Five days later, I am still baffled by the amounts of equipment we saw on our tour of the Middlebury servers. We take for granted every day, that we can sit down with the simple equipment of a lap top, and be “connected” to the internet, and almost anything we want, with the click of a button and no wires or extra hardware. Walking into the server rooms and seeing how much we are ACTUALLY “connected” to, made me rethink how we use our computers and other technologies. I realize how ignorant and uneducated most of us are about the technologies we use on a regular basis. How the heck does the internet actually work? I don’t get it. We’re connected to the servers, which are in a room connected to a bazillion wires that go into the ceiling and under the floors… and apparently some fiber runs underground connecting us to the internet connection in Albany… and that is connected to something else? Where is the central THING that makes the internet? And what is floating around in the air that allows us to have a “wireless” connection?

While our laptop fits nicely in a drawer and in our backpack, and we “store” things online in some seemingly infinite electronic folder, someone else somewhere is watching towers of machinery, changing tapes and hard drives that are holding all that information in a tangible way.

It’s just crazy. I’d like to see what the server rooms look like for programs like “Second Life…”