Digital Diversity Essay -- Writing Composition Education Internet Essa

Digital Diversity Does the international scope of the Internet entail an end to the cultural and historical diversity of style in composition? In the past several decades, technology has led to a giant connected network of computers. This new Internet (and mainly the World Wide Web) has become a new communication and information exchange tool. All data that used to be transmitted by voice, paper, radio, television, or other mass media device can now be done so digitally, and these messages can be personal as well as broad-scoped. Throughout the ages, the style of messages being delivered has reflected upon the culture and history of their origin. Although the Internet reaches most places in the world, it will not homogenize the style of content found on it. Significant portions of the Internet’s origins lie in American history. In the early 1960’s, scientists began to seek a way of better communicating with each other, mainly for the purpose of sharing information in a fast and easy manner. Due to developments in packet switching technology, the concept of wide area computer network could be realized. Researchers at DARPA began work on ARPANET, which, through a series of improvements and modifications, would eventually become the groundwork for the modern Internet. These networks were originally built by connecting one computer at a time, and adding more as they were needed. Still, ARPANET was an American military creation constructed during the Cold War as a faster and more high tech communication framework. However, the other use for the budding Internet was information sharing by scientists all across the globe, not just ones at American institutions. Furthermore, the World Wide Web was developed by Tim Bern... ...the style of others they see because there is an individual inside each computer user who doesn’t want to be the exact same as everyone else. With its global scope, the Internet may end up promoting diversity instead of forcing homogeneity. Bibliography Brenner, Steven E. Perl Routines to Manipulate CGI input http://www.duke.edu/~nss8/cgi-bin/cgi-lib.pl Manovich, Lev, online archive: http://www.manovich.net. Manovich, Lev, The Engineering of Vision from Constructivism to Computers, online Ph.D. Dissertation, 1993. Rubinstein, Geoffery, Printing: History and Development, http://www.digitalcentury.com/encyclo/update/print.html Sherrard, Nathan, online papers: http://www.duke.edu/~nss8/writing20/essays Sherrard, Nathan, The Digital World Sullivan, Danny, Foreign Language Internet Search Engines, http://www.bizforms.com/search.htm