Branger_Briz Presents
references and supplementary materials
The Internet is the greatest technical human achievement of our era! But the Internet's health is waning, and restoring it to its fullest potential requires an informed netizenry. No single person or organization controls the Internet or the Web. It belongs to those who choose to get involved. We're hoping this game, as well as the supplementary materials below, help expand your appreciation for our shared technical masterpiece and perhaps inspire you to take an active role in caring for the Web!
the Journey
When you "visit" a website, your computer (game console, laptop, smart phone, etc) is actually sending a request (a tiny file) across the planet! Initially that process happens over the air until it reaches the antenna of your router or cell tower. From there, cables connect computers all around the world together. Some of these cables lie underneath our streets while others span the ocean floors. Beaming across these cables at light speed, that request packet eventually reaches a server on another computer, before returning all the way back to your computer with the website (which itself is just another tiny file). In A Web Packet's Journey, you play as a packet as it traverses the globe through the radio waves, cables and computers that make up the Internet.
In our game, this journey is divided into 10 parts. Below are links to references and supplementary learning materials for each section:
Learning Objectives
A Web Packet's Journey is an interactive narrative version of the fraction of a second odyssey described above. What follows is a summary of each part of this journey as it is represented in the game. The goal of the pages linked above is to explain in a bit more depth all the aspects of the journey metaphorically represented in the game as well as to provide references for further research.
- Understand at a high level what the Internet is technically, by chronologically stepping through the various steps a web request takes as it traverses it.
- Learn about related Internet health issues and how you can take an active role in caring for the Internet and the Web.
- Gain a cultural appreciation for the Web through historical anecdotes related to each stage of A Web Request's Journey.