Category: Leon Eckert

In the article, “Long Live the Web” by Time Berners-Lee, he talks about how it is important for us to monitor the gradually increasing fragmentation of the web, and stop it if possible.  I agree with Berners-Lee, that the web is supposed to benefit its users, therefore many of the regulations and restrictions put into effect on the web by big companies and institutions are counterintuitive to that goal. However, I personally feel it unlikely that we manage to uphold the basic principles of the web – it is more likely that the web only become more fragmented, and privacy is evaded even more. 

Thus far, it seems to me that these counterintuitive developments are quite profitable to the institutions that put them in place. And if there is one thing that trumps all other reasoning, and all good, it is a means of making a profit. Whether it’s collecting our information and selling it to other companies, using cookies to produce the perfect adds that will encourage us to buy, or companies slowing down traffic to specific sites that haven’t made deals with them, these practices are profitable.

I would assume there are people working tirelessly to stop the web’s progression down this path. However, if you have the desire to use the web in China, you have no choice but to deal with the restrictions they have put into place – otherwise, you can choose not to use it. If you are unsatisfied with a law or policy in your country – you can choose to renounce your citizenship. However, if you choose not to conform, you also lose all of the benefits that came along with the Chinese web, or your rights that came with citizenship. I’d assume, eventually, we’ll all succumb to a web that is far from what was intended- but we will do this (as we already do to some extent) for the sake of not missing out on the other benefits the web has to offer. 

http://imanas.shanghai.nyu.edu/~na1881/week-1/website-1/

I enjoyed making this portfolio page! The only difficulty I had was trying to create an ordered list, the numbers next to each item would not show up on my site and I was unable to figure out what in the code was wrong. 

When I think about the Internet, I used to imagine all types of invisible digital information flying in the air above our heads like pigeons carrying letters around. Just as what is mentioned in A Network of Fragments, people tend to pay much attention to data center and data-center regions and seldom do they think of how these data connect with each other. Just as what Burrington said:”… the truest and most compelling moments happen not at the landmark but somewhere between landmarks, in the places hidden in plain sight and only really comprehended as they recede from view.” Those cables, though quite and hard to be noticed, are “reminding us of where the Internet actually lives”. The universal, free and all-accessible future that is envisioned by Tim Berners-Lee couldn’t come true without these visible cables connecting the invisible information. They are literarily linking people around the globe together and serving as the bloodstream of the entity of the Internet. So I think that is why Burrington wrote down this at the beginning of his article:” There’s a poetry in the bits and pieces of Internet infrastructure that hide in plain sight all around us.” Those physical fragments are worth being admired just like how people admire the room where the Internet was born. They never really ask for much attention, but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore them, because “at the end of the day these fragments remain the only forms I trust.”