CH. 2 -- UNDERSTANDING HOW NEW TECHNOLOGIES WORK

Assign Course Project

1. History of the Internet

- 1957: Russia launches Sputnik
- America responds with ARPAnet developed by the Defense Agency Research Projects Administration (DARPA)
- network could withstand nuclear attack (1960s) => decentralized
- National Science Foundation creates its own network (NSFnet) => massive library of hight tech information, but difficult to locate info
- 1989: Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN atomic research center in Switzerland developed software that would allow computers to browse the info on NSFnet (browser), & allow for hyperlinks (made possible through HTML)
- Early 90s students at Univ. of Illinois (Marc Andreessen) added a GUI to the browser (called it Mosaic). Andreessen later founded Netscape
- Browser wars: Netscape vs. Explorer and consequences on web design => standard version of HTML was proposed by the WWWConsortium (W3C)

2. Features of the Internet
A. Uses a global address system (each computer has its own address "IP number")
B. Uses a common form of transmission protocol (FTP/TCP)
C. Allows for public & private communication (multiple functions)

3. How does the Internet work?
A. What is the Internet?
- Worldwide network of computers that allows for the transmission of data
- Composed of different servers:
- Web server
- Email server
- FTP server
- IRC server

B. Pulling up a webpage
- client/server relationship

C. Sending email
- Uses packet-switching
- discuss advantages of this delivery method: uncentralized (i.e. history), works if servers are down

D. The Internet Backbone
- Maps of the Internet Backbone
 

4. Five features of Online Communication
A. Packet-switching
B. Multimedia
C. Interactivity (2-way communication)
D. Synchronicity (synchronous vs. asynchronous)
E. Hypertextuality -- changes the reading experience:
- from linearity to multilinearity
- from centrality to links
- from hierachy to cooperation

Resources:

The Internet celebrates its 35th anniversary

Technological determinism: A perspective that our growing ability to alter or replace nature provides a central reason for most personal & social trends

HYPERTEXT MARKUP LANGUAGE

1. HTML Resources

• Castro, E. HTML 4 for the World Wide Web: Visual Quickstart Guide. Berkeley, CA: Peachpit Press.
• Introduction to HTML 4.0
• HTML Tutorial for beginning & advanced web designers
• NCSA -- A Beginner's Guide to HTML Home Page
• HTML Goodies
• Managing Your Webspace -- Accounts and FTP

2. Some HTML Resources

• Click here for a template for a simple webpage
• Click here for a list and description of the main HTML tags you'll need for this project
• Or check here for another resource for HTML Tags
• If you like a feature of a particular webpage, pull up its HTML code by clicking "View Page Source" on your Internet browser. For instance, if you would like to add an email link to your webpage but don't know how to code for that in HTML, (1) find a webpage that features an email link, (2) pull up its HTML code, and (3) copy the HTML code pertaining to the email link.
• Look at the HTML code used to produce the following tables. Try to understand what each line of coding does to the overall table layout.
  Table 1
  Table 2
  Table 3