World Wide Atlus: A roadmap of the past, the present, and the future of the internet (Final Project)

Everyday millions and millions of Americans connect to the World Wide Web. Be it from a home computer, an office PC, or a top-of-the-line mobile phone, people are connecting to the internet each day to satisfy even the most rudimentary of their needs. Even at this moment, everyone from ten year-olds to senior citizens are checking their email, their stock quotes, movie showtimes, and world news through a few simple button presses.

Such an incredible number of people rely on the internet for so much these days. For many children of the late 80s and early 90s, it would be near impossible to imagine going through a day without checking their MySpace page or doing research for projects via the web. Yet to children born in the last few years, today’s internet will appear archaic compared to the inevitable changes coming in the next decade alone.

With the advent of blogs, the gradual movement of journalism to a more online format, and the emergence of popular user-fueled sites such as YouTube, the web is already going through several changes which could eventually lead the web to be near-unrecognizable to future users. The easiest way to understand these changes is to begin by looking at the past.

The Past

Above: J.C.R. Licklider, founder of the project that eventually became the World Wide Web

The origins of the internet can be found in the earlier years of the 60s. In 1960, J.C.R. Licklider published a paper titled “Man Computer Symbiosis.” The paper dealt with the concept that computers should be developed so as to increase communication options between people and computers across the country. After publishing his work, Licklider was contacted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA, to work with a group of scientists on creating a network based on the paper.

In 1969, the project came to its first major breakthrough with the creation of a network of communicating computers called ARPANET. ARPANET, or the Advanced Projects Research Agency Network was the seed that eventually grew into what is now the internet. At the time, however, APRANET was strictly limited to use by the Department of Defense and as such the public had no access to it until the 90s.

Above: Creator of Hypertext, Tim Berners-lee

That all changed in 1991 when M.I.T. graduate Tim Berners-lee created the hypertext code which we use today. Hypertext allowed browser users to see documents and images on web pages without having to first download the assets to their computers. As a result, the internet was sped up immensely and, through the steady progression of new and better browsers, more and more non-computer savvy users could navigate the web with ease.

Since the mid 90s, the number of people using the web has grown exponentially. As of 1996, 45 million people were using the internet. Today that number has grown to well-over 800 million persons across the globe.

The Present

Within two decades of the internet’s emergence into the public eye, the world has evolved to embrace and incorporate it. Advertisers have slowly been decreasing the amount of ads they put on television and used that marketing money to move into the online arena. The daily lives of many people now include using the web before leaving the house alongside of basic functions such as getting dressed and eating breakfast.

While the convenience of the internet is certainly apparent to everyone who has ever had to sent an email or retrieved files from a home computer in a pinch, what the future holds is still unknown. However, there are many opinions as to what awaits web-users in the upcoming decade.

The Future

A serious matter regarding the future of the World Wide Web is that of net neutrality. To those who are not familiar with net neutrality, it is the idea that those who use the internet are guaranteed the same freedoms and services to navigate the web as everyone else. However, as of recently there have been serious concerns regarding the safety of this ideal.

Above: A brief video explaining net neutrality

Websites such as Save the Internet have made it their goal to raise awareness of net neutrality and prevent major corporations from limiting access to the web. The public outcry for the safety of net neutrality has been high all over the web. A search for “net neutrality” on YouTube yields several hundred results while searches in Google provide pages and pages of papers arguing for further government regulation of the internet safety program.

Yet while many are concerned currently over web censorship, there are those who wish to look at the future of the World Wide Web not with paranoia, but rather eager optimism.


Numerous people in the press have speculated that the printed word will gradually transition into being all focused on the web. According to these people, by 2020 the greater bulk of newspapers will have consolidated all their resources into catering to the online community. While it is uncertain whether this is a feasible fate for printed publications, there are certainly major publications such as the BBC which place high emphasis on their online site. The website for the BBC News allows users to read articles in over 33 languages ranging from English to Arabic.

At the same time, there are journalists who claim that the future of their enterprise lies not with anchormen and local editors, but rather within the blogosphere itself. Sites such as the Huffington Post, which takes a more subjective approach towards the news, employs professional bloggers and well-known celebrities as its staff. In South Korea, the popular website OhMyNews hosts news blogs and articles submitted by readers.

The most promising aspect of the news blog community lies not with mere content, but actually the readers themselves. When a popular and interesting news story is posted, the story may have significant draw due to its content. However, without a readership willing to spread news of the article, it may simply fade into obscurity. This is where popular sites such as Digg.com come into play.

Through sites such as Digg.com, users are able to submit popular news stories which they find interesting. Soon more users read the same story and submit a "dig," which leads to the story gaining more prominence on the Digg.com official website. This cycle of viewing and recommending keeps news that users find interesting at the forefront of discussion for possibly weeks beyond its original post. In this way articles often lost in other formats such as printed word have lasting appeal to the masses.

However, there are some issues with Digg.com. Since the users decide what stories belong on the main page for visitors to read, all too often the main page can be dominated by stories which are goofy and irrelevant to real world topics. For example, last year one of the most recommended stories on the website involved not politics, but crustaceans. Or rather, the exercise methods they practice:



The video "Shrimp on a Treadmill," seen above, remained the top recommended story on Digg.com for several weeks. While stories regarding the Bush administration and foreign policy dotted the page on a daily basis, the video reigned as champion for almost a month.

For now irreverent joke stories and amusing photoshops may be found on the most visited pages online, this does not mean that true journalistic content is not popular. On top blog sites, articles from major publications such as the Washington Post and the New York Times are often ample and replied with comments from devoted readers. Regulars of Digg.com often recommend interesting articles from sites like CNN.com and BBC News. Through this, stories often regulated to one page suddenly show up referenced and linked-to on dozens upon dozens of personal and public blog sites all over the web.

While it is still far too early to know what the future really holds for the internet, it is easy to see the path it is on now and make an educated guess. With a significantly increased emphasis on user-controlled content sites and interaction with the digital media in the last few years alone, the web will continue to draw in more people. Everyday polls are hosted on important news sites and the media welcomes their comments on major news articles. And because of the mass appeal and influence of the World Wide Web, their opinions will be heard louder than ever.

Chernobyl receives another burial.

Above: A ferris wheel on the outskirts of Chernobyl remains untouched
for over twenty years.

While we are all certainly thankful for the technology in our lives, we often forget the dangers posed by the world around us. Some of the readers of this blog may be too young to remember the terror inspired by the events at the Chernobyl nuclear reactor in the late 80s, while to many others the name "Chernobyl" conjures up nightmares of nuclear disaster.

For those unfamiliar with the horrific events of 1986, the events that unraveled at Chernobyl have forever changed the area of its impact into a barren wasteland. The failure of a nuclear reactor in late April of that year led to scores of people dying and to the radiation poisoning of several hundred thousand Ukrainians. To this day, much of the countryside remains deserted and infant mortality rates due to radiation are still high. More can be read here.

Above: An image from the abandoned neighboring city of Pripyat

An article posted Sunday on Yahoo! news chronicles the start of new construction Chernobyl. According to the article, titled "Doomed Chernobyl reactor to be buried in new coffin," states that a $505 million project maned by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has gone underway. The project aims to build a new shelter over the preexisting one encasing the reactor. The current shelter has been leaking radiation out for several years now and it is hoped that this new shelter will stop the issue of leakage once and for all.

It's important that people know about the horrors of Chernobyl. There are several websites which chronicle the event, but there is also a Discovery Channel documentary on the 1986 disaster. Hosted on YouTube.com, the documentary can be seen here.

A tiny slice of my childhood for you.

When I was a child, I was a real nerd - not that this should come as a surprise, mind you. I played chess, was likely the worst soccer goalie in the history of the sport, and read science fiction novels by the box-load. However, amongst the many tomes of fantasy and sci-fi novels I read was a series by Douglas Adams titled The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.


Some of you are no doubt familiar with the title. Maybe some of you actually read the tongue-in-cheek comedy series when you were growing up. Perhaps a few of you saw the movie adaptation that came out about three years ago (which is not bad, honestly). Regardless of whether or not the novels are familiar to you, they have always had a real cult following through the years. Truth be told, there was even a video game adaptation created in 1988.


The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Video Game came around in the era of text-based adventures. Far before the Nintendo hit American shores and every five-year old was playing Mario/Duckhunt, fans of Douglas Adam's hit novels were playing an interactive version of the first book in the series. In the game, the player plays through the game by giving instructions to it. For example, in the first scene the player is in pitch black room. By typing in "turn on light," the player continues forward.

So why am I mentioning all this to you? Well, BBC Radio 4 has created a new version of the classic game in honor of the 20th anniversary of the first book. It's web based, so there's no downloading necessary. This version of the game even gives the player a visual representation of where they are in the game. I really recommend that you give it a try. Who knows, you might even have a chuckle or two.

Are you wasting money too?

With the US economy slipping into a recession (or to the claim of many, already in one), a lot of people are doing the wise thing and saving up their money for tougher times. However according to an article from BBC News, some of us are still buying more than a few frivolous things.

In an article titled "Video games immune to US slowdown," it is reported that while our economy's currently is in a bad place, video game sales are way up. According to the article, $1.7 billion was spent on video game consoles, games, and accessories this month alone. At the top of those sales was the Nintendo Wii which sold 720,000 units.

At least it's nice to know I'm not the only person wasting valuable money on these time-wasters. The above article can be read here.

Leave the laptop behind.

Have you ever felt like going on a vacation, leaving all of your excessive electronic gadgets behind, and just enjoying wilderness? An article over at Forbes.com has given some great vacation ideas of where to go and what to do. Seeing that summer vacation is almost here for Rowan students, now would not be a bad time to start looking at some good hot spots.

The article, titled "World's Ultimate Unplugged Vacations," can be read here.

Military theft on the web; Hackers become more organized

I have come across two articles of note that deal with a common concern for web-users these days: online fraud and theft. Both articles were found on TopTechNews.com and while they are very short reads, I recommend taking a look at them.

The first article, titled "Stolen Military Equipment Found on Ebay," deals with investigators coming across items of military origin posted on both Craigslist and Ebay. The items themselves are on a U.S. Munitions list. While they are not exactly rifles or harmful weapons, they do range from hazmat suits to parts from F-14 fighter jets. The article in its entirety can be read here.

The second article is just as worrying. Titled "Online Crooks Face Tough Competition," the article claims that identity theft criminals are in such strong competition that they are going as far as actually organizing into more formal business operations. It's gotten to a point where they actually sell credit card information in bulk for low prices and are competing with one another for customers. The article can be read here.

Profile: Gregory Olsen

Photo courtesy of MSNBC

Everyone has had a childhood dream of becoming something amazing. Some children want to become veterinarians, while others play with fire trucks and daydream about putting out flames and saving lives. Yet for many growing boys, the greatest dream of all has been the desire to go into space. While only a few chosen elite can claim such a boisterous accomplishment, one jersey native achieved such an amazing goal only a few years ago.

Originally from Brooklyn, NY, Gregory Olsen was born in 1945. Shortly after being born, Olsen’s family made the trip from New York and decided to settle down in New Jersey. He attended Ridgefield Park High School where he soon became known as a troubled student. He received low grades in high school and was even convicted as a juvenile delinquent after being caught stealing hubcaps. Soon after this he turned his life around, dramatically increased his grade point average, and even went off to college. After graduating from Fairleigh Dickinson University, he went off to the University of Virginia where he received a PhD in Materials Science.

After college, Olsen went through a wide variety of career ventures. From 1972 to 1983, he worked as a research scientist at RCA Labs and developed new crystal growth methods for optoelectronic devices. In 1984, he founded a fiber-optic detector manufacturer titled EPITAXX and later also founded an infrared camera manufacturer. The two companies were bought and sold multiple times, raising hundreds of millions of dollars each time.

The successful entrepreneur didn’t fully achieve his dreams, however, until but a few years ago. After over five months and 900 hours of training at the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Moscow, Olsen was prepared to take off for the International Space Station. On October 1, 2005, Gregory Olsen left the Earth on a Russian rocket and became the third private citizen to orbit the Earth.

For ten days he was a guest at the International Space Station where he orbited the Earth over 150 times. Although some branded him as a “space tourist,” Olsen deplored the term. Prior to taking off from the launch pad, he was quoted as saying:

”The term ‘tourist’ doesn’t do justice to all the work I’ve put in, or the work that the people at the Gagarin centre put in preparing us.”

Featured above: Greg Olsen has a drink of water on the ISS

When he returned to Earth on October 11, Olsen returned to his job as founder and manager of GHO Ventures. At GHO Ventures, Olsen runs a series of programs and initiatives called Angel Investments. These programs range from an education program called Achieve 3000 to a company called Princeton Power Systems which produces electrical power conditioners.

Since that time, he has gone from school to school, discussing the details of his space trip as well as the space race and the possibilities for the future of space travel. He recently gave an in-depth interview with Kim Nagy of the Wild River Review where he talked about the particulars of his experiences in space. On March 27, Olsen visited Rowan University where he gave a lecture on these topics to students in the Rowan Hall auditorium.

In his Rowan Hall lecture, Olsen spoke to teachers and aspiring students alike about not only the intense training he underwent in order to go into space, but also the need to be determined.

"The lesson I learned when I was 60 was the same I learned when I was 16: don't give up," said Olsen. "Don't give up; that's really the secret to life. There's a lot of reasons why you can't do something and only one reason why you can and that is not giving up."

Featured above: Jim Clash (of Forbes) interviews Greg Olsen (2005)