Ethan Zuckerman’s 6-minute History of the Internet not only sets the record straight as to who the “Father of the Internet is” (not Al Gore), it puts blogging, social media, and wikis into historical context and explains how these were all natural progressions of the advent of the Internet.

In the Nerds 2.0.1 Timeline, I learned more about the development of the internet prior to it becoming commercially available. My family signed up for AOL in 1995, and I remember a time when websites were limited. You had to know the exact address in order to find them or else rely on the “shortcuts” AOL provided you in its interface. The sound of the dial-up will always bring back memories. 🙂

The Internet: A Decade Later helped me realize the impact the internet has had on pop culture. For example, in 2002, the most-searched items were topics that originated offline, such as Spiderman, Shakira, and the Olympics. By 2012, we see online-originated topics becoming more prevalent, such as Rebecca Black, Google+, and Pinterest. Content created online is now popping up offline in the news, entertainment shows like Tosh.0, and in other aspects of pop culture.

The First Website: I never before thought of the web as a cooperative. The “How can I help?” link made that sink in. It says,

There are lots of ways you can help if you are interested in seeing the web grow and be even more useful… The web needs raw data…

In The Evolution of the Web, I was very interested to learn the evolution of the cookie, as well as all the different types of cookies that are now available. I am somewhat familiar with them, having worked at a financial institution and in the marketing department, but I had no idea that there were so many different types.

How Search Engines Work: I had no idea that some search engines only index the page title. That explains why some of our SEO advice at work tells us to drop a bunch of keywords in the page title. I’ve always found that tacky and annoying, but now I see the importance.

Get More Out of Google: Holy cow! There are SO MANY different ways to search Google. I had no idea it had its own language, similar to code, that can help you produce the results you want much faster than typing in keywords and combing through articles.

On Twitter, I started following WOCCU, the World Council of Credit Unions, because they sponsored and coordinated the internship I recently participated in. They serve as a connector between all the different credit unions around the world — many of which are “doing it better” than the CUs in the United States.

I also started following the CU Water Cooler because they post content, articles, and event information relevant to CU employees and fans of cooperatives.

Lastly, I chose Filene Research because they post content relevant to consumer finance in general. While I personally align with the cooperative/ credit union movement in the US, Filene posts information and consumer research that will impact both banks and cooperatives.