Blog Post #6: EOTO Technology Presentations

After listening to my peers' technology EOTO’s, I became much more knowledgeable about the history and inventions of different technologies that we use in our everyday life. Two topics that were touched on that helped me deepen my understanding are Caleb’s presentation on search engines and Katie’s on Facebook.

One thing I did not know much about was search engines. My classmate Caleb spoke on the topic teaching the class about the history behind search engines and how they have evolved over time. Search engines are something that we use everyday to our own convenience from our phones and computers.

First, Web Crawler was created to search for keywords which sparked the creation of search engines. Web crawlers are internet bots that symptomatically browse the whole wide web. All search engines need to have crawlers, some examples are: Amazon Bot is an Amazon web crawler for web content identification and backlink discovery.

Then I learned that Google was created in 1996 which was built off of existing platforms. Eventually over time Google made a deal with Apple making Google the primary search engine for all Apple products. Apple is a very popular technology company so making Google their primary search engine made it even more widely used. Nowadays most people go straight to Google to look up anything they need information about.

A negative impact that search engines have had on society stated by Caleb is that people don't remember specific things because search engines are so easily accessible. Since we all have the capability to quickly look up information when necessary, no one knows specific facts or dates anymore. An example Professor Smith stated in class is how each one of us does not even remember our own passwords because our search engines keep them stored for future so we don’t even have to remember them. This can be a positive and negative aspect of search engines.

Now after Caleb’s presentation I am much more educated on search engines and know why I use Google along with many others.

Another EOTO presentation that stood out to me was Katie’s presentation on Facebook. I knew what Facebook was because I have an account but I did not know the history behind the creation of social media.

Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2003 and it was called “Facemash.” It was first created just for Harvard students to connect with each other using their .edu email address.

Katie educated the class that Facebook was the first major social network that had ever been seen. It was a way to directly communicate and broadcast.

Facebook had a huge networking effect because people joined facebook solely because they knew other people with accounts. Facebook has had a huge impact on social networking today and communications as we know because of the amount of people with accounts.