Reliability: Packets & Routers

We've learned a bit about the communication potential of a timed system of strategically shared 1s & 0s. We've undertaken an immense thought experiment by considering the actual physicality of the internet, discovering that  it moves packets of information via electricity, light, and waves. We've explored some essential ideas about the adaptability of the internet. 

We've also gone all philosophical by hearing from software engineers and an early internet designer, who explain that the internet was shaped by a design philosophy so that it is open.This openness to participation also also makes the internet vulnerable to hacking.

Recently, we learned that the internet was designed so that it will scale to user needs. Now, in a timely conversation that seems perfectly addressed to our current COVID-19 related challenges regarding our abilities to communicate, educate, compose, design, share, and stay informed by content on the internet, we'll explore just how reliable the internet is.

In response to today's video, we'll break into groups to discuss how important internet reliability is and has been to us in 2020, given the particular challenges of a global pandemic, and, more recently, the wildfires creating new information needs, especially in the Western United States. 

I'm going to call the short clip, above, my "Making Sense of My Mess" textual representation (see Covert, Ch 1 exercise). This is my actual workspace, and the familiar objects with which I orient myself to the world via the internet. The faded icons represent the persistent likes, loves, and current informational structures that are shaping my experience of the pandemic. We'll discuss, and hopefully this will inspire ideas about how you're experiencing and processing data toward the hopeful goal of interacting with and producing useful and reliable information to the users and stakeholders in your academic, civic, personal, and professional lives.