Friday, October 07, 2005

The History of the Internet

Next week, we will be working on Basic HTML and building Websites with Dreamweaver software. We so often take the Web for granted - just hop on and point and click, etc. But I think it's important to know how the Internet came to be - so today we will be doing a bit of history. Here is a link to Wikipedia's History of the Internet - Wikipedia is a free online encyclopedia that is written by anyone who chooses to write or edit an entry - read an introduction to the site here. Some people are leary of a site that allows anyone to write an entry - and there are some valid concerns that Wikipedia addresses here- . I find it to be a powerful research tool that sometime leads me to other sites, ideas, etc. A lot of the "techie" entries for topics such as the history of the Internet are dead on and just a wealth of information. Look for an article in the November issue of Esquire, where an editor submitted a factually incorrect piece and let the Wikipedia readers edit it.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Professor Matson,

I should think this is an area journalists would be interested in: Seems the Pentagon has become understandably concerned about G.I. bloggers posting to the web. Here's an interesting and authoritative article that outlines how (ineffectively, apparently) DoD is trying to control the medium. You'll note that censorship in war zones has been made virtually impossible to administer, unless they shut down and deny access to the web. This page also links to Stars & Stripes and others.

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,
SS_100405_Bloggers.html?ESRC=airforce-a.nl

prof_matson said...

Thanks so much for the link - I plan on using in class