The required AccessScience reading dealt with the internet and gave a brief overview and summary of the internet. Since our generation was the first to grow up with the internet, I felt that the article was more a less a reminder of things I knew through experience of previous technology classes. The article was also dated in some ways, talking about chat rooms, older connection speeds, and the new fangled electronic mail. The part of the article I found most interesting was about ICANN and the domain name system.
The article I found dealt with ICANN and it's decision to alter or update the current domain naming system. The article, published on the Internet Corporations for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), discusses the recent board approval of a revamped domain name naming system. For the majority of the internet's short history, there have been 22 primary domain names within the system - ranging from .com to .org to .edu. However, this summer (2011) the ICANN board decided to expanded the naming system beyond the generic top-level domains. The expansion of the domain name system will alter the way people search and use the internet, as well as the way business and markets structure their online presence. Under the new rules, any pretty much any word or combination of letters can be used to end a web address. The board will begin to accept new naming systems from Jan. to April of 2012. While a shorter article, I found it helpful to see what exactly the recent decision entailed. I remember hearing about the possibility of the system changing and allowing any ending. While I don't necessarily agree with the change, as I think it will create a good deal of confusion, I can see how the 22 domain names could be a limitation as our society becomes more and more web based.
Justin notes that the Access Science article on the Internet is basically a lot of knowledge that we've already gained just by living in this era of internet and growing up watching it evolve from AOL dial-up servers to what we have today. I completely agree, as I stated in my own entry. The article did get into some technical terms including the ICANN and the DNS that I kind of already understood, but did not know the technical terminology. The second article discussed is very interesting. I cannot wait to see how this takes off in terms of expanding the domain names of websites. I feel that this could turn into a massive list of domains that basically cover any industry or trade with their names. This will probably help with small businesses as our guest from last week described how it was difficult for him to find a web address that hasn't been taken already.
ReplyDeleteThe second article that the Justin read seems to be very interesting and helpful. I remember hearing about the change as well yet I did not know what the final decision was. I think that there should definitely be more domain names to specify a field, so searches could be faster based on specifically what you want. I agree with Justin’s statement about having any combination would cause confusion. I think that the ability to use any ending combination is a bad idea as it would not be helpful to anyone. We all have see situations where doing something simply because we can does not turn out well; usually it ends in a worse situation than where it started from. This is what I believe would happen if all limitations were removed from domain names.
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