Characteristics of the Medium

The internet today is very fascinating how all the technology is put together to create reality. There are people that revolve their lives around the internet and use it daily. There are two mediums of the internet, macromedium and metamedium. The three distinct communication factors are reliability, speed, and distribution. Also key qualities of the internet consist of it being multimediated, hypertextual, interactive, packet based, and digital. Qualities and distinctions like these make the internet what it is today.

Macromedium and Metamedium are the two mediums in which the internet is broken down by. Macromedium looks more at how the internet can cater to many branches of communication. Metamedium is the ability to have the best of both worlds, television and radio.

The first distinct communication factor is reliability. In the past the Greeks have used song memorization to remember things and scientist use formulas (Barlow, pg 30). With the internet today and the reliability of packets it is easy for computers to send and receive data. Speed is the second communication factor that has pushed the internet along. The early households that were lucky enough to have internet use to run at a speed of 300 bits per second with data transmissions of 56,000 bits per second. Obviously with technology today most high speed internet connections are no longer dial up. We have technology today that sends data in less than a second. Of course there are more people using the internet today than 20 years ago. Computers are more easily accessible and the cost of computers has gone significantly as well. This accounts for the huge distribution of people using the internet. Accuracy for a number figure on internet users is measured by the number of hosts.

The first key quality to the internet is multimedia. The internet offers so much such as graphics, words, sounds, videos, movies, animation, and so much more. The next key quality is hypertext. This is when you are on one website or page and you click a link or underlined phrase and are redirected. The internet is interactive as well which does not make it boring or repititious. Unlike a television where you are stuck on one channel you can surf the internet and look for what interests you. A huge feature that was also talked about in chapter one is packet base. Packet base is the segments of data that are transferred compared to the whole that could be transferred such as a telephone. This helps the internet run as effeciently as possible and also helps with data transfer speed. Analog and digital are two different ways that data could be stored. The internet runs on digital for several reasons. Some issues include less distortion, less vulnerability to wear and tear, and easily compacted and stored (Barlow, pg 42).