Wednesday, September 17, 2008

How the web works

For my blog today September 17th, 2008 I read Web 1.0- What is it? How does it work?. Whitaker, Jason, wrote the story.  My initial reaction to the title was this could be pretty good. The story will probably go into a brief history and then explain the basic structure of the Internet and how it works. Unfortunately what I read did not keep me interested at all.

 

            The story was a quick page or two on every possible aspect of the Internet except for the things that I was interested in. It describes all the different types of media along with a little history lesson on each. Another disappointing factor of the story was when the authors were discussing the history of different media it was extremely vague. For example, when discussing photography and, how William Henry Fox Talbot had created chemically treated photo paper did not emphasize how it was actually two pieces of glass with a fine layer of silver emulsion in between the two that started photography. (P.66).  Also, I think another problem I had with this story was there was way too much information that was being thrown around. The authors give you this brief history on the media and then throw a bunch of terms at you saying how important it is and then move on. I am not trying to bash on the authors work or anything I just do not agree with the way this chapter was laid out. Aside from all my negatives I did learn something new out of it instead of re-learning html, hyper-texuality, hyper–linking etc. I learned that as DVD’s evolved so did new coding that prevented piracy on the movies. This was done because DVD’s were being sold before the movie was shown in theatres in some countries. This was not a concern in the past because VCR’s were different in Europe then they were in the U.S.A. (P.73).  

 

            To summarize this story in short it was more a chapter of terminology then a chapter of how the web works and what it is. There are a lot of good little learning points in it but, for the most part it was a repeat of things I already knew and too much of it at once. If I were the author I would have broken it this chapter into two or three mini chapters.

 

 

 

Cited work:

Web 1.0- what is it? How does it work? Whitaker, Jason. (2002) The Internet: The basics (chapter 3). New York: Routledge

No comments: