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Did I meet my goals for this course?

The Journey Between @shivkumarClayTabletsWeb2013 and Politics_of_communication

What were my goals?

When I first opened the class and did the tutorial, I was prompted with the question of what I wanted to learn in this class. As such, I wrote that I wanted to learn this:

"What REALLY is the internet? That’s what I want to learn from the course. Internet has been part of my life as early as the day I breathe my first breath. Because of that, I took it for granted. It’s time I look at it a little closer.."

It can then be summarized that my goal for this course was to reconsider what I initially thought of the internet, and I'd like to say that I was successfully convinced otherwise.

Did I meet them?

Although I was expecting to look more closely at the digital perspective of the internet, I still believe that I, in a way, met my goals for this course. While I said that I wanted to learn what the internet really was, what I was really asking was to see the internet in a different perspectives than I am already accustomed to. In that sense, this course succeeded in doing that. What I learned about the internet wasn't the intricacies of its digital system, but rather of its long and complex path that led to its creation. It seems that I had gone in the course with the idea that the internet was an isolated phenomenon, but I was quickly educated that the history of the internet actually dates a few centuries back, all the way to the classification schemes and early 'programers.'

So exactly what did I learn about the internet? I learned that the internet is a phenomenon built on Competences that only arose because of social neccessities. These started long before the internet, when things were very much analog. Printing allowed people to reproduce knowledge which increased its accessibility. The telegraph then connected the world with trans-Atlantic cables to carry that information electronically. The phone was invented to further connect the world and convey information in real time across the world. Then, social neccessities created computers during the World Wars first as a mean of communication for military strategies, which then evolved its used in the scientific community and finally made its way commercially to the mass. These series of events and competences are what paved the road for the internet to even have the chance to be invented. Therefore, the history of the internet that I learned was not digital, but very much physical and analog. This is the perspective that I was lacking when I went into the course. I did not consider the role of these previous physical inventions and how the change in how information is organized and transmitted allowed for the internet to exist.

The journey path that I chose for this note is quite short, largely due to a lack of proper gardening, but I believe it still powerfully conveys my point about the internet about being built on the need for classification and communication.

The first note links Kumar's article (@shivkumarClayTabletsWeb2013) that talks about clay tablets and the early methods of classifications. This note is powerful as it sets a need for classification of knowledge that has been seen throughout history as early as 4000BCE and how the way people classified and organized knowledge changed with social neccessities and contexts.

The next note is about the Organization_of_knowledge, and the presence of Agency that comes with it. It once again emphasizes the need to organize knowledge.

The third note highlights the important impact of the Globalization_of_communication and how the world had now been connected by cables.

The final note brings us to the Politics_of_communication, narrating its power in controlling information. With communications being globalized, it was now easier to control and monopolize these networks. The internet is therefore a political invention in a way; one that was born on the need to better classify and transfer information and improve communication. Although this journey does not specifically involve the digital internet itself, the internet can be understood when looked at what shaped it to be what it came to be.

What could have changed and conclusive thoughts

While I did capture the big ideas, I failed to connect the smaller ones in my memex. Because I went into the course thinking it was going to be more about the digital internet itself, I was not trying to create many connections early on because it was not my focus. This lack of early gardening madeit difficult for me to find a focused path to demonstrate how my goals had been met. Perhaps if I had given a structure to my notes, like a chronological pattern, they could have flowed and connected better. Overall, I am still satisfied with what I got out of the course because it taught me that the internet was not about the product, but the process; a mindset that I should have adhered to much closely when creating this memex.