Today in class we looked at the internet and how it came about. First of all we looked at computers in the 20th century. As you can see, they were a lot bigger than todays.
DARPA - Defence Advanced Research Agency. This organisation was created after they were surprised by the Soviet Unions technological advances. Their aim was that it would be the initiator and not the victim of strategic technological surprises moving forward.
Packet Switching - This is when data of information is sent to someone else, which could be across the world. The data gets broken up into small pieces, then put back together when it gets to the receiver, all in a matter of seconds. I found this amazzing, as I had never thought about how data gets across the globe in a matter of seconds, and after looking into this I understand a little bit more about how it works.
Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, in 1989, while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. Time was dedicated to making the web available to all, and with the World Wide Web Foundation, is dedicated to protecting the web and making it a public good. In 1976, he made a computer out of an old television set. He thought that accessing computers and using them were too complicated and not accessible. He created HTML, URL, HTTP, which are still fundamental in web development today. In 1990 he also created the first web browser, which was called Nexus. He was listed in the 100 most important people of the 20th century by Times Magazine.
Jeffrey Zeldman was a web designer in the 90s and 2000s, and is famous for pushing web standards. This was because web page development was able to be done by anyone, so therefore there was no set rules or standards, so Jeffrey wanted to establish rules and standards, leading to the web standards movement in 1998. Different web browsers had different standards, therefore if a different browser was used for the webpage, it would come out looking completely different. He wanted to change this so that no matter what webpage you used, the webpage would still look the same. Some things he pushed was that browsers support HTML and CSS, and that web page had to meet accessibility and semantic standards.
Another thing I found interesting from todays class is that there are different web generations.
Web 1.0 - 1989-2004
Web 2.0 - 2004-Now
Web 3.0 - Now?
Some people say that we are currently in the transition of Web 2.0 and Web 3.0. Web 1.0 was simply information based, Web 2.0 allowed users to create their own content for the purposes of social connectivity, interaction and commerce, and Web 3.0 aims to allow users access to their own data, using a decentralised network system.
Todays class was super interesting, as we learnt about the history of the internet, and there was so many things that I never knew before todays class about the internet, such as web standards, different web generations, but especially how the internet began with one man, and how he changed the world. There are so many areas of my life that wouldn’t be possible without the internet, so it is something that I am very grateful for.