Lab 2: Web Development Fundamentals

While I have been exposed to web development in the past, I haven’t spent much time reflecting on whether it should be standard for students to learn the fundamentals of web languages and the history of the Internet. Based on my experiences in Computer Science and Digital Humanities courses (including this one), I believe that all students should have a strong foundation in technology. I don’t necessarily think that all students need to know how to code, but I think a base level understanding of how the Internet works and how it shapes our lives is important.

My background in coding is quite extensive at this point. I’ve worked on multiple web and mobile app development projects and completed the CS major at Carleton. Out of the three languages we looked at this week, I’m most familiar with HTML and CSS, so I was happy to have a chance to improve my JavaScript skills through HTML Dog.

In addition to coding experience, I recently took a Computer Networks course where I learned about the Internet and its history. That course made me realize how much impact the structure of the Internet has on the world. This particular article, “We Need to Rewild the Internet,” draws an analogy to ecology and argues that we need to eliminate the presence of large companies who currently control the Internet. These companies have so much control because almost all Internet traffic runs through them. The authors also mention how we increasingly visit the same websites (rather than seeking out interesting new ones), which may lead to a more unified and less diverse culture over time. The article about Tim Berners-Lee echoes my concerns about the privatization of the Internet, saying “the world’s scholarship and scientific research—much of it publicly funded—[is] being ‘digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations.'” Everyone should be more aware of the power that private companies have over the Internet.

In terms of coding specifically, I think a basic understanding of how code on the web works is valuable. For example, students can see how alt text is an important part of accessibility by looking at the code for an image in HTML.

<img src="my_image.png" alt="Description of the image">

On the other hand, CSS and JavaScript can get quite complicated, so I don’t think it’s necessary for students to understand these languages. Some of the concepts in JavaScript, like the object-oriented programming shown below, aren’t taught until the second or third course in the CS major sequence at Carleton.

var Dog = function(name, age) {
    this.name = name;
    this.age = age;
}

With the emergence of accessible AI, web literacy is more important now than ever. I hope that students are taught about how the Internet works to protect themselves from misinformation and keep control over their personal data.