Reflection on some of the articles

  After reading through the class articles from “After the Dotcom Crash” to “Past and Future History of the Internet,” I have to admit that technology and the internet itself is a changing pattern that not only affects a certain group of people but it can also affect businesses and can change the actions of governments.

               The capitalist internet: “After the Dotcom Crash” article explains how the early internet investors were greedy businessmen that only cared about profits. They didn’t care about the rules (if there were any) and lost touch with reality.  However, what we tend to ignore is that this is a cycle. In a capitalist nation, businessmen tend to become greedy when they see a new innovation that could change the way business is handle. This happened during the Industrialization Revolution during the 18^th and 19^th century. Monopoly was seen everywhere in the United States during such period of time: from steel companies to the textile industry.  During such time, they were unstoppable until the government was able to take action.  Today, this is what we’re seeing through the internet. Is it something too big to stop?  The internet is not control by one major player. The internet is everywhere and depending where you are, the internet might be control by multiple parties.  After being publicly introduced, the creators and major internet computer scientists lost the battle against new-comers.  Such progress has not only expanded our economy, but many have lost.  It is still a competition between companies on who can attract the most.   Companies will keep investing on new technological revolutions even though it has been proven that is a risk.  Companies have changed their business patterns and have to become part of the new technological evolution.  Those who don’t accept to be part of will be left behind.  Society will keep changing and our culture as well.  From the Enlightenment Era to the Information Era we’re living at this moment we are becoming part of the changes of improving and sharing our knowledge as never seen before.

               The “History of the Internet and its Flexible Future” provides an insightful thought as to where our society is heading because of the internet. It is not only based on the history of the internet, but how we as the users have shaped it and will keep shaping it. It has being a source of communication through emails, video conferences easy and faster information sharing and above all making a worldwide connection to everyone and everything. The creation of wireless or radio wave signals has also brought a sense of a development that has brought many to think where we’re heading next.  A vision of the flexible future is more than just the connection between man and computer, it is also a connection between our society as a whole and the effects the internet is having in our lives.  It is something as described in the article that is just part of a bigger beginning.

               The psychology we find behind the mass (users) and the internet is controlled by individuals that want to be part of something bigger. It is more of a silent mass that is behind computers that want to let political parties and corporations know that even though physically they can’t be involve or can’t be part of their organization they can do it through the new internet mass.  They can create their own visual world in a click of a mouse, but now we are also seeing the internet is “governed by big telecoms, entertainment conglomerates and state, which will try to control and regulate access and content,” as described in the “Mass psychology of internet” article.  The internet’s main purpose began with the military and universities and now it belongs to everyone.

               The internet will keep growing and as Geert Lovink described on his article, the internet is becoming a competition between businesses. These businesses can have an effect our lives through their websites or links on social networks such as facebook. An example of the increase of advertisements can be found on smartphone applications. These applications are loaded with more advertisements than you could find on a newspaper.  The user sometimes does not have control over this.  However, this is the sense that we get when we describe a more globalized and connected world.  We can’t expect our privacy to stay private forever. Great inventions have been created to maintain such dream of connectivity and sharing true. From radio waves to smartphones and computers, anything could be possible.  The psychological effect of such innovations is that we want to create a digital visual world that leads us to ignore what really is happening on the real world.  

2nd Day of class - Presentations

Presentations were great first of all, but nothing is perfect. I will admit that even my group had its imperfections or mistakes that we might have forgotten to include on the presentation or more information was needed in certain situations.  The first thing that I realized is that the second day of class demonstrated where the class is heading during the semester in terms of group work and learning much more than we could imagine; this is what happened on the second day of class. Even though we lost more than half of the class, those who were left managed to do a great job on their presentations. Further below is my opinion and critiques of the strength and weaknesses of the presentations:
Group 1- Good PowerPoint presentation. The design was not a great one but good enough to have a normal class presentation. A PowerPoint presentation is based on how much information is given to the people with a few bullet points. I'll admit, I did learned a lot from this presentation. From knowing about the main reason why computer scientists intended to create the internet to how the commercialization of it in 1995 changed the interaction between people on a global scale. However, I just think that too much was written on presentation and because of it, it was hard to catch up with the presenters and reading everything at the same time. The font was too dark to read because of the theme, but everything else was great even as going far to predict the future of the internet. It was great to see how social networks have a mass amount of users that could make up a nation.
Group 2 - I was not expecting someone to create a video for their presentation, but this group went beyond everything else. The video not only presented the history of the internet, but how the internet is just more than what we see online.  For example, the narrator pointed out how the internet has become this competition for businesses leading for many companies to take control of what is given to people. There was only one small problem to the video, I know it was a group work but it would have been better if the narration could have been done by all the members. Focusing on Youtube and other social networks was a great point to talk about. What I like the most was the last minute when the video was showing how future technology will be on the palms of our hands. This means that communication over the internet will be closer than ever.
Group 3 - As previously stated on the introduction, I know our group could have done better. It was something new that we were testing. After testing the website for a while we decided to try it out in our class for our presentation.  In my opinion, more information was needed in certain circumstances such as the Supreme Court cases. I think that I needed to explain more how the cases evolved and what was the final decision made by the courts.
Group 4 - Their presentation brought a broader perspective on the history of the internet. They weren't specific on one thing only, but the internet overall.  The most important part of the presentation was pointing out who created the first computer on the 1800s and thanks to such person (Charles Babbage) today we have such great innovation of the computer.

Overall, second day of class but a great start. Hope we continue learning more from the readings and from class discussions.