Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Reading Reaction: Sept 17

In the reading, The Internet: The basics, one would assume that what Jason Whitaker speaks about would be the basic elements that make up the Internet. Yet, reading line after line I was bombarded by information that went far beyond basic. I think the title should be amended to The Internet: An Abridged History, because that is what the reader is getting from reading this piece.

But, in Whitaker’s defense he does speak about the basics, albeit in a strange way. Nonetheless he does speak about hypertext, "information that links to other information" (Whitaker, 2002), and how it essentially is the most basic building block that makes up the Internet on the surface. Meaning that it links texts, to images, or to video, ultimately it depends on the user and what he or she wants to publish on the web.

Whitaker does get back into the elements of the Internet, speaking about HTML, Hypertext Markup Language. HTML essentially speaks to web browsers, Internet Explorer or Firefox, to display the page a certain way, ranging from layout to color to size of the text, or even placement of a certain picture on the page. But like any standard, HTML is no different and its standard is set by the W3C, World Wide Web Consortium.

Alas HTML in its old age is being stretched to its limitations and XML, Extensible Markup Language, is being brought in to try to simplify things, Whitaker states that users can define their own tags. For instance a phone website has a form asking the user to input their phone. On the back end of things it would look more like [phone]Nokia[/phone]. Although it would be with <> instead, since blogger is not allowing me to demonstrate it.

Whether its code from HTML or new implications of XML, the Internet is an ever changing entity, we will just have to sit back and enjoy the ride, because the apparently the basics are not so basic after all.

Reading:
Whitaker, Jason. (2002). The Internet: The basics (chapter 3). New York: Routledge

No comments: