LJ1 Internet History

Knowing the history of the internet impressed upon me the magnitude of effort, emotion and innovation that can be found behind every mouse click that I make. This newfound awareness is invaluable and makes me an educated and appreciative user. Some of the major things that I learned in this module are:

• The internet had its origins in a national security threat.
• The department of defense needed a way to protect important computer data from foreign attack. A network of computers was needed to replace the stand-alone computer units that were present so that in the event of an attack, data could still be accessed via a different path in the network.
• It was not created by one person but was rather the product of many minds over decades
• Some of the individuals involved are R.Taylor, P. Baran, J.C.R. Licklider, M.Andreessen, V. Cerf, and T. Berners-Lee
• The "Internet of Things." 
• A term that reflects an present and evolving era in which connectivity to the internet is no longer restricted to our computers and mobile devices but also everyday objects such as our refrigerators, cars, homes, and community infrastructures. The video below gives a short description.

• There is a difference between the Internet and the World Wide Web (definitions at the bottom of the page)
• Hyperlinks began as an attempt to mirror the human way of thinking in terms of associations and relationships. Just as thinking of one thing often leads to thinking of other associated things, clicking on links in a web browser can lead you to several different places with related information. 
• What actually happens behind the scenes when I click a webpage link. The short and sweet of it can be found in the video below.

Some of the new terms that I learned are:

• GUI (pronounced "gooey") - Graphical User Interface
• A type of graphical interface in which users interact with electronic devices through special graphical icons and visual indicators. Before GUI, people did things on a computer by manually entering precise commands. Now, we can click on an icon that represents an action or engage in intuitive interactions such as dragging files from a folder into the trash bin. Before GUI, using the computer looked like this:

www.alexatmakerssquare.gitbooks.io

• The World Wide Web (WWW) - an information space where documents and other web resources are identified by URLs, interlinked by hypertext links and can be accessed via the internet. 
• Internet - a global system of interconnected computer networks.

This module was engaging and informative. I collaborated with a classmate to present on the evolution of the web from web 1.0 to web 2.0 to web 3.0.