Information wants to be free.

It’s nice when a class starts with a quote, because then it sets a clear standard for the rest of the lesson. It helps to have a topic to think back on if the class was discussing something that might have been too confusing for you, which is a problem that I often struggle with, but thankfully I was able to keep up with where the discussion was going for this class, at least for the most part.

So the idea of information wanting to be free is something that was passed around by computer experts. I will admit that the philosophical implications of this class interests me far more than the technical details, but that is mainly because of my own ignorance in such matters. The idea of information wanting to be free is that information should be shared, it deserves to be shared, and the sharing of information could benefit the world.

What was interesting was that we spent a significant amount of time discussing the history of the internet again, bringing up vacuum tubes and transistors that we discussed in previous classes, but here it was given a more streamlined presentation. We learned how vacuum tubes were quite primitive, generating heat and needing to build energy, while transistors were able to run on batteries and were smaller than the vacuum tubes. This not only helped with the development of computers, but other technologies such as television and radio. Transistor radios can be carried anywhere and run on batteries, two aspects that the vacuum tube radios lacked.  We also talked about how the transistors would eventually lead to microchips.

It’s interesting to see how the internet was born from ARPANET. The development of the Cold War lead to organizations needing to trade information quickly over vast distances, What’s interesting is how this tied into the idea of information wanting to be free. Professor O’Malley pointed out that information being free to share was preferable for a lot of people. The exchange of information between experts could lead to new ideas, or improving previous theories and such.

We ended the class with Professor O’Malley showing us examples of how the early internet was quite different from now, including how he worked the HTTP and similar matters for his classes. It was a nice look, mainly because it reminded me of my father’s old computer screens that I saw as a child. I am curious about what the next class will be about, considering the swerve Professor O’Malley mentioned as we left.