Internet Studies: Final Thoughts

This class on Internet Studies has brought up topics that were familiar to me before we started; the beginnings of the Internet, the information conglomerate, censorship and filtering, hashtagging, copyright, the public domain, and more. In this class I learned time management, online communication, writing skills, and most of all, critical reading skills. The content we flew through this summer session really boggled my mind. The topics that will stick with me include creative commons and copyright licensing in participatory culture and algorithmic bias on both search engines and social media. I was highly interested in getting to know more about the history of the Internet and its networks that have become the digital public sphere. I definitely won’t forget about the ingenuity of DARPA. They couldn’t have imagined what their subnet would spark. I also will continue to think about the digital divide and how it is expanding in one sense concerning ease of use, and closing distance in another more physical sense. I came to see that access to the Internet develops certain dependencies, creates faux representations, and may fragment people rather than bring them together. Fragmented networks is a concept that will also stick with me. I can see now how fragmentation is almost inevitable with access. There are plenty of other interesting topics we studied in this class, and the ones I listed are just a few that stuck out to me.