etc.). It is amazing to think about how we were able to advance with technology enough to be able to get these devices to be able to communicate with each other the way they do. The trouble we are having now is trying to get a “universal remote” that would allow you to control everything with just one remote.

While these advancements are very helpful and are the way of the future, we need to remember to be careful with how we implement security. Not only against other people, but against the technology itself. Greengard gave the example of the train that crashed due to a computer malfunction. The person operating the machine was not able to stop the train in time before the crash. We need a way to warn the driver of an impending crash possibly. We also need to make sure we are making these devices hack proof. What if a person decided to hack into these trains and make them crash? While it is nice to have everything connected in the IoT, we need to be protecting ourselves from disasters like these.

Questions:

Who should be in charge of making sure that our devices are hack proof?

How long will it be before we have a “Universal Remote”?

Picture taken from: https://az788150.vo.msecnd.net/assets/0/2147483652/2147483732/2147483733/252/5c6e585b-ead3-438e-a27d-c21a496c606b.png

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 5 & 6]

Blog 14: Drowning in data.

The thing that I would like to discuss is about chapter 3. Chapter 3’s big takeaway was data. I do not think it is possible to comprehend the amount of data that is out there. The data that has been collected has been used for good and bad things. People have become so obsessed with data that it has become a currency. Companies want to know what you are buying and they want to predict what you will buy in the future. I wonder if this is for their benefit or if they are trying to assist their customers. The scariest thing to me was how some of these apps can locate you at anytime. This is the kind of data that is bad in my opinion. This is an infringement on privacy to be able to see where someone is anytime of the day.

There were some good applications of data collection though. One they talked about was weather and how to predict it as accurately as possible. Another good one that this chapter talked about was computers analyzing past areas of a city where crime has happened and predicting where it is going to happen next. I do think that this is technology that we should look into but something we need to be cautious using. Going forward, I think we need to be careful about what data we are collecting. I think that there needs to be more transparency on what companies can see and collect from you. Maybe in the future we will have a government agency that will be able to govern this type of collection.

Questions:

Do you think it is a bad idea to be able to predict where crime may take place in the future? Implications of this?

Do you think that companies are collecting too much data from people? Is our privacy being infringed on?

Picture taken from: http://cdn.business2community.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Too-much-data-300x150.png

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Chapter 3]

WRIT 3577 · Post Blog 12: The Medium is the Message Posting as Patrick Richard Update Revert to draft Preview Close ComposeHTML Link

Blog 13: Data as a new currency

So far I really like how Greengard starts out his book. It is really interesting to hear how other people use technology. The way he made it sound was that he was not as technologically savvy as some. However, I would have to say in comparison to me his use of technology so synchronously is quite awesome. I envision a future in which we will be able to have all of our technology sync with everything and you only have to worry about one interface. It just blew my mind all of the technology he used to keep track of every important thing. It almost seemed like a burden to have to worry about all of that technology. I could not imagine inputting every individual food that I eat on a daily basis while also inputting what you drank and how much you exercised. This seems a little personal letting a device someone else made know all this information about you.

This leads me to my second point about these chapters. Greengard touches on how data is being collected on us at an astounding rate. It makes me uncomfortable thinking about what the internet may know about me. Is it right for companies to be able to trick you into collecting your data because of how they write their terms of service? Like Greengard said, that data is going to be a new currency for companies and it is going to affect how business is done in the future.

Questions:

Do you think that our data will become a new currency or has it already become that?

What kinds of technology do you have synced up with the internet like Greengard describes in chapter one?

Picture taken from: https://cdn2.hubspot.net/hubfs/536250/Stock_Photos/DATA.jpg

Greengard, Samuel. The internet of things. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. [Introduction, Chapter 1 & Chapter 2]

Blog 12: The Medium is the Message

These last few chapters of this short book were very interesting. It seemed to coincide with something that I have been talking about in my New Media and Culture class. The topic we studied was a sentence coined by the person named Marshall McLuhan. The phrase is, “The Medium is the Message.” This chapter goes into depth explaining the advancements in technology and how we are able to use these technologies with rhetoric. I think the phrase, “The Medium is the Message” goes very well with this chapter. It matters the way that we spread rhetoric whether it be through written, oral, or some other means such as TV. The chapter also talked about how human culture moved broadly from its initial ‘primary orality’ where spoken word was the most popular way in which rhetoric was spread to the ‘second orality’ which we use writing to spread rhetoric that is used mostly in the modern era.

Another interesting thing the chapter talked about was the way in which leaders used rhetoric. For example, how Teddy Roosevelt used it to help get people on board with going to war against Germany in WWII but at the same time trying to cover up some of the facts of war. Another example was how Hitler used rhetoric to try and say that Jews must be the ‘necessary consequence’ of war while sending messages to his subordinates letting them know what was expected of them. These chapters did a good job explaining how rhetoric has been used in the past along with which mediums are used.

Questions:

Do you think that we are moving into a ‘third orality’ with the way technology is advancing in the ways you are able to use rhetoric?

Which medium do you think is the best when using rhetoric?

Picture taken from: https://jamesbhurley.files.wordpress.com/2012/10/rhetoric.gif

Toye, Richard. Rhetoric: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2013. Print.

Blog 10: The Power of Persuasion

I would first like to offer my thoughts on how Richard Toye goes about talking about rhetoric. For me, it was confusing how he jumped around in time it seemed. Also, this style of writing is difficult for me to read personally. However, I do feel that I know more about what rhetoric is and how it has been used in the past. The big thing that I got out of the introduction and chapter one was rhetoric is about persuasion. Rhetoric is such a powerful tool. It was first discussed back by Aristotle and Plato. Another important thing that was mentioned was how there can not be a set of rules defining what rhetoric is and how it can be used to be successful in your task. You can not make assumptions about your audience. This changes based on factors such as class, gender, and race.

I think rhetoric has been very controversial in its inception, but has also been very important in many roles such as leadership. It is very important to learn how to use rhetoric and how it can be used against you. I did not fully understand the importance of why we should be teaching students about rhetoric until reading this first bit in the book. Being able to make a good case and being persuasive can get you very far in certain situations.

Questions:

Did you know what rhetoric was before taking this class?

Have you ever used rhetoric before in any situation, if so can you name that situation?

Picture taken from: https://www-tc.pbs.org/parents/adventures-in-learning/files/2015/11/powerofpersuasion.jpg

Toye, Richard. Rhetoric: a very short introduction. Oxford: Oxford U Press, 2013. Print.

Blog 9: SELECT SQL FROM ITR

My internet technology review was about SQL. I talked about the uses for SQL along with demonstrating how to make a basic table. I also go over a different database language and compare it with SQL. Along with this I present some pros and cons to using SQL. After analyzing SQL, it has many strengths and weaknesses but really it depends on the kind of data that you are trying to store. You may want to use SQL or NoSQL database languages.

Blog 8: Online Piracy and How the Internet has Shaped Campaigns

A big theme that I got out of these chapters that we read for today was how the Internet really changed a lot of different things and how people did not anticipate these changes. Ryan begins by talking about online piracy. It first starts out by a guy who took a Metallica song and converted it to an MP3 file. Back then, there were constraints around what size files could be and to be able to compress the audio made it possible to store songs on a computer. Soon, websites such as Napster came about. It made it easy for people to find any song they chose and download it for free rather than searching the web and different websites. Soon the music industry fired back by suing napster which effectively ended the website's ability to let people download music. This did not stop people from pirating music. With the advent of torrenting, it allowed people to pirate larger things than MP3 files now. They were able to download software and movies for free. Online piracy is still a huge issue today and I do not foresee anyway that it can be controlled. Once you take down one site, there will be a hundred more to come up to take the burden of the traffic the site once had.

Another thing that was very important was how the Internet shaped our politics today. It allowed a former wrestler become elected as a governare. Jesse Ventura was able to get enough attention because of a website that he made that allowed people to see his message. It also allowed people to see pictures that he had taken with them. This was revolutionary at the time. Nothing like this had been done in the past. This was the start for how the Internet helped politicians get elected. There were other candidates that Ryan talked about but the other one I want to talk about is Barack Obama. So much of the success of former President Obama’s campaign had to do with the Internet. It allowed people to donate money and see his campaign promises. Ryan talks about how former President Obama went and reached out to people at Netscape to get a sense for what is was going to be next. The Internet has shaped many things but these are just a few of the examples that Ryan talks about in these chapters.

Questions:

Will there ever be a way to combat online piracy?

Do you think that the Internet will have as much of an impact on a politician's campaign now that they have been using it as a tool for awhile?

Blog 7: HTML and Web 2.0

These chapters that Ryan focuses on cover a wide variety of topics. One of the most important topics that he discusses is the creation of Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). A man by the name of Tim Berners-Lee was the person who invented this. He wanted a way of being able to link different content together. This is really what started the boom of what was called the world wide web. This is the Internet that we know today. Another important topic that he talks about is web browsers. You needed a way to be able to find the HTML pages that people created. So people invented web browsers to do this. Some of the early browsers were Netscape, Mosaic, and even Internet Explorer which is still around today. Then Larry Page came around and made one of the most popular websites that has ever existed, Google. Google redefined how you searched for HTML pages. It used a new way of finding pages based off a ranking system. This system basically put the pages that had the most links to them at the top of the Google searches.

Next Ryan talks about the financial side of things. He goes into detail talking about how Ebay became such a big website. I think it surprised me the amount of money that went through that website as it progressed. Another very important topic that Ryan talks about is Web 2.0. This seems to be the inception of social media. Social media redefined how we communicated with each other. These websites will shape our interactions for years to come. Another thing Ryan brings up very briefly is Ajax and XML. These technologies are very important with creating websites today. It allows people to create dynamic web pages rather than static ones.

Questions:

How would the Internet be different today if Tim Berners-Lee would not have created HTML?

Do you think there will be something like social media that will redefine how we interact with people and world around us?

Blog 6: The Formation of Communities

Something from phase two that surprised me the most was the enormous size of AT&T. I knew they were a big company but the way it is described in these chapters is that it is basically the only phone company and they had complete control over every aspect of telephones. It amazes me that the government took so long to step in and decided that they had a monopoly on the system. This inspired a group called the “Phone Phreaks” to meet and figure out how to cheat the system. I think it is funny that a kid was able to figure out that if he blew a certain pitch into the phone it would allow him to make free long distance calls.

Another thing that baffles me and a lot of other people is how AT&T passed up the opportunity to help with the ARPANET. I am sure looking back today they see this as a major mistake because once ARPANET was available to the public it took off. The importance of it in many situations was realized. Especially when they were able to send emails to each other. ARPANET was able to connect people globally. As Ryan progresses he talks about how they phased out ARPANET in favor of NSFNET because it was capable of speeds of 45 mpbs instead of the slow speed ARPANET offered. It seems like this section of the book focused on more of the cultural aspects of the early Internet. How groups formed like the computer science community, phone phreaks, or the even the Scifi community. This is important in understanding how the Internet connects groups today.

Questions:

How do you think the early Internet affected the formation of communities today? For example the formation of the phone phreaks or scifi community long ago.

What do you think the Internet would look like today if AT&T would have helped with ARPANET?

Blog 5: The Birth of the Internet

Phase one was a very informative section of the book. It seems like we are now starting to dig down into the nitty gritty details of how the internet began and what inspired it to become a thing. It starts out by describing what the tensions were like during the Cold War. The extensive plans that went into place to try and make plans for what would happen if there was a nuclear war. One of the problems that they realized was the way in which we communicated at the time. A bomb was capable of taking out our entire network of communication just by destroying a central location that handled our communication. This is what inspired us to develop an idea that Blum talked about in the book we previously read, the ARPANET. This network was made so there was no central node. If a node was destroyed, the data would be able to be sent a different route. They also talked about how this was ahead of its time. At first, people like AT&T did not want to switch to this form of communication. After they saw how well it worked, they decided to jump on board (this was many years later). This lead to another important issue. These nodes needed to be able to communicate with each other to be able to send what they call “packets” of information. They needed a language that was universal that made it easy to send packets. They solved this by making an internet protocol. TCP/IP is what we still use today to send our packets of information from server to server over the internet.

Questions:

Do you think we would have the internet today without the Cold War?

Why do you think companies like AT&T did not embrace the idea that Baran had for a new way of communication?

Image taken from https://www.google.com/maps

Blog 4: Security of the Internet

This was a very eye opening chapter for me. Blum talked a lot about the security of these data centers. He also talked about how they find the right location to build these centers. First it was important to understand how they chose a location for these centers. It makes a lot of sense when you understand what is happening on the inside. Due to excess heat, they find a climate in which it stays cold. I can only imagine the kind of heat that one of these centers can produce. Sitting next to my computer right now, I can feel heat coming out of it. You then have to take into account the amount of money that you will spend on a building location, right? Well actually Blum talked with a person who said that this is a minor cost compared to the amount of money that it takes to upkeep one of these facilities. The cost to keep it cool is a majority of the cost so building it in a cooler climate makes sense. They can bring in the cold air from outside and cool the machines that way rather than having to spend money to air condition the place.

I did not realize the type of security that was involved in a data center. I suppose it makes sense that they need to do this since they are storing your personal information that you don't want stolen. Blum brought up a good point though, he said that these places hold our personal information but we know almost nothing about them. This really stuck out to me because basically we are entrusting our most personal data with a stranger. I will probably never meet a person that is in charge of wherever my data is stored. This person could learn a lot about me if they wanted to. This was just something that I thought was interesting and scary.

Questions:

Did you realize the type of security that was involved with protecting your data?

Blum said he thought he may have been the first tourist of the internet, do you think this is true and will he be the only?

Blog 3: A City of Cables

These two chapters Blum seemed to focus a lot on the cables that connect the Internet. He went into detail about when he went to go observe workers install some of the fiber lines in the heart of New York City. This was really interesting to learn about how they connected the new lines to the old. It was also interesting to see how long the process actually takes to install these new lines. They basically have to pop off the cover that seals these underground tunnels and place a casing that stretches to the place they are trying to connect their lines. In this case it ended up being about a quarter mile. They then have to put the cables inside these tubes and connect the old to the new. The way Blum describes these underground wires as if the tunnels are crowded with them. It was also cool to know that they reused a lot of the space that telegraph wires inhabited decades ago.

Blum also focused a lot on the cables that span the oceans of Earth. This is something that was new to me knowing that cables actually connected the Internet to people in different countries. It seems weird to have cables that go underwater and have to travel such distances just to be able to connect people. It also blew my mind the speed at which you can still retrieve data from different countries. The miles that these cables have to span to connect each of us and it can take mere seconds to get data or communicate with people long distances away. Something else that stood out to me in these chapters was how expansive and sophisticated the Internet actually is. What I mean by this is the example Blum gave us of an earthquake that happened near Japan and it took out 7 of the 9 major cables that were underwater. How they were able to solve the issue of the 2 working cables being overloaded was rerouting the traffic to other lines that went the other way around the world. It also shows how difficult it would be to take out the Internet.

Questions:

Do you think we will get to a point where we have too many cables crowding cities? Blum made it seem like it was easy to pop off the cover of these tunnels because of how jam packed they were with cables.

Do you ever think we will progress enough with technology to not have to use cables to connect to us to the Internet?

Blog 2: The Internet Highway

Chapter 3&4 went deeper into figuring out where the internet “starts”. Blum’s curiosity for figuring out where the internet is led him to interview someone who gave him a good analogy as to the type of traffic hubs such as the one in Milwaukee got. “The building in Milwaukee was the Internet equivalent of a small regional airport...the Palo Alto Internet Exchange is like San Francisco International [airport], or bigger” (Pg. 78). These analogies really help give the readers perspective as to how the internet really works. The big points that Blum made in chapter 3 were when you request data from a certain internet page, it requires your data to travel through many different hubs to find the page you are looking for. The major hubs (or “airports” as Blum writes) could be Milwaukee or the Palo Alto Internet Exchange. I think this is very interesting and if you want to confirm what Blum talks about you can open up a command prompt window on a Windows machine and type, “tracert [a website of your choice]” and it will show you the time it took the data to travel to a hub and how many hubs it had to go through before reaching its final destination.

Chapter 4 focuses on many things but the thing that I found most interesting and important was when he talked about the places that stored the actual data that people requested. Blum talks about the heavy security that is involved to get into these buildings. Blum interviewed some of the people who were veteran internet infrastructure workers. A good point that one of these workers brought up about Blum’s mission to figure out how the internet works was about how he could be potentially telling people how to take down the internet. I found it interesting but I think Blum had a very appropriate reaction to defend himself. His thought process was that he wanted to make people more aware of these places so that they could properly be protected.

Questions that I have for these chapter are,

Going back to the discussion we had on Tuesday, do you think that these “hubs” need more security than they already have?

Do you think Blum is revealing too many elements about the internet infrastructure that could potentially lead to attacks in the future?

Blog 1: The Infinite Internet

Before I talk about what Blum wrote about I think it is important to know what I have previously learned about the Internet before reading these chapters. I have had a lot of background information about how the Internet came to be from taking HSCI 4321 History of Computing. We talked a lot about ARPANET and the transition to the Internet. The information that Blum talks about was not new to me. However, his perspective of how he came to be so interested in the Internet was very interesting.

Blum talks about how one day he was using a VOIP service (such as skype) and the connection started getting fuzzy. He called his Internet Service Provider (ISP) to come take a look and see what was going on. In the process of trying to figure out what was wrong, they discovered that a squirrel had decided that the wire connecting Blum to Internet was going to be a snack. This is how Blum became so fascinated. He wondered where that wire went and how the Internet actually worked.

Something that stuck out to me was how he kept saying that he thought the Internet was infinite before realizing that it was just a bunch of computers connected by cables. His first stop was in Milwaukee to what was once Milwaukee’s Athletic club, which is now the center of the Internet for Milwaukee. He was given a tour and saw all the fiber optic cables running through the building which ran to different parts of the country like Chicago. Next on his stop he took a trip back in time to meet the person who helped install the first Interface Message Processor (IMP) Leonard Kleinrock. He goes on to talk about how IMP was used to create the ARPANET which consisted of “nodes” sending information to each other. The next thing he does is go on to explain MAE-East. This section of the chapter was a little confusing to me but it basically seems like the ISP's came up with a hub that used existing data lines to essentially create a roundabout for the Internet. Something that I noticed, was Blum never mentioned Tim Berners-Lee. Tim Berners-Lee invented HyperText Markup Language (HTML) which is the basis of how we browse the Internet today. Maybe this will be coming up in a future chapters.

Questions that I have for this chapter are,

Do you see the Internet as this infinite entity (the cloud) as Blum previously describes it or do you think of it as a physical network with a bunch of cables?

Why do you think the ARPANET took so long to get from the military into the hands of the public?

About Me

My name is Patrick Richard. I am a Senior majoring in Individualized Studies. This allows me to choose three areas of concentration from any fields. I chose to focus mainly on Computer Science. The other two concentrations are Digital Media Studies and TWC (Technical Writing and Communication).

I am hoping to go into web development after college.