Rainbow Unit: Networks Big and Small
2A: Digital Internets, Past and Present
Background Knowledge Probe
- What is the first thing that comes to mind when someone says they are on the Internet right now? Is this the same or different from internetworking as we discussed in the last session?
- What quickly comes to mind as the top three transformative advancements that have resulted from the “digital revolution”?
- What might be the concealed stories behind the stock stories regarding these Internet and digital revolution memories?
Some Early Examples of Systems for Networking and Internetworking
Networking
- The exchange of information or services among individuals, groups, or institutions specifically: the cultivation of productive relationships for employment or business
- The establishment or use of a computer network
First known use of networking: 1967, in the meaning defined in sense 1
Merriam-Webster, “Networking”[1]
As we have explored throughout the textbook, there are many ways to connect, or network, two devices together. We’ve made use of the Universal Asynchronous Receive Transmit, or UART, protocol with our own devices. We have also briefly reviewed the Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C), which is a synchronous, multi-parent, multi-worker, packet switched, and single-ended serial computer bus.
There are many other ways to network devices together, through physical cables (Ethernet, fiber) or varying wavelength frequencies (WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, infrared, cellular, satellite, low-powered radio). My own history with networking goes back to the 1970s and the growth of radio-controlled model airplanes. While attending Hull Middle School, I used a teletype device and landline phone to dial in to a minicomputer located at the high school, both to play Star Trek video games in my free time and to write my first BASIC programming language code to calculate the board feet of a log for my family’s sawmill. (My dad was not impressed. He preferred continuing to use our analog, hand-held Doyle log rules).
Then in the early 1980s I bought a Commodore 64! The night before I picked it up, I remember using a manual typewriter to complete an English class assignment at Lake Michigan Community College and continually thinking, “This is the last time I will ever need to use whiteout!!” When I got it, I also got a few issues of PC Magazine so that I could read the BASIC programming code stories that I could then enter in and use to play games and to begin creating my own calculating devices for making. And for a short period I also tested out CompuServe, a commercial online service, from which I could join in discussions and download other BASIC programming code. But landline phones were expensive when used to connect from my rural home. So for all of these, there was only one way I effectively internetworked — sneakernet. Sneakernet is an informal term sometimes used tongue-in-cheek to reference those times when the best, or perhaps only, way to transfer ele