Blog #0000: Beginnings!
The space race was the last of all the things I thought could have launched the inception of the Internet (pun 100% intended). Nor did I expect that the US government was the entity that backed the original funding for this technological innovation to ultimately occur. For me, last week’s reading and discussion revealed assumptions and biases I never knew I had.
Perhaps the strongest and thus most insight-providing reaction I had to the material was surprise— shock, even— in response to the government’s involvement in ARPAnet’s creation. Previously, I subconsciously only saw the government as a restrictor of the Internet. I had at some point incorrectly gathered for myself that an independent scientist or mathematician had single-handedly created it, and that upon seeing its potential, the government began putting regulations on it. A lot of this bias stems from an experience I had in sophomore year, which I actually wrote about in my application for this seminar. While studying abroad in Hangzhou, China in the spring of 2014, I collided with the Great Wall— more specifically, the “Great Firewall” of internet censorship (though I did also have an unfortunate crash with the physical Great Wall as well on that trip, but that’s a story for another time). Websites I knew and loved such as Facebook were utterly inaccessible. When I investigated the matter further once I returned to Boston, I found articles about imprisoned “cyberdissidents” in China. From this point, perhaps I saw government as a hindrance to online communication and freedom of thought. Obviously, the issue isn’t as black-and-white as my naive sophomore year-self perceived. In this seminar, I’m hoping to further parse out this censorship controversy and the interplay of government and technology.
On a separate note, the reading and discussion have allowed me to view the internet from a more technical standpoint. I have a bit of programming experience in C++ and Java, but unless I’m coding (or telling people I am when I’m really just having a staring contest with a slew of red error messages on Eclipse), I rarely approach thinking about how technology actually works. So reading about technical troubleshooting— for example, how checksums detecting packet errors should be handled— forces me to consider beyond my normal scope.
Overall, I’m excited to have my misconceptions brought to the surface. It can feel a little intimidating, especially in discussions when others seem to talk about IMPs and packet-switching as if these topics are as easily comprehendible as the weather. But beginning to know what I don’t know seems like a good place to start, and I can’t wait for the upcoming seminars and readings!