Reading Discussion Assignment01

Long Live The Web by Tim Berners-Lee

The thesis that I felt had portrayed the article is that when it comes to the Web, not only is the preservation of the Web a necessity to have but to also benefit from what is to come in advancements regarding the Web. The article also seems to praise the Web for being able to create a site of information without the need for approval from central authority, yet in both ways, the ability to create a site can be seen as both a positive and negative concept. Similarly, openness was another major topic in the article, but regarding companies and businesses this time. From a positive perspective, companies are able to create applications that are open to anyone, regardless of their ISP, operating system, etc., all thanks to the ability of the Web’s open standards. However, there also seems to be a darker road that companies can take, wherein the article provides the example of Apple iTunes and how the ability to link any information or share any information about a song that someone wants to share would be inconclusive as the iTunes world is centralized among itself and has no ties with the Web.

As We May Think by Vannevar Bush

One of the main topics that I gathered from reading this article was the idea that the history of research and other valuable information was being faded out as newer technology is being developed, thus, the use of old information has no purpose. This is heavily backed up as the second section of the article dives into the history/development of photography, such as the uses of dry photography, microphotography, and the materials at use, as well as the development speed of which process is faster and more efficient. Additionally, the idea of storage and use of information came up in the near last section of the article, where the term “memex” was brought up and was said to be a device in the form of a desk that can store books, records, and communications fit for the user with utmost speed. This is fairly important to the thesis of the article regarding storing valuable information as the memex was to be a huge encyclopedia that was fit to store dozens of books.