Monday, July 23, 2012

Download: The True Story of the Internet

     This documentary dealt with several topic around the Internet, and among them, I watched 'search' and 'people power' parts. It was interesting for me in some reasons.

     First of all, in 'search' section, the narrator explained and  the competition between search engines as a War. As his expression, many search engines rise and fall or ups and down. The documentary introduced Yahoo site was a kind of pioneer. Yahoo, which made by Jerry Yang and David Flio, was a 'miracle' of web search in that time. I remember the Yahoo logo song in its advertising. These days, we call searching 'Googling'. When I was a junior in the university, Yahoo was a representative search engine. As you can see logos of many search engine, even though there are many kinds of search engine, Google seems the number one position of search engine. Although Google has many advantages such as simple page design and abundant reference, this documentary explained the advertising connected with Google. New search engine representing as Google are supported by advertising, and advertising meet a very attractive medium. Advertisers said that "keywords" are so efficient in their advertising.

     We cannot imagine the world without search engine. I do not try to remember important information even simple address or shop names, because I can search whatever on Google search any time everywhere. I am expecting these search engine will be developed more than now. For example, on Naver, we can search the name of  earworm songs by singing in front of computer. I live very exciting world.    


     Do you use YouTube and Napster? Web 2.0 make us do incredible things such as broadcasting myself and sharing musics. Do you have account o Twitter and Facebook? Do you think you connect with your friends on online social world? The documentary introduced this situations as that communication is changing. Unlike traditional communication era, we can make a movie or music video by ourselves with simple devices, and more important thing is that we can share those with anonymous people. The documentary said the development of search engines is a evolution, and Web 2.0 and the changing is a revolution. 
     Of course, sharing video and music files could be illegal. Law suit between Napster and music industry is a good example. Around 10 years ago, instead of Napster, Korean young people used Soribada website, which means the ocean of music in Korean. Soribada was a website for sharing individual's music files just like Napster. After long controversy, now Soribada was changed into legal site selling sound source like iTunes. As the documentary pointed out, music industry seems winning for now, but I think music industry itself is changing regardless whether those mp3 sharing sites are illegal or not. 



    In addition, Social media such as Facebook and Twitter represent totally new social life. The documentary said that these application are connecting individuals and individual's information. Facebook alarm today is my best friend's birthday, and show that my brother living far away did what activity today. I share my political opinions with Twitter followers and get information from them. This is a  really fast moving society. More exciting thing is that this society is expanded day by day.



No comments: