Internet Experience Webpage

Check out my newly revised essay on the following webpage!


http://www.appstate.edu/~goodricham/InternetExperiences.htm

Ugly Wepage

Check out my ugly web page!!

http://www.appstate.edu/~goodricham/UglyWebpage.htm

Web Writing Assignment #1

The Internet is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as “an electronic communications network that connects computer networks and organizational computer facilities around the world”.  It allows us to connect with other people by email, social networking and video chats.  It holds a wealth of knowledge that enables us to accomplish research faster and more efficiently.  It is changing how we manage our everyday lives.  When I first started using the Internet I found it to be extremely fascinating and life-changing just as Vannehar Bush felt that his “Memex” would be.  However, I find that the longer it is around the more I seem to take the perspective of Nathaniel Hawthorne. 

My dad is draftsman who works mainly in structural steel engineering.  During the earlier time in which we had Internet, my dad was in the process of transitioning from traditional, hand-drawn blueprints to using a computer program.  He worked mainly from an office in our basement where he had his “drawing board” on one side of the room and the big blocky computer on the other side. When I would come home from school after spending the last six and seven hours with my best friends, I would check my Hotmail account. I remember being so excited after my parents allowed me to sign up for one because all of my friends already had them.  I would wait for the dial-up sound to finally subside and as soon as it stopped I knew it was time, time to check my email!  It is quite funny to think back on the names of both my friends email addresses and mine.  Unfortunately at that time in my life I was not looking for the most generic name I could think of like goodricham@appstate.edu, no, my thought process went something like this “Ooh I’ll be different, my email should be strawberries395@hotmail.com”.   Looking back I think to myself, “Self, what could have possible possessed you to have your email as a fruit and a random series of numbers that no one will ever remember?”  I have come up with only one adequate solution to this question, I was in 5th grade.

The excitement of emailing my friends and sending them annoying forwarded emails was almost more than I could bear.  It was this new way of communicating that did not involve 3-way calling, no, instead of actually hearing each other’s voices we could write to each other!  This Internet seemed more like something I would have seen on The Jetsons, certainly not in my own house.  But there it was, this fantastic, new way of telling my friends about my day, even if they already knew because they were a part of it. I imagine that Vannehar Bush felt similar to me when he thought about his “Memex” machine.  He knew that it would provide a new way of communicate and organize information for use in numerous ways.  I imagine my father’s experience in transitioning to the computer from hand drawing was also similar to that of Bush’s thoughts.  Bush saw the “Memex” as a calculating machine that would be a far cry from the abacus just as my father saw drawing on the computer as a smaller, easier way to store the information and send it to everyone. 

                  It is fascinating to me that although I use the Internet multiple times a day, I find myself growing very tired of it.  It seems almost monotonous to me how I find myself in a rhythm of checking Facebook, Perezhilton.com and Appalnet.  Although I know that there is so much more on the Internet than these three things I never actually branch out because the Internet overall is starting to bore me.  It seems that the Internet has become more and more something that takes the “tradition” out of communication.  It is possible that this change in communication is what is bothering me. When my friends and I were younger we would sit around and talk, talk, talk for hours on end.  Now sometimes when we are together we sit with our laptops on our laps and check Facebook.  Facebook, a website that is only supposed to keep us connected, not completely take away all of our social communication skills.  Nathaniel Hawthorne believed that woodstoves would ruin family life overall by taking away the atmospheric essence of it.  I do feel sometimes that the Internet has done the same thing.  Many of us retreat to our own Internet world and it is difficult to communicate face-to-face. 

             The Internet is still an overwhelmingly, fascinating thing, from the early emailing I did to the transition to instant messaging and now to social networking.  I highly doubt Bush ever considered that his “Memex” would provide an idea that would transform into such an amazingly revolutionary piece of machinery.  Yet it still performs functions as basic to us as it was extraordinary in the original “Memex” design.  It holds new forms of encyclopedias like Wikipedia, items can be instantly recalled by simply tapping a button and it does computing on an almost superhuman level.  As I used email in my early experience with the Internet, I felt as though I was tapping into something never before conceived in human history but in retrospect I see the true design was ages ahead of its time.  We humans embraced the Internet as our own and saw it as much more than a kick in the pants to more traditional communication just as the woodstove was seen as more than an insult to atmosphere in a traditional “fireplace home”.  We use this medium every day and are constantly finding more ways to adapt it to our ever-growing needs.  It depends on how we decide to allow it to be used in our lives the perspective we take about it.

"Internet." Merriam-Webster Dictionary. Web. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/internet>.

It's Harry Potter!!

I am an absolute fanatic about Harry Potter, that being said it is only fitting that I would be ridiculously giddy (yet somewhat depressed) about the final Harry Potter movie (Part 1) coming out in November. I thought I would share the trailer for HP7 for you all to watch. Also, I find it simply amazing that whenever we want to watch a movie trailer we can go on the internet to find it rather than hope it is attached to the next movie we go see.

Enjoy!