Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Response to "Always Already New"

    For the Gitelman article, I found the context and technicality particularly difficult to understand.  To me, the article seemed to jump topics from early forms of internet then made a choppy transition into errors the early web faced.  Though I learned quite a bit of new information, it was not an easy task to do so.  I did, however, find the section on common issues very interesting due to the fact that they all exist even in the modern internet we use today.
    Anyone who has been online can tell you how frustrating it can be to find that a site you were looking for is out of commission with one or more errors.  Even more frustrating is when the error is unexplained or an unfamiliar problem.  One such error is the infamous 404 error which, I was surprised to learn, is usually an error caused by the site you are trying to navigate.  I had always assumed that a 404 error was a temporary issue that would be resolved in due time or with a new update to software. 
    Though this error was one that I was familiar with, I was more interested in the errors experienced by the early H-bot.  Created to assist students researching specific dates in history, the H-bot experienced issues distinguishing factual information from fictional media.  This is similar to modern Google searches except that we now blame ourselves for searches that turn up fictional media presented in a factual manner.
   This article helped me realize how even as media evolves and becomes stronger, there will always be errors and problems to look out for as we search for information.  In solving one issue, we will find other problems arise to take the place.  Though someday, at the peak of digital media, issues will be few and far between, they will always be a way of remembering where the media has come from.

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