Blog 1: How Do We Map the Internet?

I've never thought of the internet as being a physical entity. It's always just been there. I can remember back in elementary school my phy. ed. teacher also became the computer lab teacher. That was my school's way of adapting into a new technology. We sat in the lab and learned how to search using "http://www." and including "and" between every word in our search. We also learned how to search for ClipArt using Microsoft Word. That is where the internet entered my life.

Where did the Internet begin for you?

I've had many of the same questions that Andrew Blum shares throughout the first two chapters in Tubes, but unlike him I've never sought to find out more. I found it eye-opening when he related to the internet as "tubes", when I've always imagined it as a "cloud" like many others. Blum discusses how the Internet has "infinite number of edges, but a shockingly small number of centers." While we can come up with many different edges of the Internet and all the places we can go using the Internet. It is difficult to come up with the center, or the beginning. Blum ability to find those centers is astounding, and his interpretation along the way allows us to understand the Internet in new form.

As Blum begins his mapping in Milwaukee, I found a sense of pride being from the Midwest and having a parent from Brookfield. To say that the map of the Internet begins there, goes against many other peoples theories of beginning in Silicon Valley. I appreciate his connections to various people who were catalysts for the Internet and the beginning of a network. It's clear that the founders of the Internet never anticipated it becoming what it is today. These networks have become physical, logical, and geographical and Blum dives into each of these realms.

I appreciate all of his definitions of various Internet related terms. Referring to Auer's job to connect "the Internet" as reading "the destination of a packet of data and send it along one of two paths". That sounds so simple, yet in my head when I think of the path of sending an email to my professor I imagine a jumble of paths that somehow are organized and insanely fast and efficient. I understand that everything begins with a first and last step, but I don't understand the in between when it comes to the internet.

Why is the origin of the Internet unclear and why is there no single founder?