Halt and Catch Fire Syllabus

Class 11 - World Wide Web / FYI on “What is the Internet?”

Apéritif

RFC as koan

Emulator as koan

Themes

Prompts

Description

Episodes: - S3E9 “NIM”, S3E10 “NeXT”

As better articulated by Jason Kottke in his essay/review, WWW: The Way We Were, it’s during these two episodes that the main characters discover the potential of the web – “the amazing possibility to be able to go anywhere within something that is magnificent and never-ending.” Class #10 focuses on that awe and glory, while this class can focus on the work and pieces that fell into place for the web to become the thing that we know it is today.

The characters have a strong business mindset, focused on how to monetize this technology, but the history behind the world wide web is based on public funding, academic research, and noncommercial goals for communication.

Readings