ITN 101 is a whole class about computer networks: how they connect, the Internet, Wi-Fi, and the technical skills involved in building and supporting all of the above. It is worth pausing at the beginning of the semester to contemplate how much our daily lives rely upon these networks—and how much society has changed as a result. What would your life look like without them? Do you ever unplug—or is it too intolerable? Over the next ten days, I will work through ten impacts, starting with the most obvious one.
Communication used to be much slower, often more expensive, and traditional correspondence was usually one-to-one. It could also feel more deliberate.
Before computer networks and the Internet became part of everyday life, people wrote letters with pen and paper, read printed notices and newspapers, and used landline phones. Long-distance calls were billed by the minute and expensive enough that some families scheduled them in advance and watched the clock while they talked. A printed message to another city could take days; an international letter could take weeks.
Of course, telephone, radio, and television systems predated computer networking. They were electronic communication networks, not computer networks, but they helped set the stage. Telephone circuit switching, copper wiring, coaxial cable, and radio transmission all contributed technologies or ideas that computer networks later adapted. I’ll return to telephony itself on Day 10 of this series.
Today, messaging services—including iMessage, RCS, WhatsApp, and countless others—along with email, social media, and video calls make communication nearly instant and inexpensive, even globally. Many modern services are cloud-hosted and designed mobile-first, while users often reach them through Wi-Fi or cellular networks. These services also allow large groups to connect at once. A modern group chat combines immediate conversation, images, video, and a persistent history—capabilities that once required several separate communication systems and much more advance coordination.
Notice that when the cost of sending one additional message approaches zero, delivery stops being the scarce resource and attention becomes the bottleneck. At the same time, digital communication creates new risks and dangers from (mis)information overload, to privacy and surveillance, to possible digital vulnerabilities of critical infrastructure. As much as we may daydream about life before the Internet, there really is no unwind button for society: we live, work, and play in sociotechnical systems that are heavily internetworked today.
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