The Digital Past

This week took a different turn in the class, as now we talked about the beginnings of the radio, TV, and internet. It followed last week on the Cold War a bit, in the sense of new inventions that forever changed our lives. The information I found most interesting in class, most likely because I can relate to it, was information about the beginning of the internet. As Professor O’Malley said, information wants to be free, as it should be shared and free of hierarchy. One of the best ways to effectively share this information with everyone would be the internet. Tim Berners-Lee was the inventor of the World Wide Web (WWW), which was the first web browser. The acronyms for things are what I found really interesting, because all kids my age should recognize them. I never realized when I typed in a website as “www..,” it stood for World Wide Web, but it makes sense. Next there are the protocols, like “HTTP,” which stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, and “URL,” which is Uniform Resource Locator. Again, these are acronyms I recognize, because when you type a website’s URL, it used to begin with the “HTTP.” There are a few more too, but I was fascinated that I could relate to this and recognize what we were really talking about during the history of technology and stuff. I’ve never been too into the history of technology, but it’s a good thing to learn as they are such a large part of daily life now. I couldn’t imagine my life without a radio, TV, or the internet, which is kinda sad when you come to think of it. Although, I am really excited for the class to turn back towards music next week!