Week 2 Homework Assignment

Erin Crowe
Due: February 9, 2020 by 6pm

Assignment Description

• Write 1-3 paragraphs reflecting on the above texts + use as content for your next HTML page.
• Create a new directory + give it a sensical name - remember this will become a part of your url. Inside create a new HTML document + add in your response to the reading. Using an local HTTP server, build your page as you see fit and make sure to include at least two different images - one relative + one absolute. Use at least 6 different semantic HTML tags. Use some basic CSS to change color, make it nice / interesting to look at.
• Save your work locally.
• Add your work to your class repo
• push to Github + GP + please post a link to your work by your name below before 6pm Sunday Night.

As We May Think - response

     Vannevar Bush wrote the piece in 1945, while he was working as the Director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during the Second World War. As We May Think , was written to consider what should now be at the forefront of technological advancement, now that all efforts weren't diverted toward the war. Largely, As We May Think, focuses on human memory and the categorization of human information, in a way that is valuable and meaningful. Bush says in the piece that technology has "enabled man to manipulate and to make extracts from that record so that knowledge evolves and endures throughout the life of a race rather than that of an individual". Which gives us as humans a huge responsibility to organize the information that we have in a way that is clear and effective for the future generations. He also says that in order for our human record to be useful on an ongoing basis, it "must be continuously extended, it must be stored, and above all it must be consulted". But how realistic is it that the totality of human information is consulted on each and every scientific decision? And how are we to ensure that all the information being stored is factual? I think the largest problem facing this topic is not a limit in technology, but instead a result of human irresponsibility. Most information forums are open-sourced, which means that the responsibility of fact-checking falls upon the reader, which unfortunately means in today's society that it largely goes undone.
    

Long Live the Web - response

     Long Live the Web was written in 2010 by Sir Timothy Berners-Lee who invented the World Wide Web in 1990. He wrote this article to celebrate its 20th anniversary and uses this paper to discuss his hopes and fears over the first 20 years of the growth of his baby. He clarifies how the Web and Internet are actually two distinct entities, although the terms are actually misused interchangeably. He discusses many of the current issues of the use of the web, including the issues of net neutrality and the attempts of companies to create what he refers to as walled gardens in which they can charge users to play. The world can connect to each other on levels previously unheard of. However there have also been many concerns over privacy, plagiarism and targeted marketing programs, which are done by snooping at data created by users. However, as any good father does, he continues to have high hopes for his creation. He ultimately wants the web to be used with linked data instead of documents, which will allow for communities to share their information in ways that will improve the world. In his example, a scientist puts to the web a query about what proteins are involved in signal transduction and are related to pyramidal neurons. The query through current search engines gave over 233,000 hits, but no answers. In the world of linked data, such an inquiry could provide a small number of specific proteins with those particular properties. Berners-Lee hopes that by truly sharing data in an open, net neutral environment, the information can be coordinated in ways that truly will change the world.