W4-Computing power to communication/Forecast
Discuss the effects of applying computing power to communication.
I think that computing power makes “global village” possible, it shortens the distances among people, makes us more independent, and people can also connect to other people more speedily. We know the Internet has become a vast global communication system that is used by millions people around the world for business, education and entertainment purpose, as well as for personal correspondence an information retrieval. However, no government or commercial entity owns the Net or directly profits from its operation, so its development has been more organic than bureaucratic.
Applying computing power to communication causes the users online social network. A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. An online social network may cause the international social network, and users can interactive with people who are around the world via platforms such as YouTube, Skype and MSN etc. It breaks national boundaries.
What needs to happen next, is simply to make this interaction environment more user friendly, more “natural” for the millions and millions of people out there, just getting familiar with “the web”, email, spam, how to communicate in this environment, using emailing joke, (often bad jokes), to merely connect with family and friends, present and from the past.
http://www.socialnets.org/news/OSN2005manifesto.pdf
What might Bush forecast today, if he were looking to 2050?
It is incredible that a man could propose the ideation of technical advances which we have today on 1945. “As We May Think” presaged the idea of the Internet and the World Wide Web and was directly influential on the fathers of the hypertext and the Internet as we know it today. As early as the 1930s he was concerned about the glut of information coming out of academia and the government and wanted to improve the way people accessed, stored and communicated information. He recognized the limitations in how that information was accessed. In this landmark article he describes a machine, the memex, which would help someone find information based in association and context rather than strict categorical indexing. “A memex is a device in which an individual stores his books, records and communications and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”
The article goes on to describe the physical desk as having a set of translucent screens, keyboard, buttons and levers. The desk would also serve its user as a large storage device.It is because of this article that Bush has been hailed as the conceptual creator of “hypertext”. The article is at its most innovative and interesting in the description of how the memex device was to work for the reader.
The memex “affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.”
Bush’s vision for how we handle and interact with information took a step towards reality with the creation of hypertext and the basic linked web, but those of us working with information and creating information spaces and connections would do well to take another look at his vision and be as inspired to create new and innovative ways to gather and share information as other have been in the past. The modern weblog starts to walk down the path Bush described. Wikipedia, the software that allows one person to aggregate and publish information and then allows others to modify and add and change the original information is also akin to his vision as well. Therefore, Bush may foresee that the new media we have today will be combined together, integrated and then personalized. Mass media are no longer mass media but “personal media”, people can choose even design their own media, just like we can create ourselves “personal homepage” on Google!
I think that computing power makes “global village” possible, it shortens the distances among people, makes us more independent, and people can also connect to other people more speedily. We know the Internet has become a vast global communication system that is used by millions people around the world for business, education and entertainment purpose, as well as for personal correspondence an information retrieval. However, no government or commercial entity owns the Net or directly profits from its operation, so its development has been more organic than bureaucratic.
Applying computing power to communication causes the users online social network. A social network is a social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds. An online social network may cause the international social network, and users can interactive with people who are around the world via platforms such as YouTube, Skype and MSN etc. It breaks national boundaries.
What needs to happen next, is simply to make this interaction environment more user friendly, more “natural” for the millions and millions of people out there, just getting familiar with “the web”, email, spam, how to communicate in this environment, using emailing joke, (often bad jokes), to merely connect with family and friends, present and from the past.
http://www.socialnets.org/news/OSN2005manifesto.pdf
What might Bush forecast today, if he were looking to 2050?
It is incredible that a man could propose the ideation of technical advances which we have today on 1945. “As We May Think” presaged the idea of the Internet and the World Wide Web and was directly influential on the fathers of the hypertext and the Internet as we know it today. As early as the 1930s he was concerned about the glut of information coming out of academia and the government and wanted to improve the way people accessed, stored and communicated information. He recognized the limitations in how that information was accessed. In this landmark article he describes a machine, the memex, which would help someone find information based in association and context rather than strict categorical indexing. “A memex is a device in which an individual stores his books, records and communications and which is mechanized so that it may be consulted with exceeding speed and flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate supplement to his memory.”
The article goes on to describe the physical desk as having a set of translucent screens, keyboard, buttons and levers. The desk would also serve its user as a large storage device.It is because of this article that Bush has been hailed as the conceptual creator of “hypertext”. The article is at its most innovative and interesting in the description of how the memex device was to work for the reader.
The memex “affords an immediate step, however, to associative indexing, the basic idea of which is a provision whereby any item may be caused at will to select immediately and automatically another. This is the essential feature of the memex. The process of tying two items together is the important thing.”
Bush’s vision for how we handle and interact with information took a step towards reality with the creation of hypertext and the basic linked web, but those of us working with information and creating information spaces and connections would do well to take another look at his vision and be as inspired to create new and innovative ways to gather and share information as other have been in the past. The modern weblog starts to walk down the path Bush described. Wikipedia, the software that allows one person to aggregate and publish information and then allows others to modify and add and change the original information is also akin to his vision as well. Therefore, Bush may foresee that the new media we have today will be combined together, integrated and then personalized. Mass media are no longer mass media but “personal media”, people can choose even design their own media, just like we can create ourselves “personal homepage” on Google!
posted by Kaichen at 5:18:00 PM
1 Comments:
The Internet has definitely made it easier to form networks with people who are not geographically near to create "global villages." I think there is something lost though in not being able to read nonverbal cues. It's interesting how people have adopted phrases that are beginning to become agreed upon by the masses to try to make up for some of this. For example, lol, hehe, and numerous emoticons.
As people become more comfortable with the technology users will undoubtedly adopt more ways to try to make up for missing cues that can be read when communicating verbally.
4:11 PM
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