Welcome Part I

Hello. Welcome to internet history,
technology and security. I'm Charles

Severance. And I'll be your instructor for
this course. So let's start right away.

Like, who do I think should take this
course? And the course the answer is you,

You should take this course. Because
everyone should take this course. The

network that we touch and use is with us
pretty much all the time. Obviously, if

you're watching this lecture. You're
watching it over the internet. How does

all this stuff work? Who made it? You
know this didn't just grow on trees.

People built this, right? And we're gonna
talk about a highly technical thing.

Perhaps the most complex engineering task
humanity's ever undertaken, maybe. But

we're not gonna talk from a math
perspective, and we're not gonna talk from

a programming perspective. I mean, really,
were not going to, we're not gonna push

you on that stuff. We gonna talk about
really cool technical things, we're gonna

meet some really cool people, but it's not
a technical course. It's a course about

listening and understanding and thinking
critically about the people who made the

internet what it is. So it's, we are going
to explain some things and ask you to

reflect a bit. So. This is going to
include a bunch of oral history. Oral

history that I've gathered. And my co-host
on my television show, Richard Wiggins

gathered. Starting in the. In the 90's.
Through the, present day I

continue to gather this. And continue to
keep asking people who've done amazing

things on the internet. Like, what did it
take? How did it work? What were you

thinking? What was innovative. What, what
went wrong? Real history's a bit messy.

Real history is not. As simple as a 30
minute PBS special would like it to be

sometimes. Those are actually sort of fun
television. We are actually going to hear

from people listen to them a little bit
longer. We aren't going to try to collapse

everything into two minute segments. We
are gonna listen to these people . Then

we're gonna ask some critical questions
about what do we think about the way folks

talk about these innovations. And then the
second half of the class we'll really dig

into to how the Internet works. Still
avoiding any programming or any technology

or anything complicated. We are just gonna
sort of from a. A simple set of metaphors

as we can possibly come up with understand
the architecture of the internet and

you'll be fine. You'll be surprised at
just how much you understand. So, I always

like to start the first lecture talking a
little about me, so you get to know me. I

am a professor at the University of
Michigan School of Information. School of

Information studies a lot of things. It
studies social science like things. Data

and information and technology so we like
to say School of Information studies

connecting people information and
technology in more interesting ways. And I

as a faculty member have written several
books. And I am on the web and you can

follow me on Twitter and I do a lot of
traveling. Who knows maybe. Maybe during

this class I'll end up in your country or
in your town, and, and who knows, we can

do something. So, if you want, feel free
to stalk me on Twitter. I'm, I'm always on

Twitter. So. A big feature of this class
is. Videos, particularly the first half

where we're talking about the history. And
I was really fortunate in 1995. Really

most people would say that the, the
internet and web took off in the, outside

the academic sector in like 1994. And in
1995, I had a television show. It was

sponsored by, TCI CableVision, which is a
cable company that no longer exists because

it, because it got eaten by I think AT&T
ultimately. But through 1995, from 1995

through 1999 my, me and my co-host Richard
Wiggans We would run around with cameras,

and go to conferences and do whatever. Put
cameras in people's faces, famous people

who had done things. Now back in the mid
90's, the internet wasn't nearly as fancy

and as important as it is now, so it was
really easy to find these people and they

were always happy to talk. So, we got in
their own words, the kind of innovation.

So, the people on this slide... On one
side here, we have Tim Berners-Lee. Tim

Berners-Lee is the inventor of the world
wide web and we'll meet him later in the

history lecture. Right now, we're gonna
take a look at a fellow named James Wells.

He was one of the founders of the real
audio. And just to kind of give you a

sense of the kinds of things that led me.
>> It really inspired me by some of the

people doing some really kind of amazing
thinking in this internet was just, first

getting started, so here's, here's James
Wells of RealAudio. >> We have sort

of over 700 thousand people who have
downloaded the player in a last six

months at a rate of 250,000 per month, so if we just do
the arithmetic you will imagine that over

the next six months, there would be
many millions of people listening and tens

of thousands of people producing. It
allows the idea of what we call narrow

casting. That is to take information in a
very inexpensive way and get it to very

specific points of interest and targets.
Another large user of, of, of RealAudio

is education. >> Mm-hm. >> You know,
distance learning. The ability to, to

provide a learning
environment. Over time, and over space.

So that was James Wells of RealAudio. He's got big ideas. One of the things you saw in that video was a

modem. You saw little blinking lights,
well that's data moving back and forth.

And, and you know, in 1993 94 95 we used
28 kilobit modems. You know, when you,

when you have your fancy phone and it goes
down to Edge. That is 128 kilobits and.

And you think that's terrible. Well. Back
in 1992-92 we were using 28. Kilobit,

which is one-third, one-quarter of what
Edge is today, and that was, was not much

bandwidth at all but even in that, James
Wells has this imagination that we could

squeeze teaching down into little tiny
audio and people can take audio classes

all around the world. Now this actually
inspired me and it really has become my

research. So I started teaching, using
technology much like what we're using

right now, except far less sophisticated.
I created this thing called Sync-O-Matic,

and what it did in 1996 is that it sent
both slides and audios. See that kind of

scary looking picture of me, that scary
looking picture of me sitting there. Ahh,

that guy looks a little bit scary right
there. That was my picture, we couldn't

send video. We could only send audio
because the connections were so slow back

in 1996. But I sent slides. So I'd give my
lectures, I'd record the audio, we'd flip

the slides and there was no drawing on the
screen or no fancy things at all. And, and

then in 1999, I switched jobs, went from
one university to another and I wrote the

next thing. And, this was a thing I
called Clip Board and it's actually very

similar to what we're using today, other
than the fact that what we're using today

is much more sophisticated but you can
actually draw on, slide, and you could

flip the slide back and forth and you have
a pointer and you can type text on the

slider make a blank thing. I had this
thing working and I was trying to, To give

it to Apple. I built this on Apple
hardware and I tried to give it to Apple

in 1999. And they didn't take it. But,
there's now. Things like ScreenFlow and

Camtasia. And, whole bunch of other things
that, That do this. And so. This, this

moment where I'm sitting on this
television set and I see this guy talking

about the future of education is gonna be
over the Internet it really triggered

me, to sort of. Go through a whole series
of things to change my research. Area from

what was then high performance computing.
So, I'm sitting, you know. Sitting on the

TV set, and I see that education might be
a good thing. I immediately go out and I

invent this thing called Sync-O-Matic, and
then I invented this thing called ClipBoard.

Click. So ClipBoard, that was sorta 1999
and then I, I couldn't get anybody to buy

into the idea of using this stuff. I mean
now it's, obviously we're using it right

now, but I kinda got frustrated, so I
decided that what I would do then is work

on a learning management system, Sakai.
Some of you actually might have used Sakai

as your learning management system. I was
the chief architect of the Sakai project

and instrumental, continued to work with
the Sakai learning management system. And

then when I found that Sakai only had reached
two or three percent market share. Then I

decided that I was gonna work on
interoperability between learning

management systems with the kind of secret
notion that I would plug material just

like my recorded lectures into these
learning management systems. And so then I

spent a few years, 2007 through 2010,
eleven, twelve, with IMS, which is a

standards organization that built
standards. And so it's really kind of it's

kind of ironic to be sitting here, in
effect, fifteen years later and teaching you

guys with this totally cool, and awesome
technology. Called Coursera. Because it

really was. It was the vision that I had
and some [inaudible]. I couldn't be more

excited. To be working with Coursera. And
so I also have this alter ego Dr Chuck.

Most of my students call me Dr Chuck, the
reason I call, I came up with this

nickname was, I got my PhD rather late in
life, and I thought that it would be

Hypocritical if I stopped making fun of
people with PhDs just because I had one.

And so I, I adopted the nickname, Dr.
Chuck. For those of you who wanna go do

some research, the, it wasn't Dr. Phil or,
or, Dr. Drew. It was, actually, Dr. Ruth

was the television doctor. So you can go,
do some research on who Dr. Ruth is. And

so I got some pictures here about what
some of my hobbies are. I play hockey. I

do a lot of travelling. Sakai does
cause me to do a travel. I've been around

the world. That, I think, picture there,
is like. Three or four years of my travel.

That's what those pushpins are. I ride
motorcycles. Off-road motorcycles. On-road

motorcycles. I got--you can go see video s
of that. I do karaoke. All of my pictures

of course are not of me doing karaoke, but
me taking pictures of my friends when

they're doing karaoke. I wrote a book.
Several books. And I also wrote a book

about my experiences in the Sekaya
Project. And I'll close with.. A bit of

humorous video that I made that you might
have heard of called the "iPad Steering

Wheel Mount." And if you haven't, go ahead
and Google "iPad Steering Wheel Mount."

And it's a, a short video that I'm, that
I'm curious what you think. So. Next we'll

talk a little bit more about the detail of
how the course is going to work, and how

grading's going to work and other things
like that. So see you in a bit.