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U.S. History 1877-Present 14.4: Entering the Digital Age 19 Views
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Description:
Before the internet, everyone basically just sat around chiseling cuneiform onto tablets and munching on giant turkey legs. Trust us, it was havoc.
Transcript
- 00:02
Believe it or not, there was a time before the internet. [Cavemen sat by a fire]
- 00:05
And, as scary as it sounds, a time before Shmoop.
- 00:09
Those were dark days, dark days indeed. [Lightning storm with Shmoop flying around]
- 00:12
Back then, no one could Google anything.
- 00:14
In fact, Google wasn’t even a verb. [Kid running in the park]
Full Transcript
- 00:16
If someone wanted to know something, there were no search engines or Siris to help.
- 00:20
The horror. The horror.
- 00:23
But…there were books—actual paper-and-ink books. [Bookshelves in a library]
- 00:26
Students used encyclopedias to conduct research.
- 00:29
And families might have had a single computer…used chiefly for rousing games of Minesweeper. [Family gathered round a computer]
- 00:34
America entered the digital age during the 1990s.
- 00:37
The world was about to get a whole heck of a lot smaller, as information and trends were [The Earth shrinks]
- 00:41
dispersed instantaneously in a digital world. [Woman looking at lots of screens]
- 00:44
Soon, no matter where people were in the world, they would get up-to-the-minute updates on
- 00:49
who was dating who in Hollywood. [Woman watching screen as information flashes quickly]
- 00:51
How’s that for progress?
- 00:52
Hey, people in the jungles of New Guinea have a right to know when Brangelina is over…
- 00:57
Though it’s thought of as a 90s thing, the Internet was actually invented in the 1970s [Matrix style code]
- 01:03
by the Department of Defense.
- 01:04
Hard to believe that something we now use for entertainment and shopping was once purely [Soldier approches woman on her laptop]
- 01:08
a tool for national security.
- 01:11
In those days, it wasn’t used for spreading memes…or videos of people tripping over [Woman trips over a sofa]
- 01:15
stuff.
- 01:16
The military developed it because they thought it would be a great idea to operate one computer
- 01:20
from another terminal in case of attack. [Two computers, one of which explodes]
- 01:24
In the early days, the Internet was also used mainly by scientists to communicate with other [Scientist working in a lab]
- 01:28
scientists, like the sending of big files.
- 01:30
Veeeery few cat videos were exchanged.
- 01:32
The government retained the rights to the Internet until 1984, when it released it to [Cat playing with a toy]
- 01:37
the public.
- 01:38
This new technology gave users the ability to connect computers over local or even national [Computers popping up all over a map]
- 01:43
networks.
- 01:44
Through a device called a modem, individual users could link their computer to a wealth
- 01:47
of information using conventional phone lines. [Picture of a modem]
- 01:50
All one had to do was…dial up…and wait for the Internet to pick up.
- 01:55
Of course, this prevented use of the telephone while surfing the web, which was not super [Kid looks annoyed as he cant get online]
- 01:58
popular with America's teenagers.
- 02:01
Until they discovered Instant Messenger, at least…
- 02:04
One early problem faced by Internet users was speed. [Sped up footage slows down]
- 02:08
Phone lines could only transmit information so fast.
- 02:11
In the days of dial up, it was like digital information was being carried by… digital [Snail with 'info' written on its shell]
- 02:16
snails.
- 02:17
Luckily, all this slowness was vanquished by the development of fiber-optic cables,
- 02:22
which allowed billions of bits of information to be received every second. [0 and 1s flying around]
- 02:26
Companies like Intel developed faster microprocessors, so personal computers could process the incoming
- 02:31
signals more quickly. [Picture of a cat loading on a screen]
- 02:33
These days, the Internet shapes almost every aspect of our modern lives.
- 02:37
Like most major changes, the digital age has brought with it dramatic improvements to American [Woman checking a recipe on a tablet]
- 02:42
and global life…but it’s also introduced a host of new problems. [Girl on her phone being told to do her homework]
- 02:46
All in all, we fall on the side of being grateful for the Internet.
- 02:49
How could we not?
- 02:50
It would be hard to Shmoop via smoke signals… [Man waving his arms in smoke]
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