Sharing is Caring...Or Maybe Just An Obsession

HTML:

To all appearances, making a blog seems easy. It’s been made easy by our constant drive for greater and greater conveniency, quickness, sharpness, as if we want to be made sharp and quick by our own technologies.

I click to blogger.

I click on new blog. I choose a template. I can go to the links on the side and, with a mere few clicks, I have a template for my blog complete with a picture of me and my profile description. I have a gadget (or widget) ready at the bottom.

But as I move into the real meat of the blog, I realize that the blog’s simplicity is only a mere façade. There is a vast HTML and Javascript framework which build into each other to create, creating connections, supervising the correct flow and appearance of information that we so desperately crave. Every detail is diagrammed into endless minutiae of equal signs, formulas, numbers, and hashtags. HTML, separate from Javascript, saves information regarding formatting and appearance.

Because I couldn’t explain it better myself, I found an apt definition of HTML (and how it’s different from Javascript from Christopher Heng:

“In the same way, web pages are simply strings of words put in a special format that web browsers are able to display. While the format of Word documents is simply called "Word format" (or "doc format"), loosely speaking, one might say that web pages are formatted using "HTML". Take the paragraph of text in the box below for example:

This is an example paragraph to illustrate what HTML is, for the purpose of explaining common terms like HTML, JavaScript and PHP.

If you were to peek into the raw code for the above words, you will see the following:

This is an example paragraph to illustrate what HTML is, for the purpose of <a href="http://www.thesitewizard.com/html-tutorial/what-is-html.shtml">explaining common terms like HTML, JavaScript and PHP</a>.

So, for example, this Georgia font is able to look like this because of the following coding:

"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">

<b><span style="font-size: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So,

for example, this Georgia font is able to look like this because of the

following coding</span></span></b></div>"

Something like that...

Everything on this post, switched to HTML, looks like that. Even the bar across the top, telling us how to format the font, insert links, movies, pictures - everything is running to the Shakespearean play written in the background coding of this blog.

Humanity:

As a culture, easier access of technology has led to easier access of information, which has created the wave of pushes and pulls by way of giving and taking information. I write this blog to give information to those hungry to seek it; when did this cultural phenomenon arise? How did it grow to such a degree? Perhaps people have always been doing this. Aristotle's books were just lecture notes, after all. 

But going further...How do we codify information so that we can relate it? How can we make information - mere, unintelligible script - into an appearance of text onto a webpage to be viewed on computers by humans? When can we have enough information?

How can we push further and further towards Gatsby's green light, an unattainable desire we so obsessively pursue?

Linking: 

If you want to learn more, you can click here to get to Mr. Heng's website.

Linking, in this fashion, is just more HTML script. It formats the blue or red or black font different from the font color of the rest of the text, as well as underlines it.

The linking, while you might think is something like Javascript which can do fun things like widgets, is in fact also HTML. We can see another brilliantly written explanation from our friend, Mr. Heng:

“Notice that it is more or less like the text given earlier, except that there is additional information embedded. For example, the portion that says <a href="http://www.thesitewizard.com/html-tutorial/what-is-html.shtml"> (which I placed in a different font above to make it easier to spot) tells the web browser that what follows, until </a> is reached, is to be regarded as a link pointing at the web address http://www.thesitewizard.com/html-tutorial/what-is-html.shtml”

HTML is an instruction manual that your internet interface, and your textual links as well as pictures, can't live without. It won't even exist. For example, here is the HTML for the first image I used:


"<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt0DUYlbZzDOgUlm0aYbyd_bDc8rt1fD43-1Dr581CrwFxRHo_FxHeGao1oj0wtxiJfLymnqJELPYU1UJn48gig22rDuJQ9K47DrKa5HBR_UgUzT1bf2FS5IkpkOtb2kZi1WRyuwg5I0M/s1600/Fullscreen+capture+1252012+111132+PM+-+Copy+(2).bmp" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgt0DUYlbZzDOgUlm0aYbyd_bDc8rt1fD43-1Dr581CrwFxRHo_FxHeGao1oj0wtxiJfLymnqJELPYU1UJn48gig22rDuJQ9K47DrKa5HBR_UgUzT1bf2FS5IkpkOtb2kZi1WRyuwg5I0M/s400/Fullscreen+capture+1252012+111132+PM+-+Copy+(2).bmp" width="400" /></a></div>
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">"


Upon deleting it, my screen capture was gone, erased from the instruction manual like it had never been there.

What was just a way to remember information about size, shape, font, and appearance also now functions as a way of giving directions to the internet. HTML isn’t just the paint on the road, or the medians or the width and number of lanes – HTML is the road itself, leading in infinite numbers of textual links all over the interwebs. This is how one can go “Wikisurfing” or “blog-hopping,” accumulating the greedy amounts of information we seem to uselessly need in this age of information. HTML is our essential enabler, feeding our addiction to greater and greater amounts of information.

Javascript:

It's close cousin, more insidious, with the "hard drugs," is Javascript or PHP. It's a programming language, which is different thatn HTML script. It can't make things look pretty. But it can add what is called a "web widget"or gadget, which is basically anything that is a more complicated operation. Christopher Heng explains again: 

"If you want your web pages to do different things depending on the situation, you will need a programming language. For example, some websites want to provide a membership facility where people can log into the site, and access certain information. Other sites provide a feedback form so that visitors can contact them. All these things require facilities that a simple document format cannot do.

JavaScript, PHP and Perl are three of the most commonly-used programming languages on the Internet. They are used by websites to carry out more complicated operations.

Programs written in JavaScript run in the web browser itself, so if your website has a JavaScript program, the program will be automatically fetched by your visitor's browser and executed on his/her computer."

This definition is broad, expansive beyond simple definitions. It is basically anything fun with linking, but beyond the capability of HTML. I can add Google Apps, for example, or a stock ticker on my blog. I can add Twitter and Facebook (as I have done here).

Blogger has nearly 30 different widgets, with a vast array of functions. Javascript creates playgrounds of information for us, allowing us to both break free from simplistic HTML and do more things, but seducing us with a sexier version that only feeds our desire for information further than ever. 

***********

Interestingly enough, Mr. Heng must have added protective measures to the HTML coding on his website. He made it so that nobody could actually copy and paste any of his material - you can only link to his page. I can't identify the HTML protective script, so I am going to have to just take you to the website.