Student Impressions of Internet History Milestones

Student Impressions of Internet History Milestones (Jerz’s Literacy Weblog)

This morning I gave my students a randomized list of key events in the history of the internet, and asked them to estimate the year when each event happened. “Average” gives the average of all student guesses. “Actual” gives the actual date. “Diff” gives the difference.

 

 Event

Average

Actual

Diff

 
 

 IBM founded

1980.6

1911

69.6

 
 

 first computer with a disk drive

1983.7

1956

27.7

 
 

 first computer sold with a keyboard and monitor

1984.8

1960

24.8

 
 

 mouse (pointing device)

1988.0

1963

25.0

 
 

 word “hypertext” coined

1988.0

1965

23.0

 
 

 internet created

1986.6

1969

17.6

 
 

 working computer hypertext system demonstrated

1989.0

1968

21.0

 
 

 first e-mail message sent

1987.0

1971

16.0

 
 

 Apple Computer Co. founded

1982.1

1976

6.1

 
 

 first commercial computer game

1984.6

1978

6.6

 
 

 CD (compact disc)

1986.4

1981

5.4

 
 

 Microsoft Windows

1987.9

1983

4.9

 
 

 HyperCard (hypertext system for home computers)

1991.0

1983

8.0

 
 

 World Wide Web created

1990.8

1990

0.8

 
 

 first graphical web browser created

1990.0

1993

-3.0

 

Some of these details are fairly obscure — at least, for the vast majority of people on the planet who don’t get their jollies researching the history of technology. So I’m generally pleased with what I saw.

The collective intelligence of the class was able to sort these events roughly in chronological order, which suggests they have a certain familiarity with the medium of the internet. But it looks like they underestimated by about half the amount of time that has passed since these milestones. They got more accurate with more recent events.

The average answer for the date of the creation of the World Wide Web is correct, but graphical browsers are actually a few years older than the average figure guessed by the students.

4 thoughts on “Student Impressions of Internet History Milestones

  1. Mike, I’ll have to look up “Mediamorphosis”.

    Moira, you’re probably right — it was during the 80s that a lot of this technology filtered into people’s homes.

    I don’t know that it’s fair or useful to say it’s a problem of history education… I have to remind myself that some of our most tech-savvy students might never have done any significant work from a DOS command line, so I need to work a little harder to get them to see how computers mediate our experiences.

  2. Wow, that’s pretty fascinating! Maybe we all thought the 80’s because that’s when the technology filtered down to the masses? I know my family got our first CD player sometime in the mid-80’s. As a child, it’s easy to think that when your family gets something it must be brand-new and supercool! Just a guess?

  3. I suspect the Lynx web browser would seem something like the ancient telegraph to today’s students.

    What I found more compelling was that nearly all the averages fall within the 1980’s! Is this a product of their own histories (e.g., I think it’s safe to guess that most of these students were born in the mid 80s)? Or is it the result of nostalgia TV? Apathy? Or just poor history education in high school today? Until you’re 18, I think history is all just a matter of who won what war, and when…sadly.

    Are you using a text called Mediamorphosis in this class? I like the way that one explains the historical development of electronic media, particularly in terms of “convergence.”

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