Author Archives: wstrand

What technology will be in 50 years

When I think about the future technology speed and efficiency come to mind first. Faster speeds downloading and uploading. Even more so faster purchasing speeds such as maybe a chip in the finger that you wave over a machine rather than getting cash or a card out of your wallet. I think of faster transportation, whether the cars drive themselves or even teleportation(maybe in a 100 years). I think the electronics we have now (cell phones, TVs, computers) will continue to get more powerful, easier to use, and more portable. I think the future technology will have a major impact on the medical field. Especially with the machines to diagnose illness and also in healing diseases. When it comes down to it I believe the future technology could go anywhere and almost nothing is impossible.

Social Network Sites: Public, Private or What?

In Danah Boyds article Social Network Sites, she talks about many different impacts social network has on us. One thing that she mentioned that really stuck out to me was what she called Persistence. Which she described as what you say sticks around forever. Once we post something onto a social network it is out there on the internet whether we delete our profile or not. The childish decisions we make when were young that we wouldn’t make when were older can now follow us around for the rest of our lives from the internet and social medias. She wrote this article in 2007 when social medias were just on the cusp of breaking out, yet I still feel she brings up a very relevant point for the year 2014 and how individuals need to be aware of the social impact that the internet and social media can have on their lives.

Social Implications of the Internet.

In Paul DiMaggio’s book, Social Implications of the Internet, he touches on five key implications. They are, inequality, community and social capital, political participation, organization and other economic institutions, and cultural participation and diversity.  The implication that sticks out most to me however is inequality, or also known as the digital divide. The internet has a huge impact on many of our lives, when it comes to accessibility, communication and education. However many people in different countries and even in the United States still don’t have ready access to computers and the internet today. The internet helps progress with those who have ready access, while those who don’t have the access continue to fall further behind, greatening the digital divide.

I felt this book would be a good resource because it talks of the inequality the internet brings when it was written in 2001. But it also brings up issues that still go on today because the digital divide is still an issue and an implication the internet brings.

Education Transformation

Education Transformation is a book written by Ron Packard. The beginning of this books talks about how the internet and online classes will revolutionize the educational process on a global scale. He explained how remote villages and poor countries who could not afford the expenses of building a school building hiring teachers and getting students into the classroom will eventually just need a lab top and a WIFI connection. This got me thinking of the impacts the internet is having on everyone today. Not all things the internet provides are good, but something it is already doing and will eventually be able to do, is provide an education to millions of people who without the internet would never of had a chance. The internet has brought a whole new form of communication to us, and this book really goes into Packard’s vision of seeing how the internet can change education.

I felt Ron Packard would be a good source to use on online education because he is the founder of the K12 curriculum that has been used by over 500,000 students in 85 different countries.

Designers: The Browser War Casualties.

This article was written by B. Phillips and can be found at this link. This article primarily focuses on the coding side of how the internet works. HTML also known as Hyper Text Markup Language is the primary coding use for web page design. However this article talks about how not all websites are supported on different types of browsers. This is due to different technologies and different languages. As a result this is causing web site developers with some problems creating a website that will work on all browsers. This article is a little out of date because it was written in 1998. However I felt it would be a good article to share because this is an ongoing problem. I have a website that I am required to use to do my homework on for a couple different classes I take here at UMW, and every time I use Google Chrome ( a more popular web browser) it says “web browser not supported”. This article helps explain “how it works” on the coding/ language side of things, but it also shows how sometimes the internet does not always work.

The Evolution of the Internet

This article was created by Carolyn Duffy Marsan, and can be visited at this link. One of the things that stands out to me on this article is slide number three. The slide talks about how the internet started out connecting four computers together at a university and it has now grown to over 440 million computers (not to mention all of the other devices such as cell phones, tablets, etc.).  The 5th slide shows how many different countries are connected to the internet today. The internet has become so much more than one countries militaries communication line, but it has become a necessity for many different households across the world.

This article was tagged yellow because it was done as a slideshow. I did not feel to great about it at first but the information in the slides really emphasized the growth and “evolution” of the internet so I felt it would be a useful source.

How Does the Internet Work?

This is an article written by Jonathan Strickland, and it can be found here. What was most intriguing to me about this article was the details it has on the networks used to get the internet going. The beginning of this article talks about how different components all over the world can connect two people through the internet. It starts with a server that stores information. When we access the information the internet uses nodes (which are just connecting points) and transmission lines (which are physical cables or wireless signals) to get the information back to us. With all of the different tasks going on in the world at once this would seem almost impossible to get right as often as it does. However the set of rules known as protocols (some examples are: TCP, IP, and HTP) keep it running smooth.

This article was marked yellow, however I thought it would be a good article to write about because the author cites his information and has experience in the writing field.