"The Internet" - Campbell-Kelly Critique

Martin Campbell-Kelly, author of this week's article, The Internet, refers to many of the topics that have been discussed in all of our FIG classes. From the history of the Internet, to the politics of today's social media, Campbell-Kelly outlines and explains the development of the Internet from it's birth, a progression that allows readers to understand how the Internet became what it is today. 

Campbell-Kelly begins his chapter by explaining the development of the "Memex", an innovation dreamt up by Vannevar Bush in post-World War II United States. The Memex can very much be considered the foundation for today's computer, as Bush described it as a "desk-like device that could hold the contents of a university library in a couple of cubic feet". While computers today are certainly much, much smaller, they now hold the contents of any given university library and much more. Bush predicted that "it would be possible to contain the Encyclopedia Britannica in a space the size of a matchbox", a claim that clearly holds a far amount of truth today. 

Campbell-Kelly goes on to explain the development of ARPAnet as the basis for Internet and e-mail, easily allowing readers to label ARPAnet as possibly one of the most important innovations in history, as it allowed for the invention of the Internet - arguably one of today's leading keepers of social progression. To me, however, the most fascinating aspects of his article involved the theory of 'telegraphese'. Telegraphese, as explained by Campbell-Kelly, was essentially the method in which words were communicated through e-mail exchanged. Due to the lack of tone of voice and human delivery, the straightforward and unforgiving way in which dialogues occurred through e-mails could often " easily cause offense to the uninitiated". This led to the development of "netiquette", giving way for easier conversations still occurring over e-mail. I found this idea of online communication involving different etiquette as one that still hasn't been completely resolved - while online and digital communication is certainly more of a norm now, there are still quite a few 'unofficial rules' of online text. For example, it's often considered that kurt and to the point of messages, such as a simple 'k' in response to a favor, are rude, whereas if the same were said in person they wouldn't even be notable as out of the ordinary. Campbell-Kelly definitely hit home with the point of 'netiquette', as it's presence is visible today in online social media.

The name of this chapter is 'The Internet', an extremely huge and broad title for a mere 20-something page chapter. The Internet's presence today is surely an unimaginable state for what Bush and Wells once thought up of with the "World Brain" and the Memex. While these inventions involved holding an organized digital library of "all the world's information", they have developed into a global-scale, endless information and endless opportunity bank for learning, applying, developing and critiquing information. Campbell-Kelly's chronologically ordered outline of how the Internet and social media came to be perfectly depicts the founding base for today's online communities.