Blog 5

Lecture

• Charles Babbage- who is essentially the came up with the of the idea of a computer with the help of Ada Byron
• Alan Turing- excentric man who developed early computer like systems in the second world war, in order to crack the german enigma codes: The Bombe

The Personal computer

• Xerox PARC- early 1970s, creators of the mouse and the grafic interface used for pull down windows
• Apple-at home brew meetings Steve Jobs and Steve Wozinak create Apple and recieve a loan on condition Mike Markala supervises them when Creating computers...Apple 2 (computer) is launched in 1978. First Apple sells for $666.66 and was the first self contained personal computer for non techies.Paid $100 for visicalc application.
• Microsoft- Bill Gates drops out of Uni and starts wrinting the BASIC, for Altair, in Albequerque, opened a garage business called Microsoft.
• IBM- up until then were only selling mainframes to governments, they decide to built a PC and commision Bill Lowe to see it done in one year. They track Bill Gates down and buy his software; language system and try to buy Gary Kildalls operating system, he fails to sell this and IBM approach Bill Again and he then Buys a system called Kudos based on Kildalls system and pays $50,000 for it and obviously made more money.
• Apple- Have the best graphic interface as its user Friendly and Windows is a copy to keep up. Steve Jobs quits however returns in 1998 and has had success since, not as much as other PC companies.

The Internet

• Networks of Networks which include mainframes, servers and personal computers
• Logically linked By IP(internet protocol) addresses
• Able to support communication with TCP(transmission protocol)/IP
• Uses are private or public
• RAND corporation 1960s, think tank , developed a series of communicaton
• ARPANET- US defence put funding however was subject to hi-jacking of ideas

The World Wide Web(WWW)

• Particular use of the Net, 1990s
• HTML- Hyper Text Mark-up Language
• The internet is not the web

Cyberspace

Karl Popper says

• World 1- objective material
• World 2- subjective conciousness
• World 3- Public structures, interacting

A conceptual space where words, relationships, data, wealth, power are manifested by people using computer mediated communication technologies.

Early Internet Applications

• E-mail - electronic mail; Microsoft outlook, Mozilla thunderbird
• File transfer protocol- directly down and uploading of info onto and from the net
• MUDS- text telling what to do eg: go north

Recent applications

• Instant Messaging
• Portable Audio: MP3, AAC
• Skype

Readings.

The readings were almost a mimic of what was discussed in the lecture , mention was made about the history of the internet.

I recognised the name ARPANET... funny thing is that it was called DARPANET in Metal Gear Solid 2: Solid Snake.I guess it just links with having a narrotolgy as the main idea with the game... that story was based on real events however its obvious the characters are all fictional however the fictious nature ties in with reality and it just becomes harder to distuingish between the two...I know when i was playing Metal Gear I had some pretty crazy conspiracy theories..... so yeah I just saw the link to todays' lecture...and how the game affects you after you play....

Blog 4

Firstly i m not sure that i even hate wikipedia .....i guess i will have come to a answer by the end of the blog ?



Lecture



The topic is why I hate wikipedia

• We were introduced to how wikipedia can be misleading and false , an example being the Lee Cox and Stockwell feud.


• I think the students didnt fully understand the talk prof Stockwell had regarding the Whitlam government, what i think he meant was that important information cant to this day be accessed and is left out of the encyclopedia.


• We saw how most of the wikipedia articles are not refereed by experts in the field of the topic searched and are therefore not scholarly and obviously can be false, and for refereed info journals should be used.

We then discuss the reading, which i will discuss shortly, and how it relates to the lecture in progress.

• Correspondence theory- What we observe, facts (The sky is blue)


• Coherence theory- Does it make sense? (The ants ate the dead bug)I know this without seeing it


• Performative theory- I do declare (I am heterosexual) therfore i must be because i say i am..... i guess unless i was lying , WHICH I M NOT


• Social theory- What can we as society agree on (Its a hot day) society can agree

These however are obvious theories but how can we know that what we sense-smell, see, hear, touch-is real ....the matrix theory tells us that we cant that easily distuingish the real from the non real..

Readings

The readings by Jorge Luis Borges was intresting as it brings to our attention how wrong encyclopedias can be ...distant lands that do not exist are put into factual books, this obviously goes hand in hand with how the truth is easily distorted especially in an age where people use wikipedia as there source of info.... this is a problem , how do we know that what we have learnt in hand copies of encyclopedias is true? Four additional pages existed in a later copy of the same encyclopedia....these pages held the Uqbar story and there was no other change...

according to Tlon

On Tuesday, X crosses a deserted road and loses nine copper coins. On Thursday, Y finds in the road four coins, somewhat rusted by Wednesday's rain. On Friday, Z discovers three coins in the road. On Friday morning, X finds two coins in the corridor of his house. The heresiarch would deduce from this story the reality - i.e., the continuity - of the nine coins which were recovered. It is absurd (he affirmed) to imagine that four of the coins have not existed between Tuesday and Thursday, three between Tuesday and Friday afternoon, two between Tuesday and Friday morning. It is logical to think that they have existed - at least in some secret way, hidden from the comprehension of men - at every moment of those three periods.

Tutorial

Given question on how Walter Benjamins article applies today?

Q- How do the ideas from Walter Benjamin's "Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" apply to contemporary digital media?

A- My understanding of the article is that Benjamin see art as something that has always been able to be reproduced however it can still be unique. As with photos the negative is unique.

Q- There was a time when "Art" was made by artists who were skilled professionals. Now that anyone with a computer can create things digitally (music, images, videos, etc), what does that mean for "art"?

A- Art has just become broader and classifying it just becomes harder... an example is the DADA art period, it was conceptual but only trained artist were recognised as they held the nessecary skills an artist needed and they decided that somethings were art just standing conceptually.....

Q- Is a photoshopped image "authentic"?

A- I agree with Benjamin in that something can be reproduced but still be unique therfore it would be authentic as you have changed it but now it is authentic on its own , it is unique from the previous photo and from the next that might be even more edited but still authentic.

So i can deduce through the lecture, readings and tute that wikipedia can be false and should not be used as an accurate source , however it has its uses and its place....oh and that i should question what is real?

Blog 3

Scavanger Hunt

1. Onel de Guzman who is 24 and a computor student is the creator of the love bug virus


2. Johan Vaaler(Norway) is the creator of the paper clip


3. The ebola virus is named after a river in the DRC (Democratic Republic of Congo)


4. The largest recorded earthquake was in Chile and registered 9.5 on the richter and was in 1977 in Kanomari.


5. A terrabyte is a thousand billion bytes or just one thousand gigabytes.


6. Inventor of e mail is Ray Tomlinson


7. The storm worm is a spam e mail that infects your computer with the trojan virus usually starts with headlines like 230 dead in Europe.The country of Estonia suffered as it is difficult to detect for anti virus programmes. The creator is said to be in St Petersburg and under government protection.


8. I believe the easiest way to contact the Prime Minister of Australia is go to the home page which is found on any search engine, then e mail through contact us .


9. Proffessor Stephen Stockwell is the keyboardist for the Black Assasins


10. Web 2.0 in my view is the rejuvinated version of the internet after its decrease in 2001 and with the increase of new and exciting pages and things like facebook, it sort of made a comeback. Like mullets !

Resources

• A9 http://www.a9.com/


• yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/


• hotbot http://www.hotbot.com/

Lecture

• The lecture discussed old communication technologies in relation to what walter benjamin argued in his essay on 'the work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction'.


• A timeline was shown, it depicts in chronological order:

1. Tribal practices -To tell stories about what was happening in their culture at the time


2. The alphabet- Hieroglyphics 6000-8000 BC, the alphabet dated 1500 BC and was phonetic(sound put with letter)


3. Ancient texts- Writing began to occure all across Asia, India and Europe


4. Print- Gutenburg invents the printing press and prints the first copy of the Bible(1452)


5. Telegraph- Samual morse sends morse code,dots and dashes, across large distance(1837)


6. Telephone- Alexander Grahem Bell invents the first patented telephone. voice projection over a long distance.(1876)


7. Phonograph- Thomas Edison invents technology that leads to play back of sounds, which goes on to become CDs and Records(1876)


8. Radio- Marconni invents the radio device which at first is only used for two way communication but later used to broadcast news (1895)


9. Cinema- By showing images at 1/24th of a second motion is depicted and film is created, 1929 is the first film with synchronized sound.


10. TV- TV is invented in 1926 and spreads through world in the 1930s , reaches AUS in 1956. Invented by John Logie Baird.


11. Video- 1976 video is introduced as VHS and Only replaced in sales by DVD in 2002

Tutorial

Got started on the scavenger hunt without using google or wikipedia. Not that I like google anyway, wikipedia is a bit more fun but yahoo is the one for me..... anyway

discussed

Marshall McLuhan- who essentially beleived that technology is an extension of the body.

George Gerbner and Larry Gross -views on the way violence is portrayed on the tv.

Maxwell Mc Combs and Donald Shaw- observed agenda setting , which indicated by rank what the voter felt was important.

Reading

Firstly i beleive by the response of everyone else in the new comm tech class and the fact that an understanding cant really be reached(i know you have your reasons for torchering us). However i do remember a lot of rambling over the auras of certain technologies and how film and photography affect those who see them. The fact that film and photos are a mass produced medium they should be used for good and not propaganda and indoctrination. He also seems to beleive that through technology people will have more info at their finger tips and should be smarter not dumber because things are easy.... movies like idiocracy (stupid but funny)and korns music video about the deevolution of society oppose this ..... did my head in .....