6. Internet and the Web

What is in this module?

We start with what the Internet is, where it came from and a little about how it works. You will have seen some of this before, some will seem obvious, and some irrelevant. It's not; obvious or irrelevant. An amazingly complex process ensues when you type "www.facebook.com" into your browser. Knowing something about how all this works will help you when it isn't working "correctly", which happens all too often. The Internet, or some (perhaps distant) relative of it, will be around your entire lives. It's worth a couple of hours to attempt to build a mental model of how it works, even if only so you don't sound silly when you talk about it. (It's not really "a series of tubes".)

The network model gained, along with our computer model, will help you to understand the workings of all the many applications you use. Like the software applications surveyed earlier, we will survey some Internet applications. Then, we switch to the the biggest of them — the world wide web. The web is evolving; fundamentally so. Most of you grew up with Web 2.0, i.e., it has been a part of your lives. It will continue to evolve, however, and understanding how the WWW functions will help you keep up with that evolution when your lives are filled with other things, like jobs and families.

Two key topics addressed in the context of the Internet and the web are privacy and research. Privacy because you have so little of it, that you should only give up more when you choose to. Research because every teacher will expect you to be an expert at it, your boss may think the same, and we are using it more and more for everyday information. Unfortunately, the easiest lookups (like Wikipedia and Google) are often wrong or reflect the bias of the masses. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use them; rather, it means you need to understand why you are seeing what you are seeing. Wikipedia has at least five major articles on global warming. Google reports over 81 million hits on the phrase "global warming".

With much more of our lives on the Internet, this module ends with a discussion of security. Most of the malware we get on out computers comes from or through the Internet. How does one shop safely online? Although we can't cover it all – we skip government spying entirely – we can talk about some common issues.

Citizenship/Activism

I have always encouraged my students to speak out and to get involved. Apathy in the US is rampant. Don't fall prey.

Most politicians are, by your standards, old. They did not grow up with Web 2.0. In most cases, all they understand about technology is what an adviser (or worse, a lobbyist) tells them. The result is the, perhaps cruelly, funny quote by (then) Senator Ted Stevens in reference to net neutrality – a policy that can affect every one of us. The rapid change of technology and it's uses argues for involvement of young people in the process – it doesn't take much to set up a blog. (Write an editorial for us old folks.)

For a less cruel analysis of the series of tubes statement, and an example of getting involved by blogging, see "Taking Stevens Seriously" by Ed Felten.

By the way, I do not endorse hacktivism. Your freedom of expression (in the US) is so profound, that I have little sympathy for those who try to force others to listen to them.

Fake News

"I read it on the Internet" has become a well-understood joke. Yet talk of "fake news" is all the rage (see 2016 Lie of the Year: Fake news by PolitiFact). Apply the same logic you would for "research" to any "news" you read. Please.