Hollenberg's Thoughts

By the end of the discussion yesterday, I was amazed at how many industries have been changed/destroyed by the Internet. To begin, the newspaper industry and news as a whole has completely been reshaped by the Internet. I began to think, and realized that I really only see my parents or grandparents reading the newspaper. Will there even be newspapers when I graduate college? Newspapers are just one industry that has been completely changed by the Internet. Taxis have been replaced by Uber; CDs and records have been replaced by online streaming services; DVDs have been replaced by Netflix; and so many more. The Internet, which was initially created to be a way for computers to  communicate, is now at the heart of our economy. I can manage all my stocks on the Internet; I can pay all my bills online; do all my shopping; and even manage my bank accounts all from the Internet on my computer.

One aspect of our economy on the Internet that I am curious about is the rise of Venmo. For years, the use of Credit Cards, Apple Pay, and other ways of electronically paying for things has minimized the use of cash. Now, with Venmo, I personally never even worry about carrying cash, because for me cash is useless. Venmo is a simple money-transferring social network where I link my phone to my bank account and can simply push a few buttons to send my friend or acquaintance any type of money. Now, people are using Venmo to pay their rent and pay their bills. Personally, I predict that with the rise of Venmo and other similar technology, cash will be seldom used by anyone.

What are your thoughts on the rise of Venmo and its affects on cash?

Growing up in the generation of the Internet, I take for granted how easily it is to shop. I literally could never leave my house, and buy everything I could ever need to live a happy and plentiful life from the web. All the entertainment I could ever need is also available right on the Internet.

Will our lives eventually become completely dependent on the Internet? What will the Internet and the economy look like in 10 years?

Another few questions I have:

Does the United States have seperate economic policies now that so much our economy is based on the Internet? In other words, how is United States and the worlds economic policy shaped by the Internet.

Has the Internet actually made our economy stronger, or just more convenient?

The topic I quickly want to brush on are targeted ads. Targeted ads are some of the creepiest things if you don’t know what they are. Basically, many websites access your browsing history, and advertise based on what you have been looking at. After shopping for basketball shoes online the other day, I noticed that my Facebook page was full of basketball shoe and clothes ads. To be completely honest, these ads made me more inclined to purchase a new Celtics jersey with my new shoes. The world of targeted ads will only get stronger as more of your data is on the Internet, and these companies will be able to follow all of an individuals tendencies to serve them the perfect ad.

Some overarching questions to ponder:

Are targeted ads an infringement on our privacy? Will they prevent us from branching out in our shopping, and make us one dimensional shoppers? What is the actual effect of targeted ads on our shopping?

I hope you enjoyed this version of Hollenberg’s Thoughts. More to come next week. Stay tuned.

The Internet is finally complete! Where the Wizards Stay Up Late was a fascinating read for me as I finally understood how the Internet was created. I feel that the Internet is taken for granted, as we are constantly complaining about poor connection, and having to download the new adobe flash plug-in to view this video. After reading this book, I have a newfound respect for the Internet. What started as just an idea from a view ambitious computer scientists, grew to be arguably the most important tool humans have at their disposal today.

Additionally, I was quite amazed (and confused) by the IP address discussion we had, and our classes attempt to find the IP address for our website. I had never heard of a name server, but the fact that our computer has to go through many name servers to find the IP address of a website is ridiculous if you think about it. When I type in any website, it is only a matter of seconds (even milliseconds) before my web page is loaded. The computer’s protocol to find the IP address of the site sounds like it would take at least some time happens almost instantly, which is remarkable in my opinion. There is so much going on under the hood of the computer that the average user really has no idea is going on. Discussing these issues gives me so much more appreciation for these incredible machines.

I still have a couple of questions regarding what was discussed in class:

Does each website have it’s own host machine? What about it you make a site through GoDaddy or a similar platform?

How does WiFi work in relation to the network technology we have discussed?

What exactly is an end-to-end argument explained simply? Why are they so revolutionary?

Now that I understand what the Internet is and its foundation, I can’t help but think of its importance now and in the future.The future of the Internet is something that I cannot even grasp. To put it in to perspective, just 40 years ago, e-mail barely existed, there was no thing as google, WiFi was not created, computers were still bigger than humans, and even ethernet was barely even a thought. I can’t even begin to imagine what the Internet will be like 40 years from now. Is there room for improvement? Is there even more we can do, or have we reached a relative peak? I know Internet speeds can keep improving, but to what point? I know we can create more complex networks, but to what point? Will be there be a point at which our development of the Internet reaches a plateau, or will humanity continue to outdo itself and continue to grow and develop the Internet.

Overall, these weeks have made me curious and excited for what the future of the Internet has to hold. Seeing the Internet develop so quickly makes me believe that in the next decade we will be seeing a huge development somewhere in the world of computing.

I hope you enjoyed Hollenberg’s thoughts (more like Hollenberg’s questions and curiosity). More to come next week!

Play. Everyone loves to play. Whether it is playing with your friends, your pets, or your video games, everyone enjoys to play. It is fun, isn’t it? The fact that the founders of the Internet created some of its most distinct features from just “playing around” with the code astonishes me. Normally, when I think of inventing something new involving a computer or a Network, I think of hours and hours of arduous, planned work that might create an initially satisfactory solution, but a solution that undergo myriad changes until it is good enough to apply to the machine/network. Do I think of men just “playing around” and inventing e-mail, or the IMP language? What fascinated me from week 2’s reading and conversation was the fact that these computer scientists (the best in the world) that founded the Internet (initially the ARPANET) really had no idea what they were doing (Check the RFC 1!). These individuals were just going with the flow as they invented what I believe is one of the most powerful tools that humans have created. Just the freedom and this “Spirit of Play” that the founders of the Internet had when founding the Net is so fascinating to me. Additionally, this made me think of a few questions:

Would students and professors be more successful if they were given less structure?

Would the Internet be what it is today if the founders did not operate with this level of relative freedom?

****Another topic we covered in week 2’s discussion was the concept of flaming. I never had the chance to ask the professors, but what exactly is flaming?

Another thing that continues to fascinate me about the Internet and computers in the binary. In both this seminar and in CS50 I have learned that deep down in the machine code, computers only read 1’s and 0’s. If you were to tell any ordinary man on the street that had not studied computers, that computers basically just run on 1’s and 0’s I’m sure that they would not believe you. As I keep studying the Internet and computers, I always believe that we will stray away from this binary and dive into more complexities. But will we?

Do computers (with all their incredible functions) solely just work with 1’s and 0’s? If so, how does it do everything it does so fast just dealing with 2 numbers?

Thinking about these networks and computers made me think about the concept of simplicity. So often as human beings we get so worked up over a problem and overthink it. We always create complexities, which take our attention away from the simple answer. If only we as humans could think of our problems as simple as 1’s and 0’s (like computers), I believe we could solve many more problems way more efficiently. A question for readers:

Should humans think more like computers (which they created) to solve their problems? Would this help or hurt our problem solving ability?

I hope you enjoyed the 2nd edition of Hollenberg’s Thoughts. More to come.

Walking into the seminar, I was surprised to see a few familiar faces. Knowing that the class just had 12 people, I thought that I wouldn’t know anyone, yet I was wrong as a couple of my new friends were in the class. This made me definitely a little more comfortable in the discussion setting. I felt that I was ready to participate after cramming in the reading the night before.

The first thing from the conversation that I found interesting was the topic of the how dependent we are on the Internet and its connectivity today. Back when Lick, Taylor, and company were thinking of the Internet, it was a revolutionary idea to have the “symbiosis” of computers and humans, and the overall concept of constant connectivity. This led me to think about how this constant connectivity has affected modern society. What keeps coming to mind is the Arab Spring. The connectivity first thought of by the likes of Lick and Taylor helped begin one of the most influential waves of revolutions that the world has seen in quite some time. Individuals in Tunisia, Egypt, and other Middle East countries used the sheer power of the internet and its connectivity to plan and execute protests against their suppressive regimes. Without the Internet would many of these protests have been successful? Would sufficient people have attended if these protests were not advertised on myriad social media platforms? There are obviously so many hypothetical questions that could be asked in these kinds of situations, but this is truly why the Internet fascinates me. When my kids grow up and study history, they will no longer study the inception of the Internet, but rather how the Internet led to the shape of the modern world. That is also why I am so interested in the Internet and hope to work with it in the professional world. Although people are scared of the increasingly immense connectivity, I feel like it is inevitable that the Internet continues to make an even greater impact on our lives, and I would love to be on that frontier to use the Internet to affect the world in a positive manner.

Going into this class I had zero idea how the “ancient” computer worked. Batch processing, timesharing, IMPS, computer cards, packet networks, and all the little things were all foreign concepts to me. The concept that was most amazing to me, was how they utilized the IMP to solve the issue of connectivity. Instead of trying to change every computer’s language (which probably is what I would have tried to do), the visionaries simply took a step back and realized that using IMPs that could communicate could solve the problem in a much simpler way. Learning about that taught me a lot about problem solving. It shocked me how such a massive problem could have such a simple solution. I feel like I take that with me as a I continue as a Harvard student. I know I will encounter so many different problems, but no matter the size there is always a solution.

Another quick takeaway I had was the incredible diversity of people in the seminar. I feel as though I did take advantage of the amazing peers I had in high school, but a class like this will force me to learn from my peers, and develop incredible relationships. A few questions I still have:

What was the functions of these computers back then? How were they used?

How did such large computers with minimal connectivity become what they are today?

What is the impact of Moore’s Law? How could he predict that?

Overall, this seminar will teach me not only valuable lessons on the Internet, but also lessons on problem solving and other practical issues that I will encounter in my years here at Harvard. I look forward to many more meaningful discussions with my peers and professors on a subject that is so fascinating to me.

I hope you have enjoyed Hollenberg’s Thoughts on the first day of seminar. More to come later.

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