Network literacy: Perhaps it’s not as hard as we might think it is.

Like this article by Norton suggests, maybe it’s just about learning a new perspective. Just like putting on a new pair of glasses through which to look at the world.

“It’s like learning a new city, invisible but beautiful, and baffling when you don’t know how a new city works. But then, as you roam around, it can start to make sense. You get more comfortable, and in time, your rhythms come together with its, and you can feel the city.”

Ranging from the screens we look at each day, to the fibre optics that run beneath out feet; from the electrical powerpoint we plug into day in day out, to the toilets we flush – we live with and in networks.

Networks are an incestuous bunch – they overlap and entangle with each other is a beautiful, messy way.

Like Norton’s article, I’m going to try and imagine that my computer has senses. As a machine, it receives all of the information from the network and processes it for me, delivering me a neat set of translated actions that make sense. I click on my notification that tells me I have a new instant message, my computer then does it’s thing and opens the text so that I can read what someone has said to me. Similarly, I perform Google searches, I edit blog posts, and adjust the privacy settings on my Facebook, and my computer enables me to do all this easily and effectively.

However, this does not equate to network literacy.

I need to learn how to understand the magical dance of what happens in-between the clicks. 

So, in order to develop my knowledge, here’s a checklist of a few things I’ve always found mysterious, which I hope to learn by the end of the semester in Networked Media.

• Learn what an IP address is, what it does and why
• Cookies and cache (although I’d much prefer to learn about cookies and cake)
• Understand what a server is and what it does
• Attempt to demystify ‘packet sharing’, code, cryptography, SSL and encryption.
• Explore what possibilities the network can afford for me as a media professional

(Image via flickr)