internet – Building the World

Internet’s 50th birthday. Image: wikimedia

October 29, 1969. Neil Armstrong had recently stepped onto another world: the moon. That same year, another new world was born. UCLA, Stanford, the University of California-Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah were working on ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network). Graduate student Charley Kline sent a computer message from UCLA to Bill Duvall at Stanford, typing the word “Login.” The system crashed; but the letters ‘L’ and ‘O’ transmitted. Leonard Kleinrock, professor of computer science at UCLA, helped to complete the message about an hour later

Now, we’re moving into 5G. 1G was analog cellular; 2G was CDMA and GSM digital. 3G technologies like EVDO were faster; 4G LTE was even faster. 5G will deliver three changes: faster speed (moving more data); lower latency (optimizing response); ability to connect multiple devices. 5G might help autonomous vehicles become more accurate; smart roads will become more responsive, too. 5G will enable Virtual Reality (VR) and instant transmission.

The internet was born fifty years ago today. Since then, complex transmissions have spread science around the world, and a few chats, too. But some might opine that the first two letters ever sent best expressed the wonder: “‘Lo,’ and Behold.”

Novak, Matt. “Here’s the Internet’s ‘Birth Certificate’ From 50 Years Ago Today.” 29 October 2019. https://paleofuture.gizmodo.com/heres-the-internets-birth-certificate-from-50-years-ago-1839436583.

Segan, Sascha. “What is 5G?” 28 August 2019. PC Magazine. https://www.pcmag.com/article/345387/what-is-5g.

Appreciation to Dr. George H. Litwin for suggesting this post topic.

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G. Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unpor

“30” by photographer Claude Covo-Farchi, Paris, France. Image: wikimedia

It’s been thirty years since the World Wide Web was invented. Like many innovations, it was the solution to a problem: a young computer scientist found it inconvenient to switch computers when the data needed was not on the machine at hand. What if a shared database of hypertext links could be sent across a network? The scientist was Sir Tim Berners-Lee, and the network was the three www sequence we now see in http://www. Empowered by COMSAT, an array of communication satellites, the internet and the world wide web have changed the transport of ideas and exchange of cultures. But there are problems: Berners-Lee issued an assessment:

Problems of World Wide Web (and possible paths to their solutions)

Deliberate, malicious intent resulting in hacking, crime, harassment – (laws and codes of conduct);

System Design that creates perverse incentives – (redesign for incentives);

Unintended negative consequences of benevolent design – (research and new models).

Summing up the import of the web’s 30th birthday milestone, Berners-Lee stated: If we give up on building a better web now, the web will not have failed us. We will have failed the web.

What actions can we take in the next thirty years to build a better web?

Berners-Lee, Tim (Sir). World Wide Web #30. https://webfoundation.org/2019/03/web-birthday-30/

Building the World Blog by Kathleen Lusk Brooke and Zoe G Quinn is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported Licen

Building the World

Tag: internet

Happy Birthday, Internet

Happy Birthday, WWW