Week 2 – What is the Internet?

How did my grandparents communicate?

In providing a rich history of the contemporary internet’s development in the 1960s, Kleinrock’s article “History of the internet and its flexible future” illustrates the exclusivity of the then-new technology. In its nascent stages, the internet was accessible and available to a select elite, primarily the U.S. military and American institutions of academia. So, while the technology was technically available for my grandparents they were not communicating the same way my generation is today.

Unlike the stark difference between the intensity of communication between my generation and my grandparents’, my grandparents communicated in the same ways their own parents and grandparents. Based on Kleinrock’s article written communication was via post mail and in terms of wireless technology this was via the phonograph, telegraph, radio and telephone.

How could Web 3.0 change my life?

My primary method of communication is in using the internet. It is Web 2.0 that allows me to use it with the considerable intensity that I do. The existence of youtube, facebook, twitter, google and various other sites that I use and contribute to on a regular basis has already established a stark difference between my lifestyle now and when I was in high school (when those social networking sites weren’t as popular or as pervasive).

According to a video introducing the premise of the semantic web, syntax is the way in which people express an idea using words. Semantics is the way syntax is interpreted to derive meaning. Given this, Web 3.0 promises a elevated platform comapred to Web 2.0 because of its feature of using semantics. This function could change my life by further intensifying the ways in which I communicate with my personal social networks and the ways I conduct my research. As a journalist-in training, Web 3.0 would help me access information faster than I already do because in being able to derive meaning in the words I use to search for info, it would likely provide me with the most useful collection of info as soon as possible. Using key words, which is the case with Web 2.0, restricts my search to sources that have the key words I use.

How would being a ‘digital native’ affect my answer to this question?

Being a ‘digital native’ affects my answer to this question because while I am part of a tech-savvy generation, I still haven’t had much interaction with the developing system that is Web 3.0. ‘Digital natives’ are accustomed to using search engines and interacting via internet social networks, so the ways in which I perceive Web 3.0 to change my life would be influenced by this behaviour, which consists of chronic use of networking sites such as facebook.