Hello and welcome to Internet History,
Technology and Security.
I'm Charles Severance and I'll be your
instructor for this class.
So I always like to think about when I
design a class like who should take this
class and lots of classes and various
things, different levels, online, these
MOOCs, some are junior level classes.
This is really kind of like a late high
school early college class.
It's a survey class, and we're going to
learn a bunch of things.
And, who should take this class?
And the answer I think is absolutely
everyone.
We use this Internet, we touch this
Internet, you're watching this video over
this Internet.
It's going to be a bigger and bigger part
of our lives as time goes by.
We just should all know something about
it.
We don't have to be super programmers, and
believe me, even though this is a
technology class, we're going to talk
about technical things.
We're going to talk about packets and
retransmissions and you'll be surprised at
how much cool stuff we learn in this
class, but there's no math.
This is not a math class.
There's no programming.
You're not going to write any code.
We're going to learn stuff and we're going
to talk about that.
And so it's really to make you think.
It's really to get to the point where you
understand the internet well enough that
you can talk about it and reason about it.
This course came about because I have some
video and I really believe that history
is, history's kind of weird and lumpy.
At least the parts of history that I know
and have been a part of.
When people do something on PBS and talk
about the history of the internet, or
history of technology.
They, they tend to simplify.
It's like they turn into sound bites, and
the real history is kind of lumpy and
actual people who do the innovation are,
are sometimes just curious people.
They're not sort of Not necessarily
successful, they're not, necessarily
wealthy, but they're very curious.
So what I wanted to do in this class is
not try to compress it down to just a
couple of bullet points.
But actually introduce to people that have
done things.
And let you draw your own conclusions.
Let them, in their own words, describe
what it is.
And give them 8, 10, or even 15 minutes,
to explain to you what it was that they
did.
And then you can take, and then reflect on
that.
And we'll do that together, how this all,
all works.
I would like to start, talking about who I
am, so you get to know who I am.
I have a particular teaching style, as you
will you will soon find out.
I am from the university of Michigan.
Place is important.
While you'll be taking, you'll be taking
this all over the world, and that's
wonderful and I'm glad you're watching.
I teach at the University of Michigan in
the lovely building here on the north
campus, called the North Quad.
We call it Quadwarts as a joke.
It's if you ever get to Ann Arbor, walk
through the building, it's just absolutely
gorgeous.
And I teach this material in this very
classroom that's actually 2255 North Quad.
And, you know, if you took this class from
me on campus, there I would be standing,
you know, saying hi to you and talking.
I hope I'm a little bigger now, I'm, I'm
like this big, I'm bigger now, I might, I
might even be on a fullscreen, a big
screen TV.
But I teach this material, at the
University of Michigan, where I'm,
clinical associate professor, that used
the clinical means that I'm focused more
on teaching and, and leadership then, then
research.
Actually teaching and learning is my
research.
I've written a bunch of books and I'm very
active in our teaching and in the
development of a new undergraduate program
in information a bachelors of science
information that we're, we're developing.
So, to give a little history.
Like I mentioned I have this video
collection of all these people.
And I got this video collection because in
1995, right after the internet was just
getting started.
I wanted to tell people about it.
I mean, we in academia had known about it
since the late 80s.
But I just wanted everyone to know.
I was like this Internet is cool and it's
a new way of thinking and all these
things.
And so, I had friends that worked in a
cable industry and me with my co-host,
Richard Wiggins, who you will see some of
his videos as well.
We need to put the series of television
shows over a several, your period that
were produced by cable companies with the,
the secret plan of, promoting cable
modems, meaning we would sit and we would
sit on the set and you can see on the set
there is this little cable modem now
hopefully your cable modem is little
smaller and hopefully your cable modem is
little more reliable or your network
connection is more reliable and we would
sit and we would go like.
And look how fast our network is because
of this awesome cable modem.
So that one of the excuses that the cable
companies made to show was to feature
cable modems.
Now that the cable modems are barely
working you, you can sometimes watch the
old videos and see sweat pouring off our
heads and that's because we did things
over and over and over.
And finally, the, finally the cable modem
would work, but, you know now I think
things are a little more reliable than
they were.
And so, we love this notion of sharing,
and in 1994, 95, 96 you know, and even 97,
98, the Internet was a small place and the
people doing, doing all the innovation and
fooling around and stuff were very
accessible.
So it appeared we had a television show.
It wasn't, you know, as, it was, it was in
a million homes.
It was, it was distributed around the
country for a while.
Techtv came out and then that kind of
ruined us.
But we had cameras, and we would go get a
hold of people.
Meet them at a conference or something and
stick a camera in their face, and say, I
want to talk to you.
And so we've got, we've got, you know, Tim
Burner's Lee and we'll meet Tim later, and
James Wells, one of the founding people in
early real audio.
And we would just ask these people
questions.
And then we'd ask them what they thought,
what the future was going to be like.
And so we'll meet a lot of people
throughout the class, but I wanted to give
you, one person, that sort of, really
inspired, and he's not somebody that you
would even know.
And so, here's James Wells, of Real Audio.
>> The web is basically a silent movie.
Now, voice has been available, audio has
been available on the web, as downloadable
files.
Per some point in time, but there's a real
issue with this problem that, if, for
example, you know, a five minute segment
that you want to listen to, it takes 25
minutes for the 14-4 modem to download
that segment.
That's before you even know whether you
want to listen to it or not.
>> Mm-hm.
>> So what if you could take that segment
and in say, 2 or 3 seconds, be listening
to the real, the real audio on demand, at
the place that you want to listen.
It allows the idea of what we call narrow
casting.
That is to take information In a very
inexpensive way, and get into very
specific points of interest and targets.
Another large a user of, of real audio is
education.
You know, distance learning, the ability
to, to provide a learning environment over
time, and over space.
>> [inaudible] Johnny Green.
Johnny Green heading towards the end zone.
Touchdown.
>> [laugh] I tell you, that's pretty neat.
And you can sense the excitement even over
14,4 modem and if you look you can see the
little lights blinking.
And that is actually the data.
That's being transferred back and forth.
They just, it just amazes me, how much
information they can get over 14-4 modem.
Its the quantity that I was told is about
like AM radio.
Is that, is that the best quality there we
are going to see over that modem.
>> No, as a matter of fact, the 2 ohm
release which Mr.
Wells talked about is, is now available.
Has what they claimed to be approaching CD
quality.
>> So that was James Wells and it's really
quite exciting.
He talked about, I mean, when he's
talking, he's talking about a modem that
was 14-4 and sending audio over a 14-4
modem and yet one of the first thoughts in
people's mind at that moment was how to
teach with this stuff and how we could
teach people all around the world and.
Education is such a primal thing that we
humans do and so you, we take a look at
this Internet and we go like, okay, that's
a thing we're going to use for education
and of course ironically, here we are.
Another thing that I do is I write a
monthly column for IEEE computer magazine
called Computing Conversations.
And some of the videos that you will see
are part of IEEE Computer funding me to
travel around and produce these videos of
Internet and computer technology
luminaries and they've also graciously
allowed me to give you the copies of the
articles and so you can read these
articles as well.
And so it's I really appreciate their
willingness to let me share these with
this course.
So my research area is teaching and
learning with technology and so it's kind
of ironic.
And so as soon as I saw the James Wells
thing I'm thinking I need to build
software that will do this.
And so I had this software and in the 19,
1996 where I mean, we couldn't even send
video at that point.
So I had this, like, kind of scary picture
of me staring at you, in the upper
left-hand corner.
And then the slides would flip over here.
And it all ran over a 14-4 modem in 1996.
And I built this software, it's called
Sync-o-matic.
It doesn't even work anymore.
But, but it allowed me in 1996 to teach an
entire class online.
And so I've been fascinated doing this for
a long time.
And, and I also in 1999, I switched jobs
from Michigan State University to the
University of Michigan.
And I rewrote my software using Quicktime
on Apple, and that was called Clip Board
2000, It was actually a pretty bold piece
of software.
It had video by then.
Would record it, we could scribble on the
slides, I mean we're doing this right now.
But this was 1999, which is nearly 15
years ago now.
I tried to give it to Apple.
Have 'em make it part of their operating
system.
But nobody really thought that you know,
online teaching and learning, what, what
the heck is that.
So it sort of didn't.
So I, I've been doing this for a long
time.
And so we start out, I mean I was on a
television program in the 90s.
I built this software to do teaching and
learning.
More software to do teaching and learning.
I stepped out and did the, open source
learning management system called Sakai
that some of you may have used.
I worked on standards for interoperability
particularly a standard called IMS
Learning Tools and Interoperability that
should be coming soon to the learning
system near you.
And then, here we are, right?
We are in Cuorsera at the end of all this
stuff.
And so for me, this is wonderful right?
This is really been something that I've
been wishing that I could do my whole
life, is teach online.
And I've been building and making fiddling
around, doing all kinds of things, just to
get so I could teach online.
So I'm honored that you're sharing this
class with me.
I'm a pretty OpenWeb 2.0 guy.
I kind of treat my whole life like a
reality show through some combination of
Twitter and YouTube and you can see, see,
silly videos of me doing various things.
I wrote, I'm just so arrogant that I wrote
a autobiography of myself, at, at my young
age, called Sakai Free is Freedom, and
that, that was me fooling around on the
Sakai Project and it was very emotional
and very awesome and very innovative and
so I just wrote it down.
Nobody buys the book and you don't have to
buy the book either.
I figure it's for history.
Somebody later will buy it and wow, I'm
glad this guy wrote all this stuff down.
You can see the stuff of me on YouTube,
silly stuff of me.
You can see my world travel.
And I'm a big fan of Karaoke and there's
some of my friends karaokeing.
I've never take pictures of myself
karaokeing, I just picked.
Take pictures of everyone else.
And so the last thing I'll leave you with
is the iPad steering wheel mount and like
raise your hand if you've seen this
before.
This is my own attempt at viral video.
I did it as part of a class I was teaching
on how to make viral videos, and it turned
out to be moderately viral.
Interestingly I've made more money off of
this viral video.
Than I have off of my book.
So that just gives you a sense of how
things are valued in the modern times.
And so, I'll stop there and welcome you to
the course.
Coming up next we're going to have a
lecture that sort of talks about the
grading and other things like that.
So, see you in a bit.