Category: Cici Liu

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Week 2: Response to “Long Live the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee and “A Network of Fragments” by Ingrid Burrington- Evan Xie

“Long Live the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee made me think of the internet in a sense that I’ve never thought of before. While I previously understood the internet as a resource for humans to access and communicate information, I never thought about it in complex detail. As the author of the article describes internet to be separate from the web, I thought that this explanation was interesting as it goes more in depth as to why “internet” versus “web” are two very different areas that both act upon one another. In relation to Comm Lab specifically, this made a lot of sense to me as everything we code or create on the web is only accessible because we have the internet as a support system and for open use. After reading and understanding that the web relies on the internet to function, I thought about how this connection is crucial to understand when analyzing how the internet actually works. Although we have free access to the internet to a large extent, without the fundamentals discussed in the article revolving around keeping web and internet separate, it is difficult to fully understand how and why we use the internet the way we do.  As well, I also thought that the article’s discussion of internet freedom was particularly interesting. Although we do have free access to the internet with most situations, factors such as government play a huge role in our rights to accessing online information. Therefore, I feel that it is important to acknowledge universal rights and freedoms as mentioned in the article. Even though we cannot obviously have universal agreement on internet access overall, I feel that we can still work to reach some sort of agreement to universal standards for internet use. However, with this being said, I also see human rights and the future of internet use as one of the biggest issues we face in the technological world we live in. I feel that we should work to preserve the internet and web but also ensure that privacy and respect are also valued. Due to the nature of the internet, it is so easy to access the personal information of others. As a result, by making sure companies and individuals do not overstep personal boundaries for accessing information, a secure and promising evolution of internet access can be withheld. I agree very strongly with the last section of the article. I believe that if we keep the internet’s fundamentals alive, we can make greater progress in ensuring the internet’s success and sustainability over time. As long as we strive to understand and respect the “freedom” of individuals, we can make the internet a so-called “better place.” 

“A Network of Fragments” by Ingrid Burrington was interesting to me as it made me think of how the internet exists everywhere we go. I also thought of how the internet is universally connected through physical structures in order to keep certain signals and communication active. Similarly to what we do in Comm Lab, the code we use and create works in different lines or fragments being typed out rather than just one big sentence. By doing this, the final piece results in a much larger work. The internet works the same way, but I never really thought about it like that before. I found it interesting to actually think about how and why we are able to communicate a message or access a site so quickly. Based on physical landmarks such as cell towers, we are able to have internet access in rather remote locations. As well, because of physical landmarks as centers to relay information, the internet exists everywhere to a certain extent. What I also found interesting is that physical landmarks and fragments are seen as art to many people. When someone stops and recognizes objects such as cell towers or orange flags in the ground, they can often hold two meanings: to mark internet service/accessibility or to be seen as art. I immediately think of the way we use the internet in Comm Lab and how we communicate. What is most interesting to me is how we store so much information in the cloud that we cannot physically see, but continue to feel a sense of distrust or uncertainty as to where this information actually is. Therefore, like the fragments and physical landmarks in the article, I often find myself relying on or at the least, “trusting” in the physical devices we use to do work rather than the cloud. 

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Week 2: Response to Berners-Lee and Burrington – Samanta Shi

In Long Live the Web, Berners-Lee discusses the development of the Web, how humans interact with it, and what kind of rights we have (and should have) related to it.  Berners-Lee argues that the Web is “more critical to free speech than any other medium” (pg. 82), which I agree with. The Web is incredibly important to free speech because of its widespread – and at times accessible – nature. In terms of accessibility, I believe that designers and developers should do more to think about how they can make their sites even more accessible. (Here is a handy Medium blogpost by Pablo Stanley including some accessibility design tips.)

I found it interesting that Berners-Lee argues for decentralization, which makes a lot of sense (and which is why blockchain technology is so intriguing). However, he also argues for a single, universal information space, which again makes sense, but in conjunction with decentralization, sounds counterintuitive. How might we manage the single, universal information space effectively? Who manages it? How do we manage them?

There are obvious challenges in maintaining this one-stop shop. We have to worry about monopolies, privacy invasion, data leaks, etc. However, I believe that users of the internet should hold themselves responsible for educating themselves in terms of how companies might take advantage of users’ ignorance in order to make money because — let’s face it — businesses are always going to look for ways to monetize.  For example, businesses will take advantage of a user’s browsing history in order to launch targeted advertising. During my research at Intent, I interviewed users about their perception of online advertising and found some interesting results.  Some users understood how cookies work, and did not mind targeted advertising, and sometimes even found it useful. Other users clearly did not understand how the internet works and found retargeting creepy, intrusive, and reminded them of “big brother”.

Berners-Lee also discusses the need for government legislation to protect net neutrality, yet how the Web “thrive[s] on lack of regulation”, but that “some basic values have to be legally preserved” (pg. 84).   I agree with this, but I think it is hard to determine where one draws the line.  I am very intrigued by how policy and law making will attempt to catch up with the lightning-speed development of the Web. Another case study which proves that regulation lags behind is brought up by Burrington in her article “The Strange Geopolitics of the International Cloud“, where she discusses the Microsoft legal battle:

“At the heart of the case is whether the U.S. government has jurisdiction to request data located in a data center in Ireland if that data belongs to an American Microsoft user. The government argues that where Microsoft stores the data is immaterial—they’re an American company and since Microsoft can access data stored anywhere while physically in the U.S., it doesn’t matter where that data’s stored. Microsoft challenged the warrant on the grounds that a search doesn’t happen at the point of accessing the data (in this case, in the U.S.) but where the data is stored. As of September 2015, the challenge to the warrant was still in dispute.”

This case proves that the system is not equipped to handle the battles of the Web. Another recent example of this is the implementation of GDPR (The EU General Data Protection Regulation), which determines how companies may collect data, what they can do with it, among other requirements (companies now have to be more upfront about how they use user data and give users easy access to opting out and deleting their user profiles). This affected not only EU based companies, but also US based companies that function in or are embedded on sites that are hosted in the EU (I am all too familiar with this because we had an entire team dedicated to achieving GDPR compliance at my company and everyone had to read up on it).  When the time comes, it will be interesting to see how the US government tackles an initiative similar to GDPR…

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Week 2: Response to “Long Live the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee/”A Network of Fragments” by Ingrid Burrington- Cara Chang

The required reading “Long Live the Web” relates highly to our course because we are both discovering the freedom of a platform that can create sites on the web as a way to express one’s creative ideas. Using the web can be connected to millions of other sites, which is something that we are already learning by experimenting with the fundamentals of HTML. Like speech, everyone should have the right to express their inner thoughts, which can be mapped out into one single platform that is a website for all to see. People have the chance to browse around each component of a site, giving various perspectives on how the creator of the site wishes for their site to be seen. To create a basic site, like it discusses in the article, it only requires three fundamental components: writing a page in HTML format, naming it with a URI convention, and serving it up on the internet with an HTTP.  These are all things that will be covered in our own class, relating it to Lee’s article. Any website is universal to the world, and there are no barriers from viewing a creator’s site. The Web is essentially one large platform for people’s art, containing any type of information, being uploaded for the whole world to see. Because the web is so open ended, the possibility for innovation is endless for anyone and everyone. Websites are not locked like apps, because apps, on one hand, limits the user to x amount of options, whereas sites on the other hand, can be linked to multiple other sites, allowing the user to jump from one location to the other. The other article, “A Network of Fragments”, educates the reader by informing them that their internet/wireless connection to the world is not solely based from large buildings that supply these resources. The internet does not exist in just one location, but rather, in constant motion, like their users. As Burrington says, the internet comes in fragments. Similar to what we learned in class, images do not transfer as a whole piece, but instead, get divided into small bits and pieces, are rearranged, and then put back into order once it reaches its final destination which is, the user’s screen. These images, videos, etc, are also, like Burrington says, fragmented just like the internet. There is a common misconception that these resources come in whole forms, but the matter of fact is that they are highly segmented and apart from one another in the process of transmission. The internet lives underground and in the ocean, never just in one single location such as a building. The internet lives just as we do, always on the move, whether that be from a tower, underneath the highways that we drive over, or beneath the seas in which we sail.