WEEK 2 – Underpinnings of the Web
As shown in the introduction of Digital History and in our discussion from last class, many scholars and students argue that the internet is unstable and vulnerable, and therefore unreliable. Chapter 2 of Cohen and Rosenzweig’s Digital History, talks about this common misconception. People compare the internet to its ancient predecessor, the book, claiming that because it’s not tangible, it’s susceptible to slip into irrelevance. But these same people have a notion that the internet is a black hole, where knowledge gravitates to and becomes lost to us forever.
Cohen and Rosenzweig made an important observation about the web that makes the argument of classroom vs technological revolution obsolete. That the internet, specifically webpages, along with our interaction with them, are designed after tangible things in life like libraries and filing systems. The reading makes a note that information isn’t necessarily lost, once in cyberspace, it is just on standby till recalled, like a memory, or the old dusty encyclopedia that no picks up until their paper is due tomorrow morning. Servers become public libraries that we check out websites from. And HTML becomes keywords we use to categorize fiction from non fiction. The very things that scholars fear will overturn our fragile learning system, is actually an improvement on it. We based the large internet on an old organizing and learning system, but also managed to increase its efficiency. That is a testament to neither the web or the book, but rather the human’s drive for more knowledge.
That being said, I would like to increase my own knowledge on a couple of topics this semester, including the history of the NHL or the development of the West Coast offense, specifically on the San Francisco 49ers.