Week 2: HTML Portfolio Page- Cara Chang
http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~cec717/week1/index.html
HTML Portfolio Website – Kimmy Tanchay
http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~kct285/Wk1/
Over the winter break, I taught myself some of the basics of HTML. As such, this made creating my webpage portfolio much faster as I was able to recall some of the aspects of that make up a webpage.
However, Iâm still very new to coding and HTML which meant that I often forgot the functions of different tags and mistyped a lot of them. Perhaps what I found most difficult was including images into my page as I learned that HTML is extremely volatile towards changes of file location.
Overall, Iâm looking forward to continue practicing, developing and integrating CSS into our webpages.
Week 2: Response to “Long Live the Web” and “The Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloud” – Kimmy Tanchay
In âLong Live the Webâ, Tim Berners-Lee communicates the egalitarian principles and its significance on the web. Through this, the web is able to be constantly improved by single individuals around the world. The unlimited possibilities and power of the web, for example, can be directly seen through the influences of social media that has now not only become a way of connecting and sharing with people, but also a necessity in our daily lives. There is no doubt that the Internet has changed and developed as rapidly as it has changed our lives. Despite the ever-growing possibilities of the web, the principles such as decentralisation, universality and openness must be protected by the public from various companies and governments who threaten these principles.
The Webâs development, along with many advantages, has also led to various problems such as involving human privacy rights issues and internet monopolies. As such, governments and private corporations are now able to access information about the millions of internet users – often without their consent; large internet companies are able to control what users see on search bars. Overall, this made me reflect that although the internet provides human being with large amounts of information and ways to connect with one another; however, we must keep in mind how the Internet was created to serve human being, not anything less.
In âThe Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloudâ, Burrington conveys how expansive the internet truly is through the various deep sea water cables and data centres around the world. I found the underlying geopolitical aspects of data centres extremely fascinating as although we use the internet âcloudâ in our everyday life, we never think about how this service or privilege is available to us. Before reading this article, I would never have guessed that a countryâs cold climate or latency can determine data centre footprints. Moreover, I wouldnât have been aware of the Microsoft legal battles over ownership of information and data. Hence, this article is a stark reminder of how us users should be more aware of how the Internet operates and works along with our rights as individuals online.
Week 2 : Responses to “Long Live the Web” and “The Room Where the Internet Was Born” – Abdullah Zameek
The messages that Tim Berners-Lee conveys through “Long Live The Web” could not have been more timely. In any age where almost every service is available online, it is crucial to think about the way in which policies, standards and frameworks govern how we use the Internet.
A lot of the modern problems regarding the Internet seem to stem from big corporations and other bureaucratic entities. Some of these problems are
- Censorship – Not giving everyone with access to the internet the same information.
- Net Neutrality – Favoring the services of certain entities over the others.
This sort of behaviour makes it seem like the Internet belongs to some organisation, rather than a free resource that belongs to everyone. However, unlike other free resources, everyone with access to it has complete privileges to determine how it is used and what it provides. It is collective effort that made the Internet what it is today – if not for the work of students, scientists and others in the early days of the Internet, we would not have the information super highway that we have today. And, it is this sort of collaborative effort that needs to be revived and fostered as we move on into the future. The future of the Internet lies in open-souce collaboration, not closed-source, proprietary standards. Closed source standards create a hostile, competitive environment where companies are solely focused on outcompeting each other while not prioritizing user experiences and satisfaction.
While, this article had many resounding points, the following quote seemed to be quite questionable.
“Once you enter your data into one of these services, you cannot easily use them on another site.”
Privacy is one of the biggest concerns in the digital realm today, and the statement above seems to directly contradict the fundamental principles of digital privacy. If a user has provided their data to a service, it is expected that this service would not divulge this data to a third party, or use it for purposes other than what it is was collected for. If this sort of information-sharing was allowed, then there would be no control over who gains access to an individual’s data, and who would be accountable for the handling of such data. This is where the question of “Digital Human Rights” comes into play. It is high time that law-makers and technologists come together to create a framework upon which fundamental digital rights are agreed upon and put down in black-and-white. The ever-increasing presence of technology in the most intimate aspects of our lives warrants the need for such a framework. One such effort was the Online Magna Carta – an initiative by Tim Berners-Lee himself.
Once the Internet goes back to being the largest crowd-sourced, community-driven venture, would we be able to say that we have a free and open Internet for all.
“The Room Where The Internet Was Born” could be described as a historical account of the evolution of communication technologies, starting at the principles of “time-sharing” and going all the way to modern-day cloud-computing. The fundamental message behind this article could be that it is essential to understand the underlying inspirations that drive modern technologies and to understand and appreciate the roots of what we have today. As described, the ARPANET is simply an extension of the time-sharing concepts introduced by John McCarthy, and the Internet was built upon the ARPANET itself. After reading this article, I began to appreciate the current technologies that we have today much more, and it is essential that the humble origins of what we have today is recorded for the generations to come.