NETS5012 MIC501 Web Communications Assessment 1: Short Question & Answers

What is the Internet

The internet is an underlying network infrastructure; a network of networks. In February of 1958, the United States founded the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) and later created the ARPANET project which aimed to connect all the supercomputers across the country to move information around faster and avoid duplicating existing research (Rosenzweig, 1998). To achieve this efficiency, data were transported over networks in small, manageable pieces, known as packet switching, which is still fundamental to networking today (Bay, 2019).

By creating a collaborative relationship between people and technology (Licklider, 1960), computers communicated through a set of protocols, developed by Robert Kahn and Vinton Cerf, that streamlined routing and allowed separate networks to connect and share information (Mowery & Simcoe, 2002). These protocols, Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and Internet Protocol (IP), became the standard for Internet applications. IP, first actioned in 1977, addresses the machine and allows information to reach the desired destination while TCP addresses the packets by verifying everything is reassembled and intact (Leiner et al., 2009).

The Domain Name System (DNS), introduced in 1984, allowed the internet to work for people, which linked IP addresses with human-readable addresses (Mowery & Simcoe, 2002).

What is the World Wide Web?

The Word Wide Web (WWW) is an application which utilises the functionality of the Internet that allows information to be identified and accessed. An interface for information to be found and created more easily (Berners-Lee, 1992), the WWW is accessed primarily through a web browser in a series of protocols. HyperText Protocol (HTTP), a web-specific protocol, is the standardised method to interpret a HyperText document – non-sequentially linked nodes of text or information (Berners-Lee & Cailliau, 1990). To display this information, HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is used to create documents on the WWW (Johnson, 1995).

Another important element in understanding the WWW is the Uniform Resource Locator (URL), which allow access to the WWW and lets the HyperText links to work together. It is the web address that allows access to the details of where information is stored on the servers (Rowe & Nicholas, 1995).

What is the relationship between the World Wide Web and the Internet?

The Internet is the underlying infrastructure on which applications, such as the WWW, email, VOIP, and FTP, run (Johnson, 1995). While, the internet can exist in isolation, the WWW is reliant on the Internet. Commonly viewed erroneously as the same thing, the WWW contains the identifiable ways in which users can access information stored on the Internet through the client-server model.

What are three purported differences between the World Wide Web as it first emerged and the more recent Web 2.0?

The World Wide Web, at its emergence, largely consisted for static content which where hand-coded and ran on slow connection speeds. They were created by those who possessed the technical skills to do so and considered mainly as read-only for the broader community. Web 2.0, on the other hand, offers a more participatory experience in a platform to produce and publish content more easily – encouraging a read-write structure through ease of use (O’Reilly, 2005).

Since Web 2.0 created and explosion of new content from a multitude of users, it became necessary to extract relevant keywords and metadata that could categorise related content (Cormode & Krishnamurthy, 2008). Metadata in the form of hashtags, especially on social media have been popular in Web 2.0 in user-generated content. This enables search engines to work more effectively in crawling for related keywords.

As the web became more interactive and collaborative, there became a separation between form and content allowing a richer experience (Murugesan, 2007). Three key technologies are utilised in this dynamic environment: RSS, XML, and APIS.

What are APIs and why are they significant to Web 2.0?

An Application Programming Interface (API), enables two applications to communicate and exchange data securely (MuleSoft, n.d.). APIs are fundamental to Web 2.0 as they enable users to utilise the functionality of an external system without requiring the technical skills to build the functionality from the ground up (IBM, n.d.). For example, Yelp integrates Google Maps on their site to display restaurant locations (Proffitt, 2013). This is paramount to the read-write, collaborative model of Web 2.0, enabling users to participate and create without the need to code (Vossen & Hagemann, 2007).

While essential to how creators use Web 2.0 in offering a seamless and dynamic environment, there is a fundamental drawback with APIs, in that it is proprietary product and companies have the ability to alter and/or shutdown their APIs so that other connected web applications will no longer have access. Companies also open themselves to security breaches when integrating with external API creators, such as allowing users to login with existing accounts on either Facebook or Google (Benzell et al., 2021).

References

Bay, M. (2019). Hot potatoes and postmen: how packet switching became ARPANET’s greatest legacy. Internet Histories, 3(1), 15-30. https://doi.org/10.1080/24701475.2018.1544726

Benzell, S., Hersh, J. S., Van Alstyne, M. W., & Lagarda, G. (2021). How APIs Create Growth by Inverting the Firm. https://doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3432591

Berners-Lee, T. J. (1992). The world-wide web. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 25(4), 454-459. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-7552(92)90039-S

Berners-Lee, T. J., & Cailliau, R. (1990). Worldwideweb: Proposal for a hypertext project.

Cormode, G., & Krishnamurthy, B. (2008). Key differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0. First Monday, 13(6). https://doi.org/10.5210/fm.v13i6.2125

IBM. (n.d.). What is an API? https://www.ibm.com/topics/api

Johnson, A. (1995). The internet and world wide web explained. Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine, 18(3), 109-113. https://doi.org/10.3109/17453059509021634

Leiner, B. M., Cerf, V. G., Clark, D. D., Kahn, R. E., Kleinrock, L., Lynch, D. C., Postel, J., Roberts, L. G., & Wolff, S. (2009). A brief history of the internet. SIGCOMM Comput. Commun. Rev., 39(5), 22–31. https://doi.org/10.1145/1629607.1629613

Licklider, J. C. R. (1960). Man-Computer Symbiosis. IRE transactions on human factors in electronics, HFE-1(1), 4-11. https://doi.org/10.1109/THFE2.1960.4503259

Mowery, D. C., & Simcoe, T. (2002). Is the Internet a US invention?—an economic and technological history of computer networking. Research Policy, 31(8), 1369-1387. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0048-7333(02)00069-0

MuleSoft. (n.d.). What is an API? (Application Programming Interface). https://www.mulesoft.com/resources/api/what-is-an-api

Murugesan, S. (2007). Understanding Web 2.0. IT Professional, 9(4), 34-41. https://doi.org/10.1109/MITP.2007.78

O’Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0 – Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software. O’Reilly. https://www.oreilly.com/pub/a/web2/archive/what-is-web-20.html

Proffitt, B. (2013, 19 September). What APIs Are And Why They’re Important. readwrite. https://readwrite.com/2013/09/19/api-defined/

Rosenzweig, R. (1998). Wizards, bureaucrats, warriors, and hackers: Writing the history of the Internet. The American Historical Review, 103(5), 1530-1552. https://doi.org/10.2307/2649970

Rowe, K. E., & Nicholas, C. K. (1995). Reliability of WWW name servers. Computer Networks and ISDN Systems, 27(6), 773-780. https://doi.org/10.1016/0169-7552(95)00045-9

Vossen, G., & Hagemann, S. (2007). Unleashing Web 2. 0 : From Concepts to Creativity. Elsevier Science & Technology. http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/curtin/detail.action?docID=311528