Does history help us understand digital culture?

In my opinion, it is very important to look at the history of digital culture because we wouldn't be where we are with out it. Also at the start of the internet for example it would of been built around some core basic values which like anything else in the world, grow and stay entwined as that idea progresses. It is important to study the core values in a historical way because their are two sides to a coin, there is a lot of good that came from Digital culture but at the same time there are darker parts which need to be explored.

The internet was merely a by product or development from the project ARPANET in which the U.S DOD (Department of Defenses) wanted to make a reliable system in which they could communicate. One of the main reasons was that, they wanted to be able to communicate between research centers throughout the country. Others speculate that the reason for them doing this was because the U.S government was paranoid about their ineffective communication networks which would suffer gravely from a nuclear attack. The ARPANET was decommissioned in 1990 as it had become obsolete to NSFNET which was more widely used with a bigger user base. The NSFNET went on to evolve to the internet we know today.

With the birth of the public internet,  the birth of radical freedom of speech and information. was also born. Some of which is disturbing and worrying. Hilary Clinton said "Blogs, email, and text messages have opened up new forums for exchanging ideas – and created new targets for censorship." While ideas and thoughts can be exchanged and developed freely most of the time, there is also a form of war on the internet where different government agencies try to censor information or keep tabs on you. Of course some times these measures are necessary because there are websites which have child porn on or other inhumane forms of torture.

The internet has transformed so much, enabling the common person to have the capability to be an internet policeman. On October 15th the loosely nit hacker/activism group Anonymous who are branded by government agencies as dangerous, found a trove of internet sites on the Darknet ( a hidden form of the internet). The web hosting service Freedom hosting was found to contain sites with immoral images and videos. Anonymous has since closed down the website hosting service and has kept up attacks when it has tried to resurface. Sometimes you could say it is necessary to work outside of law if the government agencies are failing which the internet has encouraged.