But his move to block the Obama administration through a short-term spending bill needed to keep the government open past Sept. 30 demonstrates that the former Republican presidential candidate remains eager to keep his name in lights
.. “Imagine an internet run like many Middle Eastern countries, that punish what they deem to be blasphemy,” Mr. Cruz warned in a Senate hearing he led earlier this week. “Or imagine an internet run like China or Russia, that punish and incarcerate those that engage in political dissent.”
Technologists and administration officials say Mr. Cruz simply does not understand how the web operates. The government’s current job of domain name administrator is largely clerical and cannot influence editorial decisions on the web, they say.
“It sounds like a fairy tale to anyone who understands how the internet works,” said Andrew Sullivan, chair of the Internet Architecture Board, a nonprofit group of network engineers and tech firms such as Google and Cisco.
.. Some warn that if the plan to transition authority on Oct. 1 is delayed, countries like Russia and China could try to shift domain name responsibilities to the United Nations, giving those nations more influence over global internet policy.
Meet The Man Who Invented The Browser Tab
Adam Stiles recalls “the first tab” and how he came to create the atomic unit of internet navigation.
I wonder if you feel any sense of responsibility or ownership, good or bad, about the culture of tab proliferation that you described? Do you have any personal feelings about it?
I feel entirely neutral about it. Tabbed browsers are just tools. You can use them well, or you can use them poorly. Chrome is now my favorite browser, and I have a reasonable number of tabs open. I don’t have a personal problem with tab proliferation. If I did, maybe I’d try to solve that too.
The age of stream of consciousness — and insanity
My point, which I hope is obvious by now, is that such streams of consciousness describe the beginnings of too many of my mornings, and probably many of yours, too. Need I say this is insanity? It’s little wonder that the human attention span is minimized at the bottom right of your screen. Or that today’s children, who have known no other way of being, are so jacked up, agitated and distracted that they need amphetamines to calm them down. (Whatever happened to running laps?)
.. Much has been written about the effects of the Internet on our minds and culture, including Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains.” Not only are we forging new neural pathways in the brain, but we’re also losing the capacity to absorb and retain complex information.
Computers and the Internet may make us smarter in some ways, as neuroscience finds, but baby boomers who grew up with three channels and rabbit ears are the last generation to have been formed primarily by books requiring lengthy, focused attention, as well as the experiential learning that comes from engaging one’s imagination rather than navigating someone else’s often-bizarre, interactive digital fictions.
Tim Berners-Lee’s Announcement of the WWW, 25 years ago
In article <1991Aug…@ardor.enet.dec.com> kan…@ardor.enet.dec.com (Nari Kannan) writes:
>
> Is anyone reading this newsgroup aware of research or development efforts
in
> the
> following areas:
>> 1. Hypertext links enabling retrieval from multiple heterogeneous sources
of
> information?The WorldWideWeb (WWW) project aims to allow links to be made to any
information anywhere. The address format includes an access method
(=namespace), and for most name spaces a hostname and some sort of path.We have a prototype hypertext editor for the NeXT, and a browser for line mode
terminals which runs on almost anything. These can access files either locally,
NFS mounted, or via anonymous FTP. They can also go out using a simple protocol
(HTTP) to a server which interprets some other data and returns equivalent
hypertext files. For example, we have a server running on our mainframe
http://cernvm.cern.ch/ in WWW syntax) which makes all the CERN computer
center documentation available. The HTTP protocol allows for a keyword search
on an index, which generates a list of matching documents as annother virtual
hypertext document.If you’re interested in using the code, mail me. It’s very prototype, but
available by anonymous FTP from info.cern.ch. It’s copyright CERN but free
distribution and use is not normally a problem.The NeXTstep editor can also browse news. If you are using it to read this,
then click on this: <http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html> to find
out more about the project. We haven’t put the news access into the line mode
browser yet.We also have code for a hypertext server. You can use this to make files
available (like anonymous FTP but faster because it only uses one connection).
You can also hack it to take a hypertext address and generate a virtual
hypertext document from any other data you have – database, live data etc. It’s
just a question of generating plain text or SGML (ugh! but standard) mark-up on
the fly. The browsers then parse it on the fly.The WWW project was started to allow high energy physicists to share data,
news, and documentation. We are very interested in spreading the web to other
areas, and having gateway servers for other data. Collaborators welcome! I’ll
post a short summary as a separate article.
Tim Berners-Leeti…@info.cern. ch
World Wide Web projectTel: +41(22)767 3755
CERNFax: +41(22)767 7155
1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland (usual disclaimer)