I actually find it quite humorous that even a few years ago, people were just learning how to use the internet for its loveliness.  The Berners-Lee article, “The World Wide Web” was almost shocking to me.  Who knew there was so much complexity to the different, little parts of the internet; HTML, HTTP, URL?  These aren’t just abbreviations for they are letters that stand for something important which was difficult to perfect.  However, the way the World Wide Web is described in this article, doesn’t even seen archaic to me.  It seems like someone is trying to describe something so simple, in such technical terms.  Growing up with the internet by my side, I never had to learn the definitions of HTML or other seemingly simple internet terms.  I didn’t have to know exactly what they meant.  All I had to know was that if you wanted to go on a website, you had to put HTTP in front of the URL link that you typed in the empty box.  Although the end of the article promises an exciting future for the internet, I can’t help but wonder how excited people must have been to realize the effects the internet could have.  Not only its effects, but its abilities.  Vannevar Bush mentioned in his article, “As We May Think” (1945), the ideas of compressing an entire encyclopedia to a minuscule amount.  He talked about a desk with screens of information at the click of a button.  In a way, my generation takes the internet and all of its abilities and effects on our society for granted.  If you try to think about how much information is online, it is pretty close to unfathomable.  They weren’t lying when they said we had the world at our fingertips.

    Also, “Doug Englebart’s 1968 Demonstration” videos were either terrible quality or in their beginning stages.  We’ll pretend that the videos were good quality for their time.  I couldn’t help but think of a Saturday Night Live episode where one of the comedians is a news anchor in the TV station, and one is out at the site of the report.  The news anchors keeps asking the reporter questions, but everything is delayed and their conversations get overlapped.  The reporter can’t hear any questions she is being asked.  Eventually, the two just give up and the audience, including myself, laughs at their frustration.  These videos seemed to lag so much that it was hard to keep up with what was going on.  Listening wasn’t as bad as trying to figure out what was going on on the screen.  The example of early word processing, a keyboard and a mouse, were so much in their beginning stages that I could barely recognize what was going on.  However, let’s thank God that Doug Englebart and the people who created all of these technologies didn’t just give up like the SNL comedians.