A quick and dirty introduction to the history and possibility of a shared, open web.

1. The Digital Commons
(Not Yet) A Tragedy

2. Andrea Rehn
@profrehn
Dir of Whittier’s Digital Liberal Arts Program

3. But first, some
baby sheep

4. Before the Enclosure
Movement, sheep roamed
freely in shared spaces, the
commons.

5. Before the Enclosure
Movement, sheep roamed
freely in shared spaces, the
commons.
I’m
Freeeeee!

6. But then, the
commons were
privatized and
enclosed--by
law.

7. “The increase of pasture by which your sheep, which
are naturally mild, and easily kept in order, may be
said now to devour men and unpeople, not only
villages, but towns; for wherever it is found that the
sheep of any soil yield a softer and richer wool than
ordinary, there the nobility and gentry, and even those
holy men... stop the course of agriculture, destroying
houses and towns – reserving only the churches –
and enclose grounds that they may lodge their sheep
in them.”
Thomas More, Utopia (1516)

8. Will we allow the Enclosure
of the
Digital Commons?

9. What are “digital commons?”
Are the internet and the world wide web the same thing?
Who owns the internet? The Web?
Where is the internet? The Web?
How do companies make money on the Web?
What does government have to do with the Web?
What does the Web mean for individual identity?

10. Brief History of the Network
1969: ARPAnet
1983: TCP/IP makes WWW possible
1984: Apple MacIntosh launched (personal computing)
1990: HTML & URL invented by Tim Berners-Lee (and
others)
1998: Google founded
2003: Total Information Awareness
2013: Aaaron Swartz, Edward Snowden & Wikileaks

11. What are these things?
Internet:
Web Server:
Website:
Domain Name:
Browser:
World-Wide Web:
Web 2.0:

12. Internet: Cables that connect computers via a Network (the roads & highways)
Web Server: Computer connected to Internet that stores and shares information
Website (Domain): Location on a Server (your house)
Domain Names: Address of a website (your street address)
Browser: Reads code of website and displays as words, graphics, videos, etc.
(GUI)
World-Wide Web (Tim Berners-Lee): Open Source information space navigated
via the Internet using URLs and hyperlinks
Web 2.0: GUI sites emphasizing user-generated content and interconnectivity

13. What is COMMON in the Digital commons?

14. The Role of
Government
1969-1980s: ARPAnet
1996: Telecommunications
Act
2003: Total Information
Awareness
2013: WikiLeaks, etc.
2014: Net Neutrality

16. A Declaration of the Independence of
Cyberspace
https://projects.eff.org/~barlow/Declaration-Final.html

17. The role of commerce
“In the first quarter of 2015 Google took in $17.3 billion in revenue, up
12% year over year. Nearly all of it -- $15.5 billion -- came from
advertising sales.”
The Motley Fool

18. Why do NETWORKS matter?

19. The Machine is Us(ing) Us
by
Michael Wesch
https://youtu.be/NLlGopyXT_g

21. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

22. What Does Web 2.0 Change?
Participatory Culture
Privacy/Security and the Commons
Wikipedia, Crowd-sourcing, and Paywalls
Open Source, Open Access Movement
Identity and Community
Attention, Human Connection, Our Brains
Trolling, Doxxing, Commenting
Internet Anonymity, Pseudonymity, and Real
Names
Youtube, Uber, & Monetizing the “Sharing
Economy”
Creative Commons and Copyright

23. https://whittier.domains: Own Your Data, Own Your Domain

24. A Vision of Students Today
by
Michael Wesch
https://youtu.be/dGCJ46vyR9o

25. Quinn Norton Thursday 4:30pm
Aaron Swartz, founder of Reddit