Blown to Bits Chapter 3

Discuss how not knowing some basics of how a software tool or computer works, and the abstractions they use, could lead to bad outcomes.

Not knowing the basics of how software tools or computer works put users at risk of having some information that they wanted to keep confidential to become public. Just like how government officials didn’t know that the highlighter tool doesn’t mean people would be able to edit the file to get the blacked out part to become visible others could go through the same. If they knew the proper way to encrypt the documents, so it can’t be edit by unauthorized people then the information about the CIA agents and the death of Nicole Calipari would not have gone public.

The layers of protocols used in network communication is an example of abstraction. Can you give other examples of abstraction in everyday life? When you browse to a web page, maybe with some animated advertisements embedded on it, describe in detail what happens behind the scenes to display that page on your browser.

Another abstraction used in everyday life is the car. Although millions of people use it daily to commute to work or places to conduct their business only the bare minimum is known to the general public. The most people know is how to maintain the car, everyday people don't really know how exactly the mechanic and hydraulic of the car function to move the car.

Behind the screen when you load a webpage is much more than what people expect or even know. At the bottom is the physical part of the internet such as wires that ensure the Internet functions then comes UP which is relied by the higher level protocols to deliver packets. Then comes TCP and UDP which are used for message delivery and ensure the files have been fully received (well UDP is unreliable in that section). Then HTTP is used for sending and receiving webpages and SMTP is used to send emails. These protocols are all used to ensure that the animate advertisement that becomes annoying sometimes load on the webpage.

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