Response to Jojo Frey : Blog 1

Peer Response to Jojo's Response on:

Castells, Manuel. The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2001. 9-34. Print.

[done in 2nd person in response to Jojo's blog entry here]

In terms of Castells chapter, “Lessons from the History of the Internet”, he touches on a history of the Internet in a minimal number of pages in regards to the drastic innovations that actually took place.

As a dense timeline of events, I feel that you wall captured the overall evolution of the Internet going from the ARPANET and what Internet is now, in the first paragraph presented in your response. The fact that in the response you briefly summarized the overall successes and reasons for the evolution of the Internet made it easier to comprehend the vast number of events.

I found it interesting that you brought up the governmental and academic natures because for my reading it tended to go over my head- and then linking it to the questions of who uses the Internet more nowadays highlighted your overall critique and understanding of Castells chapter. As you mentioned in your final paragraph, the APARNET was initially created for the military, and how the example in 2010 with WikiLeaks.com and the released classified documents from the Pentagon regarding the Iraq war relates to the same usage of technological communications. The fact that you questioned the use of military technology exemplified your critique of the use of Internet in modern times in relation to the distribution of information, as you mentioned the negative aspects of the U.S military.
I found it fascinating that you explored this side of technology, as it was one that I sort of skimmed over through my reading as I thought more about the social aspect as opposed to relating to the initial purpose of APARTNET and what eventually became what we now call Internet.

Your ability to relate the two time periods I found to show a very concise understanding of the text and putting the examples that Castells listed into your own curiosity context.

Word Count: 311