Response to Readings 4, 5, and 6

Mariann Daniel
January 21, 2008
Electronic Word

Response to Readings 4, 5, and 6

While reading “As We May Think”, “History of the WWW”, and “Realizing the Full Potential of the Web” I realized some things about myself. For instance, the web is a complicated system of links, websites, and junk sites yet I know very little about how it works. For instance in the essay “Realizing the Full Potential of the Web” by Tim Berners-Lee, I realized that I had no idea what a proxy cache is or how exactly metadata works. However, some of the things the essays talked about I did understand like “When you are working in a group, you do things you would not do outside the group; you share half-baked ideas, reveal sensitive information. You use a vernacular that will be understood; you can cut corners in language and formality. You do these things because you trust the people in the group, and that others won't suddenly have access to it” (Berners-Lee 1). This concept is one that can be applied to the web and to everyday life, yet Berners-Lee seems to be making the argument that the web is the best way for people to communicate with each other because there is more honesty there and less embarrassment. Even if it is the best way to communicate with each other, Berners-Lee seems to state in his last sentence, it is best to only communicate and not force ideas on other people.
Berners-Lee speaks of the web as a great force in people’s lives stating in his closing paragraphs that the web affects the cultures of countries and the markets around the world. I agree that the web is a great force and to an extent is does affect the markets (black Monday for example) but could the internet really change a culture of a country. If one were to look at a specific culture like that of the Saudis from Saudi Arabia—a culture that is landed in conservatism—is it likely that an internet with everything and anything on it be taken lightly enough to affect the way life is lived there? Perhaps the question is way to general—many variables would need to be taken into consideration.
The essay “As We May Think” by Vannevar Bush seems to explore questions like the one posed by Berners-Lee. Bush is saying too that so many people put their ideas out there that there is an overflow of information and that the problem with the internet is that is no way to organize it. Indeed a new web user would recognize this problem gradually and eventually learn how to weed out the old and junk data presented from searches. Bush goes into history and presents the reader with objects used in the past like typewriters. The point of this seems to be to show how humans have always made machines to adapt or make certain jobs easier. It is true that many devices were made for convenience sake, but was the internet? I think that at first it was—think of the situation, all of a sudden scientist across the ocean could share with others with a click of a mouse. It was when everyday website makers started putting personal information or making site of personal interest on the internet that it changed from being a place of science to a place where everyday humans could come together and interact. Both essays gave their readers a different way of viewing the internet: as a tool of convenience or as a concept of community.