The Invention Of The World Wide Web

The author then noted the positive ways the Internet has influenced his life. yet, when he states, “But that boon comes at a price,” his tone immediately changes from appreciative to concerned. This change in tone shows that Carr is beginning to dive deeper into his topic. Additionally, his positive section acts as a counterargument.

In his essay “The Net Is a Waste of Time,” novelist William Gibson analyzes the hidden potentials of the Internet in both its vastness and affect on society. He writes this piece at the dawn of the Internet, and during this undeveloped phase, he discusses its multitude of facts as is and will be. As hinted in the title of his essay, Gibson takes the stance that the Internet at its early stages is a waste of time -- an impressively large and complex waste of time -- but a waste of time nonetheless. He is ultimately concerned with how we are choosing to procrastinate through the Internet, and that our growing attachment and dependence on the Internet reveals a “fatal naïveté” (697) about us. Gibson also brings up the true enormity of the Web even at its premature standing, detailing how “the content of the Web aspires the absolute variety. One might find anything there. It is like rummaging in the forefront of the collective global mind” (697). Despite his concerns on what the Web might become, Gibson realizes that at the time of his writing, the Web was at a stage much like the larval stage of a butterfly’s life -- seems unassuming, but as he himself puts it, “The Web is new, and our response to it has not yet hardened” (697), and that there are “big changes afoot” (696).

The birth of the internet created a revolution on technology, and social media in the world. It created a vast amount of change, and has put humans onto a path that they thought they could not walk on. It has shifted modern culture and helped shape it into a unique one where the internet seems to run the world. One big part of internet culture is the platform Web 2.0. It has helped shape many applications and has had an impact on creation, and content presented in the web to viewers. Web 2.0 can be shown in the popular app Twitter, and it shows how the site has evolved, what concepts are involved in it, and the future of Twitter and Web 2.0.

The use of technology has catalyzed society into an era that is increasingly interconnected yet impersonal at the same time. Despite technology’s endless list of assets, many fail to acknowledge its shortcomings when mentioning what is lost as a result of using it. Although in “Great to Watch” by Maggie Nelson, she is not afraid to share her skepticism of technology, as well as the role it plays in desensitizing individuals on a day-to-day basis. The internet is an invaluable resource to many because it is a public domain for sharing ideas, opinions, and knowledge that any and everyone can have access to. In a sense, it does not restrict what someone may see or do, and this can either be a good thing or a bad thing. The booming use of new media

In her call to action, The People’s Platform; Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age, Astra Taylor addresses underlying social and economic forces of the internet and differential perspectives towards it. Taylor discusses the new internet in which content is king and, people are now the product, this is called Web 2.0. She discusses this topic from a couple viewpoints; those who would believe that the internet is truly the new people’s platform and that it is the golden age of sharing and collaboration, called the Techno-optimists. The counterparts of this interpretation of the internet are what she calls the Techno-Skeptics, who have a similar mindset in that of Nicholas Carr, an author about technology in the modern age, with the

Carr is brutally honest with the phrase, “I’m not thinking the way I used to think,” and this truthfulness helps to build Carr ’s ethos and directly address the fact that the internet has changed his actions and his thoughts. He frames his essay with these anecdotes to leave the audience with the image of a personal struggle with technology. At the end of his essay Carr writes, “You should be skeptical of my skepticism. Perhaps those who dismiss critics of the Internet as Luddites or nostalgists will be proved correct...

When Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase “the medium is the message” back in 1967, we were facing a very different society than we are today. His focus was of course on the mediums of the time: radio, newsprint and television. Mark Federman, a Chief Strategist for the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology asserts in his article, What is the Meaning of the Medium is the Message? (2004), McLuhan was not speaking directly about the medium itself. His thought process went to a deeper level. Federman “note[s] that it is not the content or use of innovation, but the change in inter-personal dynamics that the innovation brings with it” that is the issue. In a world that we can now access hundreds of thousands of bits of information in milliseconds, we can certainly see a shift in media influence. Today we can actually watch events as they unfold, whether they are events for a greater good or events of horrific acts of terrorism, technology has enabled society to be omnipresent. Melody Thompson (2011) refers to Jaron Lanier in discussing how technology shapes our relationship to itself. She notes that Lanier believes technology imposes on us its own viewpoint and that shapes our decisions. In a world where we live with a 24 hour news cycle and news stations that can skew their reporting to send the message they want their viewers to hear, it is quite prophetic when Lanier states “it

Does the Internet lessen our ability to think for ourselves? Not just the ability to think for ourselves, but the capacity for deep, contemplative thought. Nicholas Carr’s article Is Google Making Us Stupid?, which was first published in The Atlantic on July 1, 2008, asked us to consider this controversial question. Ease of access to information can provide enormous advantages, that can’t be denied. While Mr. Carr does admit that there are numerous benefits that technology brings us, he argues that the cost may be more than we had previously considered. Among the authorities that he references, he pits the views of Wired writer Clive Thompson against the famous media theorist Professor Marshall McLuhan. Mr. Thompson states that the Internet “can be an enormous boon to thinking.” On the other hand, Mr. McLuhan questions the extent to which the media impacts the thought process. As far back as the 1960’s, he theorized that various forms of media are not merely passive tools used to obtain information, but that the media is, in reality, shaping the thought process. What Mr. Carr is asking us to consider is that the Internet is leading us away from independent thought, as opposed to steering us towards enlightenment. Initial research into this does appear to give

McLuhan’s claim that “The Medium is the Message” signifies that the approach of a transmitted message does matter. The reason as to why is that it affects how it is obtained by recipients which can manipulate their overall perception. This dominant form of communication also influences the substance in modifying how we interact and behave alongside our values and norms. These effects happen to stem from numerous definitions of media and its content for users such as hot (filled with information lacking in participation to think and active engagement furthering passive behavior) and cold (short of data requiring mental activity to be involved) media. Ultimately, this assertion pinpoints the role of media ecology in that mass media is the sole foundation of cultural life in society.

In the end, while Lyon and Hafner give us an entertaining story regarding how the Internet was discovered, we are still left wondering about what effect the Internet is actually having. True, we see all of the hard work that occurred behind the scenes in the making of the Internet in this book, but now the question must be asked: where does the Internet take us? This is a very important question in the context of where technology takes our culture, and takes humanity in general. Indeed, every piece of technology has an effect on the people within the culture. There is, after all, certain political and social consequences to the progress in technology. In his essay "Do

Throughout this essay I will be discussing how the digital age has transformed society in many ways. The digital age also known as the information age, is the evolution of technology in daily life and social organizations have led to the fact that the modernization of information and communication processes has become the driving force of social evolution.” This is a time period in which we live in now where Internet and email are available; this is an example of the digital age. The Information Age is the idea that access to and the control of information is the defining characteristic of this current era in human civilization.

a culture like ours, long accustomed to splitting and dividing all things as a means of control, it is sometimes a bit of a shock to be reminded that, in operational and practical fact, the medium is the message. This is merely to say that the personal and social consequences of any medium - that is, of any extension of ourselves - result from the new scale that is introduced into our affairs by each extension of ourselves, or by any new technology." (McLuhan, 1964, p. 7) Thus begins the classic work of Marshall McLuhan, Understanding Media, in which he introduced the world to his enigmatic paradox, "The

The World Wide Web, propelled by various social media programs like Twitter, FaceBook and Instagram, has become a double-edged sword in the era of Web 2.0. This double-edged sword can be symbolized by SENDERS of information, and RECEIVERS of information.

We are all aware of the first and second industrial revolutions and how they have influenced our lives

quipa (15th and 16th centuries) At the height of their empire, the Incas used complex chains of knotted twine to represent a variety of data, including tribute payments, lists of arms and troops, and notable dates in the kingdom’s chronicles.