Author: Jonathon Haley

Interconnectedness and accessibility. That is what the World Wide Web is about, according to Tim Berners-Lee in his article “Long Live the Web.” We are all connected via the web, and every one of us has the ability to create and upload content on it for the whole world to see. Thanks to these principles, information has been made available on an unprecedented scale. No longer do we have to receive our information exclusively from the people we know and the institutions we subscribe to; in terms of being informed, you now control your own destiny. (As a side note, the previous sentence may be false; we might still be receiving all our information and having our worldviews shaped by the same people and institutions as we otherwise would be, just on a larger scale).

However, says Berners-Lee, the openness and accessibility of the web is being threatened by governments and corporations who want to restrict access to information and applications, in order to control what people know and use. It’s up to us – everybody, collectively, who supports the state of freedom the web currently operates under – to reject these attempts at controlling such a beautiful system.

The other side of the web, besides everything it contains and conveys, is the physical parts that comprise it – infrastructure, like cables and towers. In her journal entry/Atlantic magazine article “A Network of Fragments”, Ingrid Burrington talks at length about the fiber optic lines and cell towers she encountered during a journey across the United States. She explains how traveling across endless highways, you sometimes come across traces of the Internet’s physical counterpart, and how over time, these traces come together to form a much bigger picture.

What’s interesting to me is how both using the Internet, such as accessing a website or downloading a picture, and seeing small bits of its infrastructure represent the same idea: while it’s impossible for most of us to see the big picture all at once, we can come to understand it by seeing small snapshots of it, little moments that help us appreciate what’s holding it all together. It reminds me of human DNA: one single cell from a piece of skin can tell you a lot about the person’s physical traits, such as their height, hair color, body type etc. In a way, I suppose we do the same thing on a regular basis, such as when we talk to another person, we try to understand their personality – an infinitely complex and unpredictable thing – based on a few short interactions with them. Often enough we’re right, but sometimes we’re a bit off, or completely miss the mark. I guess Burrington’s article illustrates our fundamental way of trying to understand complicated things (which is most things) – piece by piece, rather than all at once.

That still doesn’t explain why I had to write this all in one hour, right before class.

I made my About page into a bit of a scavenger hunt. The premise is that my page has been stolen, and to get it back I need you to search for it. The index.html page contains 2 links, each leading to a different page. Each of these pages also contains 2 links, leading to more pages. In total, there’s 10 pages and 4 layers (not including the About page, which you hopefully find at the end). Some of the links overlap (i.e. two pages may contain a link to the same page). There’s also a third link on each page (the “green pill”) that takes you back to index.html. In the end, it shouldn’t take more than a few minutes to find the About page, as there’s multiple ways to do so.

In terms of implementation, I added images that also served as hyperlinks by nesting an <img> tag inside of an <a> tag. Some of the links are images, some are text. Some links don’t go anywhere at all, they’re just there to mislead you. I also used other tags in various places, such as <p>, <br>, and <hr>.

Here it is: About Me. Enjoy!

“The Machine Stops” shows a chilling view of how the world may come to be, if we – humanity – one day create a machine that can out-think the best of us, and eventually make us all its slaves. In this short story, an omnipresent Machine attends to our every need, and in doing so becomes completely our master. Human beings live in a state of near-complete physical atrophy, essentially reduced to a brain and the systems that power it. With all of our physical needs taken care of, such that we hardly need to stand up or sit down, and almost never walk or leave the room, we are free to concentrate fully on developing and using our minds. In this world, ideas are all that matter. This, at least, is the philosophy that Vashti, the story’s protagonist (if you can call it that) lives by. It’s ingrained in her very being, hiding behind every thought that she thinks. Apparently, the human body exists as merely a receptacle for the mind, nothing else; and such things as touching someone else’s skin and feeling the sun shine upon your own, simply are not relevant. Ideas, that’s it. You exist to create ideas (not original ideas, mind you – it’s made clear in the story that original ideas are tainted with human subjectivity and emotion, and must therefore be avoided like the plague).

This unbalanced relationship between body and mind mirrors the relationship between humans and the Machine, where the humans who once performed their own actions for their own reasons now simply carry out their one-dimensional, preordained lives for the sole purpose of keeping the Machine alive. To me, such as Machine sounds exactly like a parasite. While a parasite cannot survive on its own, it infiltrates a host and then keeps the host or hosts alive for the sole purpose of keeping itself alive. Similarly, the Machine has completely taken over human society, keeping people alive just barely to the bare minimum of not being dead, so that they can keep the Machine running while being powerless to stop it (and at this point, such a thought would never even occur to most of them). And once you consider the parallels between the Machine and that greatest weapon of ours, which we have determined to be our most valuable asset – the human mind – then the metaphor becomes clear, or at least clearer. So a virus feeds upon the body and energy of its host, and the Machine sustains itself by virtue of the lives and machinations of its human slaves (slaves because by this point in time, no person was left who could understand the bigger picture of how the Machine worked and its purpose), so also the human mind, with its relentless logic and rationality, slowly takes over complete control over the body, the passions, and the senses, until nothing is left but ideas. And it’s brilliant, really – just as the Machine has conditioned its people to never even think of questioning its place in their lives, to never once ask whether there’s more to life than a single room and a wall of buttons (though a remarkable few still try), we humans also don’t question the legitimacy of our current modes of thinking, of our relentless drive to progress and advance and evolve, for it is our minds that have led us along these routes in the first place! I suppose the main message of the story is that we mustn’t lose sight of the things that matter in life, the bits (aside from thinking about things) that make our lives worth living. By living our lives in accordance to what really matters, not just what we may think matters, we can separate our minds from that of the Machine, and avoid such a disastrous ending for mankind.

Or perhaps I’ve overthought this a bit, and the parallels that I drew don’t actually exist. It wouldn’t be the first time.