Be here now

I’ll start class in 5 minutes. We’ll start with the “reading” quiz.

Quote to ponder:

“People who use the Internet (or for that matter, who make long-distance phone calls) but who don’t know about wires are just like the millions of complacent motorists who pump gasoline into their cars without ever considering where it came from or how it found its way to the corner gas station. That works only until the political situation in the Middle East gets all screwed up, or an oil tanker runs aground on a wildlife refuge. In the same way, it behooves wired people to know a few things about wires - how they work, where they lie, who owns them, and what sorts of business deals and political machinations bring them into being.”

Neal Stephenson, 1996

Georgetown University Research Study

• I’m passionate about creativity
• You have an opportunity to participate in a research study about creativity in STEM

The Study

• Two FNIRS scans - beginning and end of the year
• Here at ACC
• Compensation! $20/session

IT Crowd - The Internet

Client-Server Model

“The Cloud” is just a bunch of data centers

Runners

Pigeons

Horse Messengers

Telegraph - Connected Baltimore and DC in 1844

First transatlantic telegraph - 1858

Height of telegraph - late 1800’s

Note the instructions in small print: “Sender of the message should order it repeated”.

Phones and switchboards

Discussion

How do we think today’s internet is similar to/ different from the switchboard system?

Centralized vs Decentralized

IP Addresses

Going online

Terminal Walk-through

Some terminal commands to try:

• curl ascii.live/can-you-hear-me
• curl parrot.live
• ipconfig getifaddr en0
• curl ipecho.net/plain
• traceroute google.com
• ping google.com
• cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history | less
• cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.history | grep 03/09
• cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.birthday | grep 03/09
• cat /usr/share/calendar/calendar.music | grep 03/09