What in Your Opinion Is the Influential Audio-Visual Technological Discovery Ever?

“What in your opinion is the influential audio-visual technological discovery ever?”

In order for something to be the most influential discovery ever it must follow certain criteria. I’m defining the word discovery to be synomous with invention in that it is something that was “happened upon” and developed and didn’t necessarily exist for all time. In order to be the most influential it must permeate every part of our lives, from leisure, education, business, and travel, to the very social system itself. It must be capable of world wide use and also improve life both orally and visually for all members of society.

The most important audio-visual discovery of the 20th century is by far the internet. It has revolutionised almost every aspect of our lives from the way we study, work, shop, relax and above all communicate.

The internet as we know it developed from a government project to send secure information from one remote computer to another. The DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) began work on the internet in 1973 under the guiding influence of Larry Roberts. He designed the Arpas first network where a machine called an Interface message processor (IMP) would connect individual sites, route messages, scan errors and confirm the arrival of messages at their intended destination. A number of innovations led to the development of the modern internet. First was the development of the computerised bulletin board (today’s message boards) by Ward Christensen and Randy Seuss, second was the standardisation of internet access through TCP (transfer Control Protocol) and IP internet protocol, and third was the development of software for information retrieval which would become the WWW. World wide web. (Moschovitis et al)

The internet consists of a global network of computers joined together to form one large interconnected network. It relies on Routers, Naps, ISPs, DNS and powerful servers to connect the network.

Each computer on the network uses a modem to connect to the ISP (Internet service Provider eg Eircom) which operates the telephone lines. When you connect to the internet you become part of their network. Companies may be part of a Local Area Network all connected at points of presence in various cities. There is no overall connecting network but several high level networks connected to each other through Network Access Points or NAP’s. Backbones, or fibre optic trunk lines, carry the information through routers, or specialised computers which sort and determine where to send your information. (Tyson, 2005)

In 1991 a CERN physicist called Tim Berners Lee developed an information retrieval system which would revolutionise the way we gather information. The web page was written in computer code called HTML (hypertext mark up language) and used Http Hypertext Transfer protocol to link pages. The first pages were used to transfer physics notes among scientists whereas now they are used to form the world biggest library. (Tyson, 2005, Lerner, 2005)

To locate a webpage you type in the domain name in the URL Uniform Resource Locator. The URL http://www.wikipedia.com contains the domain name Wikipedia.com. The browser contacts the internets DNS servers to get the IP address (binary equivalent of the domain name). The DNS server contacts the root DNS Server which manages top level domain names ( .com, .org, .net and .gov). If the root DNS server doesn’t know the address for the wikipedia.com it will send the request to the .com DNS server and “Caches” the answer so it remembers it next time. (ibid)

Therefore, the success of the internet relies not only on the above technological features but on the co-operation of huge corporate networks that agree to communicate with each other through the Naps and backbones which they maintain. Only in this way can every computer on the internet be linked with another.

The dominance of the internet over all other technological discoveries this century is legitimised in the fact that the 20th century will always be remembered as the information age. Indeed, not since the development of the printing press has there been such a significant increase in the amount of information available to the public. It has linked the remotest parts of the world leading to a ‘global village’ where communication is quicker, cheaper, and more accessible than ever.

One of the strengths of the internet is that it enhances other services. Email acts as a substitute for post, (msn) Instant messaging substitutes long phone calls, online music downloads developed the MP3 player, News and weather updates buttress that of TV and Radio. Even the speed of communication from one side of the world to another has enabled businessmen everywhere to make quick decisions thus in turn reducing laborious travel and correspondence.