Reflective Essay

Throughout this course on the History of Information Technology, I have learned an incredible amount about the history of the subject throughout the ages. There is much to be said about information technology and the way it has shaped our world and our species. From hieroglyphs to the internet, we have studied them all in CIS-270. The use of the VMI ePortfolio system has allowed me to store my papers as artifacts, where I can access them from anywhere. In my papers, I researched and learned about a wide variety of subjects. In my first paper, I wrote about the history of the Japanese language, and their triplicate system of writing. In my second, I researched the advent of air mail in the United States and across the globe. My third paper was about the invention, history, and impact of the search engine in the United States. Through all my writing and research, I have seen the shape and attitudes of human ingenuity. With each technological advance, the world becomes a bigger place as people become able to reach out to more of it.

I began studying the Japanese language in high school and it has always been a beautiful obsession of mine. Thus, my first paper detailed the rise of the Japanese. I started at the beginning: a recluse group of people constantly warring with themselves. Throughout my paper, I detailed the extensive history, conflict, and mystery that went into the generation of each of Japan’s writing styles. It is amazing that despite everything else, we still don’t know exactly what inspired the language. There are many theories about roots in Altaic, Korean, and Chinese dialects, but historians have been unable to pinpoint a true origin. Despite these mysteries, it is known that, despite the will to remain segregated from foreigners, the Japanese eventually engaged with the outside world. This engagement spurred the creation of the system of writing known as “Hiragana”. Although they were initially separationists, “the people of the sun have been able to engage meaningfully with foreigners and begin their long climb to becoming a global superpower” (Snear, History of the Japanese Language). When Japan began reaching out to other countries, their world became exponentially larger. They shrugged off the idea of the world being surmised of their small island and expanded their sight throughout Asia and eventually Europe. Their communication was limited due to the technology of the day, though. But soon, with new technology, the world would get bigger still.

My next paper detailed the advent of the airmail system. Before the invention of flight, horse, camel, and cart could move mail no faster than twenty miles per hour, and only over land on established roads or trails. Transit by sea was an option, but it was slow and incredibly expensive. Eventually, the automobile increased transit speed over land, but it was only operable for as long as an individual can drive, and never off-road. “At best, you might cross the country in a few days in a car, a few weeks by boat, months by horse, or years on foot. With an airplane, you can do it six hours and twenty-five minutes, flat; one fourth of a day. That is why airmail has flourished, it plays to the name of the game: speed” (Snear, The History of Airmail). In my research, I discovered that the original airmail was by carrier pigeon, but the first vehicle airmail was by hot air balloon in France. It doesn’t take an expert to discern that balloons are inherently slow. The first airmail flight carried by an actual plane was in the United Kingdom in 1911, which spurred the advent of a scheduled service. The U.S. quickly followed suit with their own service within the year. Eventually, we come to modern days where mail is no longer distinguished between ground and air, because planes carry almost all of it.  At it’s coming, airmail had limited service as the aircraft were imperfectly designed. They were traditionally small, with little fuel and open air cockpits. The two world wars quickened the perfection of air travel and soon the world had the use of modern aircraft that can carry eight hundred thousand pounds at five hundred miles per hour for six thousand miles without refueling. With the ability to cross oceans and continents at such speed, mail, news, objects, and our own selves could reach out to the corners of the earth. Once again, the globe grew.

In my third and final paper, I talked about the search engine and its impact on the internet. The incredible thing about the internet is that it represents the culmination of almost every other piece of electrical innovation. The internet can trace its roots and components to the telegraph, telephone, radio, and countless others. But, “the culmination of these things and the invention of computers and networks were necessary, but not sufficient, steps towards what the internet is today; it was the search engine that made the internet” (Snear, The Search Engine in America). The usefulness of networking was immediately apparent, the most notable being the electronic mail system. By the 1970s, everyone with the available funding began building networks. AT&T created one of the earliest systems known as USENET using the UNIX operating system. BITNET sprung up as a way for academic institutions to communicate. Nearly all other systems were purpose built for specific companies or universities however, and could not be accessed by merely anyone anywhere. Inspired by this lack, Vinton Cerf created the “Transmission Control Protocol” and later the “Internet Protocol”, also known as the “IP” with which we are all familiar. Despite grand scale networking, in this age before the search engine, users had to know exactly what they were looking for. In the initial, professional, networks this worked fine. But, it created an intellectual barrier to entry that the layman user could not overcome. This problem was rectified in 1992, when students from Illinois created the first version of what would later become known as Netscape and other students created the first search engine alongside it. The earliest version was simply a group of kids manually searching out linked webpages and curating them onto one. Soon after, Congress allowed the web to be used for commercial purposes and the need for a more sophisticated search engine became apparent. Today, Google holds the market on search engines. They no longer manually seek out pages, but use sophisticated web-crawling programs to find them. Then, they are curated using an algorithm, “Pagerank”, which determines a page’s rank based on its reputation and links to other reputable pages. Modern men and women can instantly seek out their desires using Google’s search engine, and this above all other technologies has the true size of the world apparent. Not only does this incredible technology show us the scope of our lands and peoples, but it also beholds the finer intricacies of humanity. It has made the world both bigger and more intricate.

Throughout my research, and with the wonderful use of the ePortfolio system, I have traced the growth of information technology from ancient times to the modern era. People who perceived only their small corner of the world have frequently been shown the true size of the earth. Throughout it all, we as humans have continued to grow in scope and wisdom.

 

Citations

Snear, L. S. (2017). History of the Japanese Language. VMI ePortfolio. Retrieved from         https://sites.vmi.edu/snearls17/2017/04/26/history-of-the-japanese-language-writing-1/

Snear, L. S. (2017). The History of Airmail. VMI ePortfolio. Retrieved from https://sites.vmi.edu/snearls17/2017/04/26/the-history-of-airmail-writing-2/

Snear, L. S. (2017). The Search Engine in America. VMI ePortfolio. Retrieved from https://sites.vmi.edu/snearls17/2017/04/26/the-search-engine-in-america-writing-3/