Assignment 1 Revision

http://www.appstate.edu/~mansfieldne/Assignment1Revision.htm

My Ugly Page

http://www.appstate.edu/~mansfieldne/uglypage.htm

First Web Writing Assignment

           As I recall, my very first experience with the internet must have been when I was about 9 or 10 years old. Occasionally, when I was that age my mom would bring me to work with her when I wasn’t in school. She used to let me use her work computer to play around with various programs and browse the web while she was in meetings. I had acquired a decent amount of experience for someone of that age using computers through playing computer games over at my friend’s houses and in my school’s computer lab. My family however did not own a home computer at that time as both my parents already had work computers. This made any chance for me to use a computer something that was deeply sought after.

            I remember my mom’s work computer was a Macintosh of some kind. It was one of the ones with the bulky transparent cases as I recall. All of the other computers that I had used before then had been running Windows. My mom owned a Macintosh because she taught in the art department of a local university. She and all of her colleagues had been given Macs.  The difference in operating system obviously meant nothing to me at that age, however, it did indirectly influence one of my first internet experiences.

            

           Upon opening the Netscape browser on her computer one was directed to the default Apple Computers homepage. I’m not sure if this is still as big a feature on their site today, but back then there was a Quicktime video section(old trailers page) of the website where they had trailers upon trailers of unreleased movies. I easily spent several hours watching those videos, as well as waiting for them to load, while I waited for my mom to come back from her meetings. To me that was a big deal since that was really one of the first ways to watch movie trailers on demand.

            One other common internet activity that I used to have while using my mom’s computer was visiting the official Star Wars Fan Club website. As a child I was obsessed with the Star Wars universe and mythos. I found that website amazing as a kid because I could go and basically immerse myself in the extended Star Wars universe by reading all sorts of stories and fictional biographies. While albeit quite nerdy, I really enjoyed being able to read the fiction on that website and look at all the movie concept art.

            

           Apart from those two things, I remember not knowing what to make of the rest of the internet. Loading pages on whatever sort of connection my mom’s office had was very slow which made exploring random web pages time consuming and difficult. This was probably for the best. It is unfortunate though that I my first experience was not more educational as the internet was more or less intended to be.

            I did eventually learn to use the web as a resource for information in middle school. I remember everyone in my public school district being given a school email address to correspond with one another and share research with other students for group projects. Probably the first internet source I used for research was Microsoft Encarta. I’m not even sure that this still exists with Wikipedia now, but I remember it being not that great. Web encyclopedias have really come a long way since then.

            

            While my first encounters with the internet were for the most part based in entertainment and not education, they still mostly reflect the technology envisioned by Vannevar Bush. My first impression of the internet is very similar to how I envision the memex in that both machines provide information conveniently on demand. The comparison to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s opinion of the wood stove would probably have been more accurate at the time if I had been older. I may have then been able to see that while the internet is an amazing tool for learning it also has the potential to be the next generation “idiot box.”

            I still today feel though that for the most part the comparison to Bush’s memex is more or less accurate. It really has done more for sharing and organizing information than anyone back then could have imagined. I’m not denying that it hasn’t had a negative affect on social and domestic life since then though. It has made some very drastic changes to our everyday lives that some people don’t really even consider. How much time do brick and mortar stores have left with everything being available conveniently online? In some ways people have little reason to go outside at all anymore. One must keep in mind though that there are always pros and cons when a new technology is introduced into society. I think it’s hard to argue that the internet does not have the same potential to make knowledge way more accessible.  The difference between the medicine and the poison is in the dose.