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.
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?
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?
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?
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?
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?
