Throughout Andrew Blum’s time visiting all these different locals, he’s come to learn so many new things to teach to us readers. Now though it seems like the information given in the reading more or less just repeats topics mentioned before for the sake of emphasizing their importance. That being said, I am glad that he still continues his journey by putting focus to the international side of things in Chapters 5 and 6.
–––––––––––––––
As a computer science student, something that I’ve come to learn when it comes to programming is that often the best way to create a program to solve a problem is to look at real life. When you stop to think about how people deal with various real world situations by the individual steps, it starts to look like instructions you could get a machine to follow, and really all things computer related - including the internet - follows this concept. It doesn’t matter how complex or tedious a task is, if a person could technically do it in the right conditions then machines can do the same. This is an idea that is brought up often in the book, what with Blum’s various metaphors on how the internet works - his description of how bits of data figure out where to go from router to router comes to mind. In Chapter 6 though this idea is brought to the forefront with him talking about the undersea cables in page 194. It’s here that he mentions that the way we send digital information to internationally known port cities mimics how travelers in ancient times would transfer information by boat to those same locations. No matter how advanced we may become as a society, it appears that there will be some things that never change.
Questions
- What other connections to the real world do you see in the internet?
- On page page 196 it's mentioned that companies like people like Mr. Blum as he can get their name out there with good press. Could the information these people are giving him be sugarcoated/be hiding certain details so as to make said companies look better to the public?
Image from: https://realityrenaissance.com/2013/03/27/past-vs-future/
No comments:
Post a Comment