From Cohen and Rosenzweig’s second chapter of Digital History titled Getting Started: The Basic Technologies Behind the Web, I found the section Naming Your Site and Presenting It to the World the most interesting. In this section the authors discuss website addresses and the nature of URLs. URLs are what allows computers to locate certain web pages in cyberspace so needless to say they are very important. Apparently, servers are named by numerical combinations but now have become more accessible because of a new system that uses letters and words. In order to demonstrate this the authors use the example of the a particular Internet Protocol address, showing first the numerical address and then explaining how it translates into words and letters using a technology called Domain Name System.
What I found particularly interesting about this information is that creators of the web had the insight to realize that an average person would not be able to memorize numerical codes so they created a technology that would make the web more accessible. I was also surprised to find out the IP addresses work backwards and contain different domains that help narrow down the search. Despite the fact that IP addresses are read backwards, this reminds me of accession numbers used by museums to record their collections. Like with accession numbers, IP addresses categorize information into smaller and smaller groups one domain at a time. Until now, I was unaware that the web organizes cyberspace much like how we organize knowledge in other areas like museums. As a result, the more I find out about the infrastructure of the web, the less foreign it seems to me.
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