The First Email Ever Sent!

Although you probably think of  emails as being a thoroughly modern way of communicating with each other, the first ever email was sent 45 years ago in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson. This is what I find most interesting with the history of the internet, because I always see the email as an invention of the 21st Century or the late 1990s.

So for the first email to have been sent almost thirty years prior to this is quite shocking. When asked what was the first email sent, Ray Tomlinson said he doesn’t remember because he thought it was that insignificant. He thinks it was something like “QWERTYUIOP”. But no one asked him to invent email – it was something that Ray Tomlinson was working on as a side project by himself.

Obviously, the emailing system that we all know today is far more advanced than what was in the 1970s. But what Ray Tomlinson invented when he was meant to be working on something else, helped changed the way we communicated with people forever.

With millions of emails being sent every day, it’s easy to take this method of communication for granted-like text messages and phone calls- but to be invented in the early 1970s when similar technology was invented is quite extraordinary.

 

ARPANET to Internet: A Brief History of Data Mining

It’s hard to imagine a time when people didn’t spend most of their day looking at their smartphones or some form of technology that lets us access the internet. The idea of a ‘people’s internet’ must have also felt like a foreign concept to the creators of the ARPANET which was launched in 1969 to help universities in the USA exchange data and research.

This information prompted me to draw up parallels between the ARPANET and the internet today and how the governments use them to achieve their own agendas. In 1969 when ARPANET was launched the USA was caught up in the Cold War with the USSR and launched similar projects to surpass the Soviets by means of technology. Today however the internet is being used by our governments (but mostly the US government) to mine our personal data in the hopes of fighting the War on Terror and other threats to national security.

 

Cold War, hippies and the internet.

As a huge history fan myself i’ve never actually thought of looking at the internet as a piece of history – even though its one technologies greatest achievements. Shocking to me is that the internet was invented to serve as a military purpose during The Cold War. The Americans especially saw the potential this device could have in a military sense but scientists also knew if doable, they would be creating something truly groundbreaking which led to interests of the military and scientists overlapping in order to create the internet.

Although the internet not booming until the 90’s and early 2000, the internet was still around, with my uncle explaining “you had to wide it up, to get it going”. I think this statement just shows how much it has progressed over a decade or so. During the 90’s different currents within the counterculture which started taking place included an almost hippy subculture and a radical subculture of technology, seen with Steve Jobs being the “Billion dollar hippy”. Scientists came together with these hippies and worked out that they could free the internet from its original purpose and make it work for humanity. The internet now has been seen as a service to humanity offering knowledge, connection and understanding like never before. Timothy Leary – “The internet is the new LSD”

The internet was originally developed for security purposes but in 1991 the ban of public use was lifted and search engines such as Google took the internet to a whole new level. Having read about the history which is boring to some, it really does make you realise how great the internet and technologies alike really are.

 

History of the Internet: The Social Media effect

Everyone uses the Internet these days. Everyone talks about it. But does everyone really know how it was brought to us? How did it start in the first place?

This week we had the chance to discover the answers to these questions…

Most of us did not know that what we now call ‘Internet’ initially launched into the world through Arpanet, the technical foundation that ‘gave birth’ to the Internet in 1959. However, when you think about it, no one ever talks about it or have a clue what it is without doing some research.

If someone thinks of ‘the Internet’, the most fascinating topic that comes to one’s mind is, arguably, Social Media. Spending time on the internet is easy; you won’t realize when or how the time flies while you’re looking for a topic that raises your interest, especially when it comes to social networks, content is even more ‘catchy’ and addictive.

Social Media did not start with MySpace, but with “SixDegrees.com” back in 1997, the first platform that allowed users to upload a profile picture and make friends. In the early 2000s MySpace and LinkedIn launched. YouTube, Twitter and Facebook followed these in 2005, 2006, and 2007 respectively. Nowadays, an average person has five accounts on five different networks. Imagine how much further this might expand in the next couple of years. Will MySpace be gone like SixDegrees? Will new platforms be invented?

I’m not even going to discuss MySpace. Let’s think about Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, the most frequently used platforms today, and how they attract people into being addicted. How many people don’t spend hours scrolling through their news feed? How many don’t go on Instagram on a friend’s profile and end up on their cousin’s step sister profile?

How much time a day is spent on social media? “Social media swallows more than a quarter of time spent online” (Lauren Davison, 2015).

I understand that social platforms help people in getting to know other people from all over the world, those who share the same interests, or it might keep them up-to-date bringing the most recent news right in your hands, without having to buy a newspaper or a magazine, but consider that “If you spend two hours a day on Twitter and Facebook, that is 25 percent of your day!” (Chaitanya Sagar, 2010). Couldn’t something else be done in that amount of time? Can’t we control ourselves when we are online?

Not to mention that in our case, as students, these platforms push us to procrastination and leaves us helpless.

So, is Social Media worth our time? Is it worth spending so many hours on a advanced gadget instead of using our passing time on something more important?

From TA to PA – purposes of the internet over the years

Let’s be honest for a moment: it is universally acknowledged that we all prefer to use the perks of the internet for certain things over others. When meant to revise online or do research for an essay, all of us can probably admit to ending up on Topshop’s new arrivals page, Netflix, JustEat, or even Tinder to successfully procrastinate.

 

What probably doesn’t come as a surprise is that the National Science Foundation (US) feared that the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) – started 1969 as a network between science departments of universities in the western US – would lose its educational purpose and values in time, with access to the net becoming more universal.

The term ‘world wide web’, conceptualising our modern understanding of the internet and alluding to representing exactly that (only slower), might have been coined in 1990, yet it actually wasn’t until 1992 that commercial activity online became legal.

In fact, it took the US Congress passing the Scientific and Advanced-Technology Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1862, for the research networks to connect and merge with networks private clients paid providers for, kickstarting the era of vital technological services we are familiar with nowadays.

Imagine the things that wouldn’t be: it is claimed that nowadays 1 in 6 marriages occur after making contact online. Hours of time and travel are saved online shopping and making bargains; friendships can be maintained on the daily across continents; and detailed information about virtually anything can be obtained. Who’s to say that this is necessarily un-educational?

I find it surprising just how fast the internet has evolved in such a relatively short period of time – from the ominous asset exclusively for the research sector, to an institution incorporated in modern society, enabling empowerment and education. It took 23 years for this important step be taken, just about as much time as the internet has been ours to use, exponentially increasing in diversity and functions.

What do you think – was it wise of researchers to demand for unlimited data researchers to be available to them only as commercial internet usage jeopardises their cause, and how different would things be nowadays if they’d gotten their way and the Act had never been passed?

History of the Internet – Data Storage

What I found to be interesting and actually surprising is how we stored data, this started off in the form of floppy disks which was used until the introduction of more sophisticated technology, which led us to USB flash drives. Due to the high demand of the use of internet more technology was introduced over the years which led to the birth of cloud storage which is a modern way of storing your data and is easy to access or change as you can access it through mobile phones. The evolution of data storage is easily explained through this image below.

With the evolution of the internet also came the evolution of Data Storage which I personal think we take for granted since there is two different forms of Data Storage, our hand picked data which we store and the information such as our viewing habits which is recorded without our permission. Overall Data Storage is one of the many things which we do in our daily lives but we don’t really think about it too much we just use it as second nature and forget that some information we might not want to be saved is stored without our permission.

 

History of the Internet

Internet’s journey could be dated back to the year 1962, which was 54 years ago.

The internet has been an ongoing culture in our day to day society, without the internet, our culture would not be the same. Just imagine… we wouldn’t be able to talk or connect with each other from all over the world; our life would be so different without it. The birth of the internet transformed a whole century, generation and lifestyle of every person around the globe.

Till today the internet is still an ongoing journey and has amazed many people with its ways of making life easier and more interesting. The changes in technology have transformed the use of the internet as before only a few people were able to access to it, however, today almost everyone carries it in their pockets. It is a powerful tool, creating a hegemonic relationship between technologic gadgets such as the iPhone and the user.

Since the birth of the internet, people have always had the benefit of gaining information about anything; Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari are the most popular search engines and are used to do research.

Finally, the internet is the world’s largest marketplace and shopping centre. Web sites such as eBay, or ASOS use the internet to sell their products, and this has supported economic growth since it was introduced to the world.

Referencing :

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8K49dD52WA
• Porter. D, Internet Culture (1997)

Then and now, how internet changed the world

“Millennials” is the term used to refer to ‘our’ generation; those born between the 80’s and the early 2000, those who know how to fix a music tape and connected for the first time the cables of the telephone, hearing that series of weird sounds that would soon become familiar, introducing the Internet in their lives. It was the late 90’s, everyone started to carry around a mobile phone, which got bigger and smarter every month.

Our generation is the most concrete, tangible evidence of how the Internet changed the world.

“Who do you want to be when you grow up?” we were asked when we were little. We had no idea, at the time, that answering: “I want to be a lawyer, a writer, a teacher.” would become so difficult in a handful of decades. Today, the new adults have to face a reality deeply merged with the web, with a completely different approach to jobs and human relationships. According to “Misunderstanding the internet” (Currant, Fenton, Freedman, 2012, p.123-124), at the time of writing Facebook has more than 500 million people active on its website, while Twitter has more than 100 million active users.

We are the generation that must ‘think’ flexible in terms of timings and skills, that looks at their social networks in the office, but, secretly, is struggling to find its way, sadly conscious that our sons and daughters will probably reply “The social media Manager” when asked what their dream is.

The Matter Of Community Throughout The Internet’s History

Certainly, the emergence and the development of the internet since the 1960s has revolutionised our world with various technical and social capabilities. Those, are holding an enormous impact on our everyday lives, growing in parallel to other processes, such as the political, economic etc.

 

Along the technological evolution, I find the matter of community and the way it changed throughout the history of the internet- a fascinating and powerful view to examine. The rise of online discussion’s forms, from news sites to blogs and social media- lead to the broadening of debates and empowering of ideas’ flows.

 

The contemporary form of the internet is featured by courses of information’s commodity and a wide interpersonal communication. Those, as to Papacharissi (2010), are “connecting more heterogeneous groups of people to bring about social and political change”. If we are to understand the wide stage the internet provides to the public sphere today, we may consider more than 152,000,000 bloggers around the web, 307 million monthly active users on Twitter and around 40 million unique users each week in the BBC’s news website. Those, have been developed on a fast stream since the 1990s. They represent the way the internet promoted and is still promoting processes such as globalization and democratization, which are so central to our everyday lives.

The history of the Internet: ‘The Trojan Room Coffee Pot’

Perhaps this isn’t the most obvious aspect in ‘the history of the Internet’ but it is something I found surprising when re-glancing over ‘The History of the Internet in a Nutshell’ (Chapman, 2009). I am talking about the history of the world’s first ever webcam, ‘The Trojan Room Coffee Pot’. It was created in 1991 in a computer lab at the University of Cambridge.

And the grand reason for this masterpiece creation? A single coffee machine was located in the corridor just beyond the door of the lab where 15 hard-working academics laboured away. Other academics had to walk down several flights of stairs to make it to the coffee machine, according to Quentin Stafford-Fraser, one of the academics at the time (1995).

Well apparently the stress was just too much to handle. People kept wasting their time waiting around for the coffee to be ready. Can you imagine the hassle?

So project ‘XCoffee’ was born. If you want all the nitty-gritty tech stuff, you can find it all here, on Quentin’s very own guest blog on the Cambridge website. The most important thing to note is that the early webcam was born; the machine “captured images of the pot every few seconds at various resolutions” which could be run (in grey scale) on all the academic’s computer screens (Stafford-Fraser, 1995).

Of course at the time, it wasn’t such a huge sensation. It did not get called a ‘breakthrough’ or gain much literary interest. But it did solve the problem of who should get up and check the coffee was ready. No one ever had to make an untimely trip to get coffee again! Hooray!

Daniel Gordon and Martyn Johnson then worked together to get project ‘XCoffee’ onto the Internet in November 1993 (Stafford-Fraser, 2001). People from all over the world tuned in to watch the coffee machine at work. Apparently this was entertaining at the time. Let’s not judge.

This meant that the first ever webcam was fashioned! And now we use them on everything from Facebook, Skype, Snapchat, MSN-Messenger… (Okay, maybe not on that anymore).

Who knew that being too lazy to wait for coffee could result in such a wonderful creation!

… Or was it? So many, myself included, now blame this creation and other creations like it for the lack of privacy online. This invention is one of many which contribute to the inability for us to ever not be tracked online.

Laptops now come with webcams built right in – and hackers know how to get them working without our permission. Most people know how to screenshot when maybe you don’t want to be ‘screenshotted’ when on webcam.

Think about it, without this invention, issues like revenge porn would not even be possible!

So was it a ‘wonderful creation’ after all? Maybe not. Let me know what you think!

History? Internet? Bah!

I found this topic particularly horrible because I am not in favour of the history of the internet. This lead to difficulty finding something interesting to talk about. But I will give it a shot.

Of the few sectors I enjoyed learning, the evolution of the internet and its components sounded inviting.

We start in 1969 with the Arpanet- a complex system of boxes and lines which resemble that of a murder investigation board.

Going further down the timeline, I notice that software becomes simpler, although the ‘behind the scenes’ would probably still need the genius minds of scientists and technology whizzes.

I am fascinated with people’s needs to simplify what they already have. The Apple IPhone was introduced in 2007. It has to be better every time. Bigger, slimmer, faster….everything to ease the stress out of what already seems like a technology easy life.

I believe the evolution of the internet has made us impatient. The average person will wait a maximum of four seconds for a webpage to load before scowling and complaining about the slow pace of their browser.

Whatever you may love (or loathe) about the internet there will never be a time when the internet stands still. The internet is always evolving and will continue to make history.

From research to entertainment – Development of the Internet.

I find it fascinating how technology has come so far that we are now able to access the ‘internet’ from multiple devices from our bedroom, even on our journey to work, without any cable connection. The creation of the Internet was partly due to military funded research, however Greenstein (2015) argued that the military only developed certain technologies which helped in the creation of the internet. We can thank Paul Baran for designing a brand new different network that was robust to damage from war. Also, Alan Turing had a massive impact to the network we use to this day as he developed the Turing machine in 1938 which simulated any algorithm, meaning computers were able to communicate with each other in any form and combination. This is how computer language was developed and still used to this day.

 
In just under 60 years, we’ve come from the ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network) the first computer network only accessible by four American Universities for research purposes, to a more complex computer network, gradually becoming available worldwide. The government has then made it accessible for the public for “free” to use and nowadays we use it as a source of entertainment, business, advertising and a lot more.

If the military and many mathematicians such as Turing did not contribute to the research of the internet, we would not have this complex computer system we have today that are all connected to each other, now also using a wireless connection. A fun fact: The term ‘internet’ comes from inter-networking which comes from the interconnected network of all the Web servers around the world, often called the World Wide Web.

References:
http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0193167.html
Shane, G., (2015) How the Internet Became Commercial:
Innovation, Privatisation, and the Birth of a New Network, Princeton: New Jersey. 

 

The Internet then and now

The internet has gone through many stages according to Curran et.al. (2012) I have decided to look at the four main stages which we can relate to today;

Then 

1970’s; The internet was used by scientists to share resources and communicate through email.

1980; Discussion groups formed virtual communities through the internet.

Late 1980’s; The internet became accessible for commercial use by the public as a research tool.

Mid 1990’s; The internet became a commercialised cyberspace for companies to directly sell to the public.

Now

People share resources and communicate through limitless internet based applications and websites today to share resources, scientists shared important data while we share resources such as Youtube links.

I think it would be appropriate to look at social network sites as the virtual communities of today rather then being discussion groups.

The useful tool of the past is the entertainment of today, so the internet that was used to research useful information by the public is now used to search literally anything.

The part of the internet which has not changed much, in my opinion, would be the commercialisation of the internet, nowadays we tend to shop for everything online, so If anything has changed it would be that the internet is being commercialised even more by selling services (such as Netflix and iTunes and many more) rather than actual physical tangible goods (like a DVD or a Vinyl record).

Globalization and the Internet

One word, Globalization. How broad is that topic?! In a sense globalization has a domino effect on future events. The internet is a big factor in today’s globalization process. The industrial development in the Western Countries is one of the main causes of the internet’s success. In turn, Western countries develop societies within the Internet. Cheers to the birth of Social Media! The use of social media in a way is shaped into almost everyone’s lives and gives “the people” a voice towards world issues. Social Media and the internet is a great tool of everyday life. Because the Western countries are really the ones that are privileged enough to have the internet and social media, they become more involved in world issues. They are the ones who control most of the information that is accessible to the public. Media platforms like CNN, Buzzfeed, Huffpost, New York Times all pick and choose what they are going to write about. As the internet increases the power of western countries, it also decreases the power of rural countries.

This brings me to my take on the internet’s future. At the beginning of the internet not that many people had access to the internet throughout the 20^th century, even in the western countries. But now in the 21^st century almost the whole world relies on the internet. Hopefully the effects of globalization will make it so almost the whole world has access to the internet. This in turn, will produce an even bigger community and opportunities. But who knows?! I guess we will just have to wait and see…

Which me is the real me?

The fast-paced evolution and progress of the internet and the development of the technology to ease the access to it has transformed the current society. Yet for better or for worse?

What I always found fascinating is the possibility to absolutely reinvent yourself on the web. The anonymity, although somewhat limited, which the internet offers, allows a person to be at least two different people at the same time, say, calm and reserved in real life, and charming and humorous online. Yet which self is the true self? Did we actually manage to shift our lives online, turning back to reality just to complete the tasks which we must do?

According to Baym (2013), most people feel that they can express their true self better on the web.  This gets you thinking: why are we so afraid to be ourselves in reality within our small social circle, yet we can be our truest selves when engaging with a wide multinational network of complete strangers. Is it the aforementioned anonymity? And yet, can the online persona of ours be considered a real self, if it’s merely a simulation?

As of now, approx. 2.13 billion people are on social media (Statista, 2016). These numbers are not too surprising having in mind the ubiquity of the internet and the fast development of means of access to it. And, apparently, the comfort we find in expressing ourselves, making connections and taking part in this multinational phenomenon which is the web.

What do you think? Which self is the true self?

 

The Global Digital Divide

The world may feel more connected than ever, however the truth is far from it.

In the last 30 years a global digital divide has emerged, as the quality and accessibility to the internet drastically varies worldwide. In 2015, Internet World Stats reported that 46.4% of the worlds population is an internet user. However the regional usage drastically differs, such as 87.3% of North America is online compared to 28.6% of Africa. 

The definitions and causes of this ‘global digital divide’ are highly debated. Mauro F. Guillén notes that the internet has developed unevenly throughout the world as a “result of the economic, regulatory and sociopolitical characteristics of countries and their evolution over time”. Jon Crowcroft also believes that the digital divide is not a binary segregation, but a more complicated issue. For example just the other day the WiFi in halls cut out and therefore I wasn’t able to complete this blog post. So does this mean I was disadvantaged as I lost my internet access, which consequently disrupted my education?

This divide raises many ethical questions. Crowcroft argues that the internet should be a universal right as it is an extension of free speech and information. However this would be difficult for developing countries to provide. It could be argued that the internet is segregating the world further apart, as advancing technologies have caused developing countries to lag behind. To bridge the gap, in 2013 six technology companies launched Internet.org, whose goal was to expand internet access to those without it (read more here).

Useful links

A very interesting and visual site that delves into the causes and ways to bridge the digital divide- http://www.scidev.net/global/icts/data-visualisation/digital-divide-data-interactive.html

Refrences

Internet World Stats- http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

Mauro F. Guillén quote- http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/84/2/681

Jon Crowcroft interview- https://soundcloud.com/scidev-net/final-jon-crowcroft-digital-divide-mixdown

Google it

“Google it.” – Honestly, how many times have you heard that?

On September 4th 1998 Google was created and our ability to research using books was lost; 29 years after the launch of the internet. It started out as a small website allowing the general public to search their interests; fulfil their curiosities and provide them with information on just about anything.

Over the last 18 years Google has evolved greatly because of the internet. Google has added numerous features to their website, this includes: Google maps; Google images; Google News; and many other Google add-ons that somehow make our lives that little bit easier.

Without Google, people in this day and age wouldn’t know what to do if we did not have the internet there to comfort us by answering any questions we desire the answers to. If it wasn’t for the invention of the internet in the 1960’s we would not have the luxury of asking Google what the weather will be like tomorrow or ask Google Maps where the local chip shop is after a heavy night out…

What astonishes me about Google is how much it’s relied on, on a daily basis. It surprises me how people before the 1960’s survived without the internet. Especially Google.

 

Oh, Internet . . . What have you done?

The Internet has never been subject to a singular definition. It has come a long way from its humble military origin in the early 60s to the counterculture in the 80s (Curran et al., 2012).

Apart from the instant access to, well, everything, what did the Internet give us? A whole new way of communication.

The ultimate commodity: social media. They too started off quite differently compared to where they are now. It is due to technological development and the revolution of the user.

But first, some history.

With the advent of Web 2.0, later an infrastructure, a significant change occurred: global online environment shifted from the concept of utility of data to customized services, which would generate a specific outcome (Dijck, 2013).

The scene was now set. Social media were ready to rise and efficiently ‘occupy’ our time.

It all began with a simple idea: bring people’s everyday interactions online. Create a platform for the distribution of content among people. ‘Connect and engage.’

It was a remarkable success.

Finally, it would seem, the time of total user domination has come. But it did not last. For by providing the so desired ‘two-way’ communication (Dijck, 2013), the efficiency of the Internet and the social media platforms within it triggered the arrival of commercial interest, which recognized the potential for long-term profit.

What were social media? What have they become?

A tool for ‘standardization’ of content and ‘assassination’ of natural human kindness and sympathy? 

A platform for controlled and monitored freedom of speech and a bearer of commercial business interests?

Maybe none, maybe all. Or maybe we are still searching for a definition.

Until then, we can only heavily sigh at the corner of our little cyberspace balloon: ‘Oh, Internet . . . What have you done?’

 

The history of the internet

 

The Internet can be defined as ‘the global system of interconnected computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices worldwide’. The study of the history of the internet provides many fascinating facts such as its progression from 1969 till present day. From research the most fascinating fact I discovered about the history of the internet was the formation of social media which was a good method of communication and meant easier ways for individuals to contact one another, like seriously what would you do without these sites! Some few examples  consist of Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, MySpace and Hotmail which allows employers to easily get in touch with job seekers without need for sending letters, it is also a quicker way to promote sales for online shoppers. Facebook was one of many social media sites first created in 2004 however originally for college students and was known as ‘The Facebook’. Later YouTube was created in 2005 which in some ways allowed the freedom of speech as it instigated the rise of bloggers. 2006 was the year twitter was formed and allowed individuals to share news with one another, it also allowed the use of hashtags and re-tweets (which i personally enjoy).

Around the world approximately 2.55 billion people by 2017 will be involved in social media sites, which demonstrates the power of social media and its massive impact in today’s generation of both youth and adults. As well as for social media purposes the internet is also a faster and prompt way to find out news stories in comparison to using television and newspapers. Without social media business connection or even socialising will become difficult. What do you think?

By Whitney Ajudua

The history (or lack of) online news outlets

The Internet (although created years earlier) became popular or ‘mainstream’ towards the end of the 90s, and really took off in the 21st century. So much so, that in 2002, there were over 631 million internet users worldwide. But what’s surprising, is that until recently (the last 10 years) there were not many online news websites that offered a ‘different’ take on news.

Of course, most of the major UK news outlets, such as the BBC and ITV, got online early, perhaps correctly anticipating the huge impact of the Internet. In fact, both these organisations came online in the 90s (ITV in 1994 and BBC in 1997).

Here’s a screenshot of BBC’s website from 1998, which makes me feel physically ill.

But what I find interesting, is that websites we have come to rely on, such as Buzzfeed or The Huffington Post, are far more recent creations. (Buzzfeed was created in 2006, and The Huffington Post just a year earlier in 2005). These websites were groundbreaking in their style, offering more than just solid news, which makes them stand out ahead of more traditional news websites.

So it appears that until midway through the noughties, websites like these simply didn’t exist. I personally can’t imagine the Internet without these ‘lighter’ news outlets, that offer a refreshing, more user-friendly angle than the likes of BBC, ITV or any other major outlet.

Just for fun, here’s another horrible screenshot, this time, taken from CNN’s site in 2000.

 

 

The Internet and Journalism

Journalism goes back hundreds of years. Of course it wasn’t the same as it is today, as back then it mostly consisted of town news in newsletters and reprinting from other publications. It was very small and slow compared to the field it is today. Now, journalism is a world wide, fast paced and very difficult profession. With the introduction of the internet, journalists and newspaper publications had to completely shift their work style and adapt to the new age of journalism.

Of course I cannot speak for all on this new age of digital media, but as a media consumer and budding journalist myself, I notice the changes in my daily life. With the introduction of the internet, journalism has greatly shifted from print to online. Sure, print publications still exist and will continue to exist, but their circulation and subscription rates have dramatically decreased since the marriage of journalism and the internet. Publications such as The New York Times will always have print, but what about smaller publications in small towns without the mass readership of The Times? What happens to their print publications?

So that brings us to now, a turning point of digital media and journalism through the internet. The internet is a key tool in research and data acclamation, especially in regard to speed of publishing, but also has become a key tool in sharing these stories. Without an online presence, news publications will not succeed. Furthermore, journalists are now structuring stories to fit better on the internet and share knowledge in ways that print just cannot do. Virtual reality stories are a new and budding form of storytelling and journalism. Data visualization has become a prominent feature in written stories, and journalists will team up with experts to create visual forms that best share the information. Audio storytelling, news, and podcasting is picking up once again. Radio is not new, but the way the internet changed storytelling allowed for the revival of podcasting and audio storytelling.

I don’t think we would have developed these new forms of communication and storytelling without the internet. The question “is journalism dying?” scares every new journalism student because they think they’re going into a dying career. Well, it scared me two years ago. However, journalism will never die. People will always seek truth and knowledge for a better informed society. The way we present journalism is changing – the internet has allowed for new forms of knowledge and digital information to be shared with readers that would never be possible without the internet.

Internet hacking:the curiosity bond with internet development

Facing the fascinating attraction of the digital world, people would easily sink into depth in terms of using it as a tool to improve freedom of expression or satisfy personal interest. Edward Snowden, Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning who intend to cause malicious meddling, have also contributed to the controversial internet function, which leads us to think whether we solely have been benefited by internet improvement.

Even though nowadays we are threatened by the online and cellphone hacking, at the beginning of the occurrence of hacker, digging into the system is only driven by the human nature, curiosity. There is one thing needed to declare that “hacking” is not a production of modern internet environment. In The New Yorker’s article A Short History of “Hack”, the first time that “hack” came to mean the fussing with machines was in April, 1955 at M.I.T. Perhaps, back to that time, hackers would never imagine their current ability and influence regarding with the improvement of internet.

When we flip the history of internet, the motivation of freedom of information, cooperation and exploration has been conducted along with the progression of the development of internet. Today, as one of the extraordinary human adventure, the creation of internet has not just provided us the convenience and flexibility, but also a entire virtual world that parallels the reality. Like it or hate it, it is you to make the choice.

Social Media: a phenomenon?

Whilst contemplating how to start this blog post, I unthinkingly found myself scrolling through various social media apps and I am sure I am not the only one who finds this. I tried to think back to a time when this distraction wasn’t there but it seemed social media and procrastination had gone hand-in-hand for a while in my life. Recently, I have thought social media has a more negative than positive impact on my life – not least because of its ability to distract me. However, it’s undeniable that both the internet and social media’s omnipresence and importance in today’s society is a phenomenon.  I wondered where the concept of social media started and where it could go in the future.

From the first social media site ‘sixdegrees.com’ where users were able to invite contacts and share posts; to Bulletin Board Systems; to online blog posts to the Twitter app on your smart phone, social media has advanced and seemingly taken over the internet, particularly for our generation. It is estimated that by 2017, 2.55 billion people around the world will be using social media. That’s over 1/3 of the world who are connected to the rest of the world. Debates about whether this makes the world bigger or smaller always interest me. Millions of people around the world don’t realise that, by using Facebook, they are actually on the internet. It is interesting that some social media sites are a success and withstand the test of time, however others like ‘MySpace’ seem to disappear. How can social media sites keep up with changes? And is the future of social media one with more positive or negative impacts on society?

(For a short summary of the history of social media sites, watch the video above)

Has the counterculture transforming the internet failed?

As James Curran et al (2012) argue the importance of the counterculture – born in the 1960’s – as to their involvement in revolutionising the internet to a “sub-cultural playground and agency of democracy”. A revolution, which José van Dijck (2013) also pairs with arising values such as empowerment and personal freedom on the internet. Now, if we reflect these achievements to the present 2016, have we actually achieved/maintained these values or has the internet failed us considering these terms?

It is certain to say that the empowerment – to an extent – has stuck around with us, considering the impact of a collective, 140 characters (a tweet) or image/video material can have. This is argued well in a Guardian article from 2011, in which Beaumont (2011) highlights the importance of social media such as Twitter and Facebook during the Arab uprisings. Truth is – and this is the reason the internet only empowers us to an extent – that every social media site is also an influential, sometimes multi-billion dollar corporation.

And by signing up to these websites, empowerment as to share our opinion is in conjunction with being confronted with the corporations aims, beliefs & actions. Striking was the revelation as to how Facebook manipulated our newsfeed to manipulate our emotions (read more here). Which is one of the privacy intrusions alongside data surveillance and targeted-advertising, which should make us question, have the aims of the counterculture failed?