Logan, Chaps..47-49

There are many different ways to display virtual reality. The one that I found most interesting was the "CAVE", which was a cube where images were posted on every side making the environment completely immersive. Self driving cars or Mariner Rovers have made it easier to snap pictures on Mars or discover a world that could not be seen before. All of these advancements only lead to the yearning of more and more knowledge. Creations like the bot have revolutionized the use of technology and the WEB. We can search for information without the help of any outside source or aid of any human being. It is the bots sole duty to connect you with information that you are seeking. These bots are only as efficient as any intelligent or well practiced web surfer. Without a form of AI or artificial intelligence we will always have to be well versed in what we are doing, but with AI all information would become more of a hands on guide instead of an encyclopedia. There are many critics of Artificial Intelligence and the dangers it can bring, but putting the movies aside all of this has only created more good through out society. Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, applauds googles' accomplishments as a web browser and hopes to create a similar version by entering information that is essential to the user. With individuals like Jobs, Wales, and Alan Kay are world of technology will flourish and hopefully continue in the advancement of helping people through out all parts of their daily lives

Questions of Control

As any new invention the Internet has had many advances through out its’ lifetime. In the beginning the Net was extremely slow and it was very hard to get and maintain a connection, but there have been three new ideas or developments that have changed this. First, Graphic User Interfaces (GUI’s), which were created by Xerox Parc and are now entwined into almost every Personal Computer. Also the advancements of micro chips and there speed has aided the innovation of Graphic User Interfaces. Lastly, the creation and improvement of the Information Superhighway has increased the sufficiency of the bandwidth and has helped with heavy signal loads. Cyberspace has been continually evolving and with that the history of cyberspace is easily forgotten. Those who are working in the Cyber field today is fresh faces and have not experienced past problems that have come about. This may be a problem in the future because of their inability to cope with problems they have never experienced. A huge overbearing concern of many is privacy and how it will be maintained because of the lack of control that is currently on cyberspace. An interesting thought from the reading was that through the Internet advertising companies have switched the way they advertise. It used to be about solving problems or filling the needs of people, but now they have found ways to create needs for products that were never needed before like the iPod. Even though space on the Web seems unlimited many have worries on what that space will be used for and what happens when and if it runs out.

Chapters 44-46

Blogs, previously called weblogs, are way more popular than I would have thought.  It is said that approximately 18 million American adults keep a blog.  When I decided recently that I want to be involved in fashion public relations and started researching about the topic, I began to notice how many people have blogs about not only fashion, but millions of other topics.  Logan describes how blogs are broken down into smaller communities of interest, which is something I noticed right off the bat.  Logan also says that blogs are meant for alternative news sources, although I have never considered looking at a blog for important news stories.  If I were to go into the journalist business, reading this section in chapter 44 has taught me that blogs are an extremely important way to publish stories that are originally not allowed in that country.  Blogs of this sort are more important for military and government personell.  I really enjoyed the quick section of the “Blook” that Logan described in section 44.5.  He put his book on a Website so that friends and whoever wanted to give their opinions could do so, calling it a blook.

            Chapter 46 on Search Engines proved to be extremely interesting.  It is inevitable that most of the people in the world have used, or at least heard of Google.  It has the largest market share of online advertising revenue, standing at 63.5% in 2009.  Google is scored based on several things—frequency and the amount of document change, how often the documented is chosen when it appears in a search list, freshness of the site and its links, how much time visitors spend on the site, and many others.  It is interesting to note that there are many different types of Google internationally, including Googke UK, Google Canada, Google Adsense, Google Germany, Google Spain to name a few.  Like we mentioned in class, Google is not only a search engine.  Some of Google’s other features include Google Mail (gmail), Google Calendar, Google Maps, Google Images, Google Blogger (obviously), Google Documents, and MANY more.  An important sentence that Logan mentioned was that “the more traffic it can generate, the more advertising dollars it can earn (advertising revenue brings up percentage).  I do not think I have gone a day without saying, “Just Google it” or “Googling” something if I do not know the answer to something or want to find something out.  It is interesting how Google does not want its name in the dictionary because they do not want it to have different meanings, but like Logan mentioned, it is inevitable that people will do what they want.  One of my favorite Google apps that I read in this chapter was Google Cooking, where you write down all the ingredients that you have in your home and within seconds, hundreds of recipes with those ingredients pop up.  The only part of this chapter that I did not agree was that Google is the seventh language, after speech, writing, math, science, computing, and the Internet.  Although Logan mentions that this is outrageous, I cannot picture this actually becoming something that is taught in schools.

            The last part of the assignment is on Chapter 46, which includes video conferencing and Web-based Collaboration tools.  Video conferencing has become extremely popular throughout the years and it is something I have seen with my own eyes.  “Video conferencing can contribute to collaboration among individuals by overcoming the barrier of distance.”  This chapter also talks about Wiki, a website in which the pages can be changed by anyone with an Internet access.  The only website that pops into mind when reading about this is Wikipedia, a website I go to when finding basic research about a topic, but never a source that is completely reliable.

The Internet, Web, and Social media

Through out the beginning of the personal computer or the PC the leader of the industry was IBM. IBM is a company that is very regimented. They had all employees dress in Navy Blue pinstripe suits and encouraged their employees to communicate with each other as much as possible. This company decided to stay away from the software and manufacturing of PC's and decided to focus on teh hardware as they had always done. Apple, a competitor of IBM, had created a new image with the help of Steve Jobs. They created an image that was new and hip and attracted a very artistic and creative crowd. Apple had gone down hill when Jobs left the company, but when he came back with the invention of the iPod Apple once again flourished. In chapters 8 and 9 of "Communication and Cyberspace" individuals go on to describe the internet, which they call an information superhighway. William Gibson went on to coin the term cyberspace, which he describes as a consensual hallucination. His vision of the internet and cyberspace was that it is a transnational capitalism run amok. An obstacle in this era was Interface Message Processors or IMP's. IMP gives computers the ability to talk to each other if they were produced by the same manufacturer. The internet or computer network has been created from the beginning by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency as a part of their defense strategy. Their thought was to create a decentralized network so that if one part of the network was attacked or went down the other parts would fill in and there would be no loss of connection. These networks consist of many components such as terminals and nodes. Terminals are not endpoints which are not connected to each other, but to a main frame. Nodes are interconnected within the network. In 1969 ARPAnet was commissioned by the department of defense and the key to this system was packet switching. Packet switching is where several packets are sent to one destination, the nodes reroute in accordance with how easy it is to reach its end point, and they come back together at their destination. Mosco has many views about the electronic age, but one that stood out to me was that in an electric age information has been increasingly modified. Another idea that intrigued me was the thought that cyberspace has no limits and or no barriers and will expand as information increases. With discoveries like prodigy, America online and the WEB our society has become greatly entwined in the internet and all that it has to offer. Within the text we have been reading they speak of a "digital divide, which is the gap between those who have access to and use the internet and those who do not(166)". This idea enlightens you on how the world has increasingly progressed through the years. Thoughts from the text and thoughts of my own hope that this gap is lessened each and every passing day