Web 1.0

For my COM 430Z class, I read “New media and web production" (The Internet: The basics Ch.3) by Jason Whitaker. This article basically gave a description of the webpage how we know it today. Whitaker talks about the advances that lead to the modern day web page. Many technological advances needed to come first to allow the capabilities of our internet. According to Whitaker, the advancement of digital photography helped bring about our modern day web page. (p.66) Whitaker claims that for many, ..."seeing is believing..."(p.62), so photographs on web pages help to make them more credible sources of information. Whitaker also claims that audio and video are also some of the most common and new found technologies of the web.(p.67) With these advancements, we can listen to radio via our computers, and have conferences with people around the world through webcams. We can also listen to and receive music, something very popular, especially among college students today who share files with one another. According to Whitaker, the compression of video is another technology that has helped the web to be what it is today.(p.69) Whitaker also acknowledges that advances such as color and images, layout designs, and hyperlinks have taken the web to places we never expected.(p. 81, 84, 86)

I know that the web is used by people all over the world, but in my opinion, its advances are probably most appreciated by the modern student. Music, papers, photos, communication, is all at every one of our fingertips. I can’t imagine having to do all that a student is responsible for without the web. We can watch movies and look up journal articles from a school in California within seconds. I can’t even fathom having to actually go to the library, look through books, and have to write a paper. It boggles my mind that we can do entire research papers for classes often without even having to leave the comfort of our own rooms. I am so appreciative of the advances in the web. How did people get by with slow internet connections, and no images on their web pages? I often wonder about the world wide web with only text, and I cannot picture it.


Whitaker, Jason. (2002). The Internet: The basics (chapter 3). New York: Routledge