February 16, 2007

• Internet Island Topic Post #22: Our Internet “World”

   

  

  Internet Island Topic Post #22.00: Our Internet “World”

  Finally, I’ve gotten around to giving you Internet Island Topic Post #21. I was a little more happy with the last topic post. I did notice a lot of other Islanders among the sites I visited, and I hope I got around to all of you who posted an entry.

  This time, the subject is the internet. If we’re blogging, we’re on the internet. Right now, the vast “information superhighway” is in front of us, beackoning like a virtual encyclopedia and gossip column. If you were born after 1977, when the home computer was introduced. then computers and the internet, seem to have always been around. For an old “analog” person like me, it’s still a brave new world, and it’s changing every day. Here are some questions to ponder about the internet. You can either “answer” any or all of them, or create your own “slant” on the subject at hand. This month we’re going to talk about our virutal “world”.

  
  As you list your entries in the comments to this post, I will “list” them here, so they are easy to find.

  The Topic Post will last approximately two weeks to a month. Please enter the link or date of your Internet Island Topic Entry for this post in a comment here. If you are creating a link, make sure you link to the page with the “comments” box and not the page with five entries. (HERE IS A TUTORIAL ABOUT HOW TO MAKE LINKS.) The purpose of Internet Island Topic Posts is to help get the members of the Internet Island Blogring to exchange comments and get to know each other. Please check back periodically for new entries throughout the posting period.  If you post a topic entry, please make an attempt to visit the other Islanders who do so as well. It is also a good idea to post the link to the Topic Entry in your own entry so that other interested parties can come here. You can copy/paste the Topic Post links right here in this entry into your own weblog entry box.

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  Before we begin, I’d like to add that I’m going to present this series of “questions” with a little background and personal history. I love the evolution of the internet, and the fact that I’m alive to have seen and experienced this electronic wonder. If you use one of the topics below for your entry, you don’t have to copy/paste the whole thing into your blog. Just the Section Header in BoldFace type. (I wrote complete essays for topics 22.03 and 22.04, so don’t copy all the text and put it on your blog. It isn’t necessary. ) 

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  We’ll start at the beginning of your “stay” on the “internet world”.

  
  22.01. Internet “start page” or “home page”.
  What is the first thing you see when you get on the internet. What do you check first? Your email? Stock quotes? The news? Do You Yahoo? Do you set Google as your home page? A personal website? The AP or Reuters news feeds? ABC.com? How about  Your Xanga? Or is it like the “blinking 12:00″ on most everyone’s VCR in the 80s. Did you just keep the MSN home page that came with Internet Explorer? (Yes, it’s interesting to note that VCRs and computers arrived at almost the same time, although computers didn’t really “take off” until Windows 3.1 and the advent of the World Wide Web, which introduced “graphics” to the previously text based internet.)  

  22.02. Hardware, Software, and nowhere
  Write or somehow present your “internet history”. I wrote an essay for my website called “A Short History of the World Wide Web” in 1999. It wasn’t a “history” of the internet, but of my own experience “online”. I’d like to know what journeys through cyberspace you’ve taken over the years. Straight sailing? Detours? Virtual collisions?

  22.03. The Blogoshpere (Your “home away from home”)
  You’re not only here on the web, you’re here on good ol’ Xanga. Did you know what you were doing when you signed up with Xanga and wrote your first blog entry? I don’t want to know “why you blog” now, after you’ve done it for a while. Each of us blogs for different reasons, and through the comments feature, we can talk to each other, and sometimes see “communities”. The “Internet Island” is such a ‘communit’. What I want to know is what you thought when you first signed up and took your first babysteps through Xanga. Was there a plan? Did you go exploring? What prompted your own first comment.  

  22.03.1: Programs, Games, Virtual Reality, the future.
  Email was the first “interconnective” device on the internet. Email and message boards. Then came graphical interfaces and personal websites, refined search engines, and of course, our friend the blog. I can remember downloading both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator thinking I needed both. I still recall the frustration and difficulty at trying to send photos through the internet as “early” as 1996. People always tell me my websites and blogs crash their old computers, because I’ve been graphics oriented since I got online. I “predicted” personal streaming video, and my first streams were online in 2001. What have you purchased for your computer? How new or old is your system? Take a photo, or better yet, create a “video blog” and upload it to your Xanga “video” section and post it for the topic. How many programs do you run? What do you do on the computer, in other words, besides blog on Xanga. If you participate in RPG’s, that’s another whole ‘world’. What does it do for you? I’m planning to write a sci fi novel, “Paradigm Shifiting” set in the future, when the internet is replaced by Virtual Reality, sort of like the “holodeck” on the Star Trek series, where “sites” are “worlds” that you can explore, and your “avatar” or “self” can be whatever you want it to be. I think that VR, represented by online multiplayer games in the present, will evolve into a “Matrix” like cyber world that is indistinguishable, or completely different, depending upon the “destination” than the real world. (Which will be somewhat barren due to global warming) What do think about the future of the internet?  

  22.04: YouTube: TV on the internet that you program yourself.
  In July of last year, YouTube overtook MySpace as the most popular site on the world wide web. As of right now, Alexa’s top 500 worldwide sites lists YouTube at #5 (MySpace is #6)

  5. 

  YouTube (www.youtube.com)

  Global Top 500 Websites by Alexa

   

  Yesterday, in the L.A. Times Calendar Section, in  a story about “home grown celebrities” and the YouTube phenomenon,  I read that  you can find anything you want on YouTube. Is this true?  It’s not only a personal video channel for videomakers like me, or videobloggers. Almost any sort of filmed or videotaped entertainment can be found on the site. I have never used the “search function” to find out if this is true, but I know a lot of bloggers post YouTube clips they’ve “found” on their entires. What is the quirkiest, most original, historical, important,  or strangest video you have seen (or can search for) on YouTube. Remember to supply links, or even better, embed the clip on your entry.

  Topic Entries:

  baldmike 2004 22.04 1/24/07

  Citril 22.03 1/25/07

  suzyQ darnit 22.03 1/25/07

  sherrytwinklz 22.01-03 1/25/07

  Zeal4Living 22.01-02 1/25/07

  prettynosyarentyou 1/25/07

  Teena 22.03 1/26/07

  emmysback 22.01 1/26/07

  Building A Mystery 22.04 1/29/07

  adrianluzky 22 1/29/07

  thereluctantsinger 22.03 1/30/07

  baldmike 2004 22.03 1/30/07

  BoureeMusique 22.01-03 1/31/07

  davesshelterfromthestorm 22 1/31/07

  writergoddess 22 1/31/07

  ladywolf aq 22.01,03 2/3/07

  screaminginmyhead 22.01 2/4/07

  kristenmomof3 22.01 2/5/07 (New Islander!)

  baldmike2004 22.03.1 2/10 

  kirby 1960 22.03 2/10

  queenofscots 22.04 2/11

  pogueatl 22.02 2/13

  presentfool 22.01-.04 2/15 (New Islander!)

  pogueatl 22.03 2/16

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  YOU ONLY HAVE TO WRITE ONE TOPIC. OR MORE IF YOU WANT.  IT’S ALL UP TO YOU!

  Remember, the tabs at the top of theInternet Island Blogring Page will “sort” the members by latest post, date joined,  and alphabetical Username. Use the ring page to find new Islanders, or older ones you might not have visited in a while. It’s OUR Island, and we’re a great group of people with different interests, fantastic stories, and wonderful lives, and we have a great deal of love for our fellow man.

  There are no “right” or “wrong” responses to any Topic Post for Internet Island. All responses are just as valid as any other response.

  

  • 10:35 pm
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