Each Friday's lecture is for general discussion on a topic related to what we are studying. The topics will be assigned here throughout the term.

Due before Friday's lecture each week is a topic “essay” from you. There are ten of these over the term. Each is worth 1% towards the final mark.

Each topic essay will be based on a reading, or an exploration of a topic that you are asked to do. The reason for the essays is simply a trick, to get people prepared to discuss on Friday.

Each essay should be fairly short and simple. An upper bound is “half a page”, or 250 words. (If you end up with 260 words or so, don't worry about it. Just don't get carried away. Also do not obsess if you are much under the limit, as long as you feel you have said what is important.) Make it readable, but do not obsess with the language. Saying something with some thought about the topic is more important. Format is not important either.

To turn in an essay, e-mail it the instructor.

• Send to "Parke Godfrey" <godfrey@cse.yorku.ca>.

• For the e-mail's subject, say

  cse-2041 / topic essay #N / cseXXXXX

where N is the current topic number, and cseXXXXX is your CSE account name.

• Format the essay either just in plain text, or in HTML, if you prefer.

Are The Internet and The Web just synonyms for the same thing, or are they different things?

The The Internet refers to the collection of connected LANs (local area networks), and the trunks and network exchanges that connect them. This also refers to the Internet Protocol Suite (stack), which describes the layers of network protocols, such as TCP/IP. In one form or another, the Internet as we know it has been around for 40 years.

The Web, or WWW, is an “application” that rides on the application layer of the Internet Protocol Stack, one of many. Its protocol is HTTP, and its standard service port assignment is port 80. The Web is twenty years old. The Web has become one of the most prominent and useful of Internet applications. It is widely used nowadays as a standard means for broadcasting information and providing interactive services.

It is common for people and journalists too to mix up the Internet and the Web, using the terms almost interchangeably. On the one hand, there is little harm in this. Why should we expect people to draw such a technical distinction? And certainly, the Web is closely related to the Internet, as it is perhaps the most prominent application on it. On the other hand, such confusion can lead to bad policies, esecially when government officials do not recognize the distinction. And it can lead to confusion and bad design when people who build and program Internet and Web applications fail to appreciate the distinction.

(233 words.)

Friday 16 September

A year ago this month, Wired Magazine's lead story declared that the Web is dead. That is an early death, considering the Web would just have turned twenty (by some measures) this year in 2011!

The article is short, but informative: The Web Is Dead: Long Live the Internet. Give it a quick read.

For your “essay”, answer the following.

1. Briefly, why is Wired making the claim that the Web is dead?

2. Do you agree or disagree with them? Make a short argument one way or another.

   (There is no right or wrong answer here. I am just looking to see that you say something sensible.)

Friday 23 September

There is a perennial debate over whether markup or WYSIWIG (what you see is what you get) is the better way to edit and produce documents.

Read Rob Brown's piece on this: WYSIWYG Editors versus Markup Editors.

For your write-up, address the following.

1. Name what you perceive to be a key advantage and a key disadvantage each for the markup approach and for the WYSIWIG approach.

2. State an example of a markup language and of a WYSIWIG system.

3. Which approach dominates today?

4. Is it possible to have the best of both worlds, a document system that represents a WYSIWIG interface for writing, but represents the document well in markup?

Friday 30 September

Ever heard the quote, “the medium is the message?” That is a quote of Marshall McLuhan, who was a professor of English literature at U of T.

However, the Web separates the message (the content) from the medium (presentation). That is the point of MVC. So one might argue that, today, the medium is no longer the message.

This is what is discussed in Wired's article from November 2010, Design Is Dead: Long Live Design! (What's with Wired's fixation on X is dead anyway?!) Read that article.

For your write-up, address the following.

1. What did McLuhan mean by, “the medium is the message?”

2. Has the Web killed design when it comes to content? Or has it improved it?

3. We are used to the notion of media; e.g., magazines, newspapers, TV, movies, etc. And some of those have become “digitial”, to be sure; e.g., TV becoming HDTV. In what ways is digital media distinct from “old” media?

I know the questions above are open ended. Just make some succient observations. And remember the 250 word cap!

Friday 7 October

Privacy concerns have been a growing concern with the Web over the last decade. In 1999, Scott McNealy, then CEO of then Sun Microsystems, famously said, “You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it.” This past decade has only seen the debate intensify. Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, has declared that the age of privacy is over.

Are the privacy threats overblown or are they real? Should we care on way or the other? Is there any reasonable expectation of privacy? What are the mechanisms by which we are tracked on the Web?

Read Wired's article from August 2009, You Deleted Your Cookies? Think Again.

For your write-up, address the following.

1. What are LSO's? How are they different than Web cookies?

2. In your opinion, do we have an expectation of privacy when using the Web? Should we have?

3. Name an incident of privacy and technology — besides LSO's and what is in the article! — that you have encountered recently.

As usual, some of the questions above are open ended. Again, just make some succient observations. In the debate of many privacy issues, there are no clearcut right and wrong answers. And remember the 250 word cap!

Friday 21 October

All tech talk these days seems to be about “the cloud”, and how this is — and will be — changing everything about how we “compute” and use information services.

For your write-up, address the following.

1. What do people mean by the cloud?

   • Provide an example of a cloud service or technology in the news recently.

   • What does your example service / technology do?

   • What functionality and advantages does it purport to provide?

2. In your opinion, is “the cloud” a game changer, or is it hype?

   • Can web / cloud apps compete with desktop apps?

   • What are the key advantages, and the key disadvantages, that you see in a shift to the cloud?

Friday 28 October

Ed Fast, the International Trade Minister of Canada, on 1 October 2011 signed ACTA. The accord has been in development since 2006, involving negotations over 38 countries. With Mr. Fast's signing of the accord, Canada joins the United States, Australia, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, South Korea, and Singapore. The accord still has yet to be ratified in Canada, but this is a big step in that direction.

See this article from the Montreal Gazette about the signing of ACTA, and the article by Michael Geist in the The Star from last year that covers some of the controversy the accord has garnered.

For your write-up, address the following.

1. What is ACTA? What problems is it designed to address?

2. Some feel ACTA may lead Canada to adopt laws similar to the US's DMCA. What would this prohibit Canadians from doing?

3. ACTA will likely have an impact on the Internet in the countries that adopt it. What are some of the possible consequences? What is the three strikes rule?

Friday 4 November

Mashups — Web application hybrids — repackage data, presentation or functionality from multiple sources to create new services. Read Mashups: The new breed of Web app from IBM's Developer Works from 8 Aug 2006.

1. In your opinion, can mashups add value, or do they offer nothing more than the original sources?

2. Find an example of a mashup service which you find interesting. What is interesting about it?

3. Does CSS help or hinder the creation of mashups?

   What are Web technologies that support mashups?

Friday 11 November

In an internal email at Google dated a year ago — leaked, with a copy hosted by github:gist — a corporate strategy is laid out regarding the evolution of Web programming, and the future of JavaScript. The email promotes a high risk / high reward strategy to develop a new language, Dash, for web-application, client-side programming, that would ultimately replace JavaScript in that role.

Indeed, Google has since pursued the courses of action outlined in that email. Dash has been renamed Dart in the interim.

1. In what ways does Mr. Miller feel JavaScript is inadequate?

2. With which platforms does Mr. Miller feel the “web platform” needs to comlete?

3. Will Google continue to support JavaScript?

4. What are the potential advantages and disadvantages of Google's Dart strategy for the web community?

Friday 18 November

Some say PageRank is the algorithm that changed the Web.

1. What is PageRank?

   In brief, what are the principles by which it works?

2. In your opinion, what type of Web search queries are handled well today?

   What type of Web search queries are handled poorly?

3. What are current trends in web search engines?

4. Name a specialty Web search engine — besides the major, well-known players like Google, Bing, and Baidu — that you feel is innovative.

Friday 25 November

It is easy in hindsight to understand what came about. But it is much, much harder to anticipate what is coming. What will be the next big thing on the Internet? The world of the Internet, the web, webapps, and the current hot companies is bound to look profoundly different in just five years. Where you will work — and what you will work on — are things we might not even be able to anticipate today.

Watch Roger McNamee: Six ways to save the internet at TED.

1. What are McNamee's six observations?

1. Which of the six do you agree most with (if any), and why?

2. Which of the six do you disagree most with (if any), and why?

2. What does he say is, and is not, important on mobile?

3. Make a prediction of your own how the Internet, the Web, and how we use them will change in the next five years.