What is this?

Consider this a workspace for socmusi255 to produce a series of useful wiki entries related to digital vernacular music-culture. The class will divide up into groups and choose their preferred terms to research. Individuals will spend 20 minutes on researching their selected term(s). Make sure that you consult at least 3 sources. The group will then spend 15 minutes creating the wiki text and then posting them on the blog.

After everyone's wiki text is posted, the class will reconvene to comment on each of the wiki posts.

Below is a selection of terms organized into groups:

1. UNIVAC, ARPANET, packet switching, punch cards
2. USENET, The WELL, Wired Magazine
3. MP3.com, Napster, Kazaa
4. Google, Yahoo, Netscape, Gopher
5. Telnet, e-mail, the World Wide Web, blog, ICQ
6. AOL, MUDs
7. The Information Superhighway, Y2K, Digital Divide
8. Internet Society (ISOC), Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)
9. dotcom boom and dotcom bust, Silicon Valley
10. cyberpunk (Ghost in the Shell), the Matrix, hacking, X-files episode "Ghost in the Machine"

Some questions to consider when creating the wiki:

• definition
• origin: when, where, what
• main figures: who are they? what do they do?
• organizations: what are they? what contributions do they make?
• history of development
• related media: podcast, video, etc.
  
• references: online, off-line
  
• related links
  

Any of these items can be further broken down into categories of information.

Internet History: the technical, social, and cultural

After doing a search on Internet history, we have discovered that the information on the subject is quite scattered. This reflects the networked or horizontal spread of the nature. We also noticed that there is an emphasis on the technical aspects of the history. We landed upon a recently released animation produced by PICOL on the technical history of the Internet.


History of the Internet from PICOL on Vimeo

As a response, we decided to fill in the blanks by exploring the social and musical aspects of the history, particularly as they pertain to the experience of music in the digital age.