Week 5- Extra Credit Post

I skimmed through the article on the open source software (GNU Project) and I think that on many levels it seems like a good idea. I really do need to look more into the software and read up on it more. I think that the dicussion about it being free or not is very valid however, because while I do sometimes associate free with bad quality you can also see successful programs (such as virus protection software) that is offered free online as a download and has been very successful. I think that the biggest issue is the market competition and how it will affect other operating systems and software that is sold in the computer industry. Overall I can’t form an opinion on it till I get hands on experience with the system and really see how the benefits outweigh current software systems and why it has been so successful for schools such as Harvard and other businesses within the world.

Week 5 Reading Reflection

I found both of this week’s articles very interesting on many different levels. I think that it is important for communication scholars to study the open source software system because it seems to be the wave of the future. I think that the “Long Tail” article from Wired magazine hit it right on with where the world seems to be going with business models, new products and the influence of the internet. Prime example of course is the expansion of products and product suggestions based on what the customer intially purchases. The customer can then explore a “whole new world” of products outside of the mainstream “hits” we as consumers are so use to get shoved down our throats through mass advertising and product placement on radio, TV, movies, magazines, billboards, and so much more.

So many times we don’t even realize that we are being brainwashed by society to think, breathe, and even eat a certain way. How many times do we know what we really like as individual people with our own individual tastes? Do we really like that one Lil Jon song that keeps coming on, or do we just think we like it because thats what is playing on the radio’s cycle every 20 minutes. An experiement that I didn’t actually mean to encounter one day was when I moved into my sorority last year. For the first time in my life the radio was on in our bathroom 24-7. All of a sudden I started realizing a trend that people have warned me about so many times before in my life, and I would learn more about that year in my com classes. We as a market for every product from music to movies to toliet paper are groomed to think and purchase a certain way to fit the needs of the company we are supporting. The same radio station was on all the time and it played the same damn cycle of songs every 20 minutes for several days straight- talk about not only boring but extremely annoying! I agree with both authors from the articles that we read; the internet and hopefully more open source software has given us abudance to masses of information that allow us to really know the companies that we get the bulk of our products from and additionally it has allowed us to really explore what products we really want to buy. Maybe I don’t actually want that new Kelly Clarkson song…maybe I want the not as popular and certainly not mainstream British soloist artist…you never know till you try. New online company strategies allow us to have that option through product suggestion and of course the information and storage overload avaliable on the internet.

When Meryl Streep won a Golden Globe for her lead character in The Devil Wears Prada, she made a speech that I can’t seem to get out of my head. She started thanking her friends, family etc, but then she said that the reason her movie was such a great success was because theatres across America and the world were playing it, and this was not so true for hundreds of other amazing movies we never even get to see as mainstream consumers. She listed off several movies she had just seen and thought were outstanding, but they weren’t playing at your average megaplex. She pleaded that Americans go to their neighborhood theatres and demand that these movies get played too. We as Americans have to realize that it is our responsibility to decide what we want, when we want it and until we can do that, the alternative choices outside of mainstream America will never reach our lives.

Discussion Questions:

Where does the class see examples of businesses in their lives (such as the movie industry or other big companies) that are lacking in customer service? How did they become aware of this? Was it because of the internet and its masses of information?

Can you see more and more businesses becoming reliant on the internet or do you think it would be smarter to stay away from the internet just maintain physical “face to face” communcation for good customer service? Which do you find more appealing?

Search Project Example

I searched for “arts and the media” and then refined my search to be “media and broadway” in the proquest database through UW and found a scholarly journal titled “Investing in Broadway”. The authors are Geoffrey R. Horlick and Richard T. Hise. The remaining citation informaiton is Business Horizons, Bloomington: Feb 1980, Vol. 23, Iss. 1; pg. 19. Published in New York. Hopefully I can come back to this article later when searching for my podcast information.

Week 4 Reading Reflection

This subject has always been a little bit alarming to me; the whole future between men and machines I mean.  I recall such movies as “AI (Artificial Intelligence)” and “2001 Space Odyssey”, both of which left me feeling a little uneasy about the future of machines in our society. In the movie “AI” the main character is a machine created to look and “feel” like a little boy that a family purchases to be their own child. The problem then arises that the little boy, although manufactured to act, respond, and learn like a real human child starts to become less and less like the little boy the family anticipated when they purchased him. They end up having to get rid of the machine because of some mechanical revolution where the humans try to contain and trash all the machines. Anyway, the little boy ends up feeling more like a human and desires his “mother” to come back and rescue him, but unfortunately he is stuck in a mechanical eternal life of loneliness where all he can anticipate is the rust that begins to cover his frame.

At this point in my life I really haven’t experienced that much when it comes to the technology of the future. I grew up in the revolution of the internet, computers, laptops, cell phones, ipods, and so much more but the idea of having a machine that cleans my house or a car that can talk to me and drive it’s self still makes me uneasy. I can’t trust my own life or those lives that compile our entire species in the hands of some mechanical contraption. Call me old fashioned but a computer can’t feel, it can’t respond to human emotion or error for that matter, just like the depressing ending that encompasses the little “boy” in “AI”. He becomes overused, unsatisfied by his owners, and completely alone frozen forever in a mechanically trashed society.

Until a machine can be created that can feel, create, and understand like the human mind…I really don’t want a part of it. Even if a machine can be built that understands and feels like the human soul, I still fear that it will be more intelligent than our species and completely take over, like in Space Odyssey 2001. The space ship in this movie actually KILLS the astronauts on board with this creepy-computer-crazed-monotone voice with an even more eery air of “happiness” to it. I realize that this fear may be juvenille, but its a fear that I am willing to admit! The future is a very scary place, a place with technology that an average college student, like myself, can only imagine in my “sci-fi” filled fantasies. What the future holds I can only anticipate, but I do hope that we as the human race are prepared to handle the machines we create to join our own society.

Discussion Questions:

Do we as a human race really think that machines, that one day could be more intelligent than us, could successfully join us in our society? How would this happen?

What would be the first kind of machine to be implemented? What company would produce it? What would it do for us? Would you buy one? Such as a car that drives it’s self or a personal maid that cleans your house?

Podcast Concept Proposal

I think one of the most fascinating aspects of digital media today is the idea that we as consumers can be and are the creators ourselves. I know that this statement is far over used but this concept still remains a huge part of our everyday lives. Every day a new song is added to myspace or itunes, a new podcast is posted on a political site, a new video is added to youtube and a new post is seen on blogs throughout the world. Even the littlest things such as an e-mail or our comments on wordpress are a contribution to the massive giant that is world wide web.

For my podcast project I would like to explore this element of internet users being consumers and creators, focusing mainly in the area of the arts, both locally and nationally. I will supply examples from youtube, itunes and my own personal vocal tracks to show how the arts have been expanded over the last decade alone through the increases in digital media and people around the world being able to view, produce, and explore the arts in more depth and frequence from technological advantages.

At Home Assignment Blog Post- Internet Credibility

I decided that while discussing the ideas of internet censorship and credibility I would use a somewhat new but widely used resource for information on the internet that can be considered controversial as well; Wikipedia.com. According to Wikipedia internet censorship “is control or suppression of material an individual can publish or access on the internet.” Wikipedia continues to say that “total censorship of information on the internet, however, is very difficult (or impossible) to achieve due to the underlying distributed technology of the internet. The legal issues are similar to offline censorship.” What is interesting to consider is how much of Wikipedia is censored on each search and how much of what other people contribute is chosen to be removed or included? Wikipedia also defines credibility as “is the believability of a statement, action, or source, and the propensity of the observer to believe that statement…in public speaking Aristotle consider the credibility of the speaker, her character, to be one of the forms of proof.” Wikipedia continues to discuss credibility in response to the recent rise in internet activity and usage especially for research. Credibility online has become an important topic since 1999, as the web is increasingly an information resource. The Persuasive Technology Lab at Stanford University has studied web credibility and outlined the principal components of online credibility and a general theory called Prominence-Interpretation Theory. This theory applies generally to credibility assessments. According to the Society of Professional Journalists code of ethics, professional integrity is the cornerstone of a journalist’s credibility (Wikipedia, Credibility). I find it ironic that a source on the web for massive amounts of information is seen defining credibility, when some might even argue that it is not is even a credible source for information itself. Granted, it is an easy way to find information quickly and efficiently, like I have here…but can it be argued as a credible source for research in the academic and professional world? I think that credibility often lies in the eyes or the hands of the writer and whether or not it is credible to you and your readers?

Week 3 Reading Reflection

After reading the listed articles for this weeks reading I have been reminded of the frustrations encountered with the ridiculous excess of information that the world wide web contains.  In all its splendor, yes the internet does have its bright-sides and I am in no way forgeting those, everytime I seem to make a search I am blown side-ways with the amount of junk that even a simple search might attain. Last month I went on google in search of the title of a book that I was going to get my Dad for Christmas; not ONLY did I get the title of the book, but I got several accounts of the author’s life story, how the book came about, thousands of places I could purchase it on and offline, how it was manufactured, what other books the author had written, why it was or wasn’t a good book from blog to blog, several personal video accounts of whether the book was liked by a poster or not, and of course several more (and by several I mean hundreds) of professional and unprofessional reviews of the book’s content. Naturally, I didn’t need 99.9% of the information that was thrown into my eyes’ path as I scanned desperately for the tiny little piece of information that I did need.

I think that the article likening the internet to a “hall of mirrors” is exactly right…so many times we become too fascinated by the internet and its endless amounts of information and resources that we forget it can trick our minds just like some fun-house we enter for amusement at the carnival. You go into the house expecting one thing and all of a sudden you look up and see a million different versions of your head and body in different shapes, sizes, and colors surrounding you. In worst case scenarios we become so enamoured with what we see our sense of reality is completely lost and we forget where we really are and what we really went in looking for and this is where addictions and mistakes are easily created. I realize that this metaphor is somewhat of a stretch but that is exactly how I feel when I click that tiny little search button on google. I feel bombarded with information, some of which I find useful and fascinating, most of which I just find annoying. When we go to search for a research paper, a friend’s blog or just the title of a book there has got to be a better, safter and more reliable way to search for exactly what you want and retrieve it, most importantly, from a trustworthy source.

I can’t tell you growing up how many loose-ended and unreliable sources I used by accident from the internet just because no one had taught me the proper way to search and verify sources. Our generation was completely caught off gaurd by the amounts of information we  had thrusted just beyong our fingertips…we unfortunately still need a way to organize and store that information so that it is actually useful and attainable. I think that the “Natural Language Processing System” sounds like a better version of “Ask Jeeves” for the future. Just ask what you need and “wa-lah” there it is…compacted, reliable and just what you needed! Hopefully this type of information storing and processing system comes sooner than later, otherwise I fear for the massive amounts of information that keep piling up in our society…where will it all keep going??

Discussion Questions:

What was an experience you had on the internet (maybe when you were younger, especially, and the internet had just started becoming a big deal) where you just didn’t know where to begin on research or you were caught at a very unreliable source? Do you think this is still happening as much today?

What do you think is a good way to start organizing and processing our information back-up better? Will nano techonology help us now or in the future with this storing and organizing issue?

Week 2 Extra Credit Blog

I remember learning about how the internet actually started for military purposes back in my 201 class last year with David Silver and I remember thinking how ironic the whole situation ended up being. I’m sure upon the ARPANET’s creation the government had no idea the impact that they would be making, not on their own nation’s war strategies and systems, but eventually on the average American’s everyday life and the mass communication of our world as we know it.

In relativity not that much money went into the internet initially as has gone into up to recent day. We put so much stress and immediance on our government these days and its funny to think that they brought us one of our most precious pieces of communication and information from day-to-day from a completely different place of study and intent. After reading over these passages a puzzling question comes to mind; are their inventions in progress today simply designed for the government’s use that could someday impact our society on a much bigger level, much like the internet did starting in the 60′s? If so, what would this device be used for and would it provide more hurt than it does aid? How big will it’s impact be compared to that of the internet and will it stretch out further from our own nation’s borders to make an impact on the world as well?

Week 2 Reading Reflection

After going through this week’s selections of readings I have had more than just 2 “ah-ha” moments of realization and interpretation, however I will just outline a few for you in this reflection. Since I am currently a young college student who has had the privilege of growing up in a generation where technology has not only boomed but become a necessity to our everyday life as a successful and striving human race, I have seen and experienced many new devices. Where would be today without the inevitable replacement of computers for typewriters and cell phones for oral communication? How would we communication with such immediacy were it not for fax machines, the internet, e-mail and our ever trusty laptops and blackberries?

I find it so interesting that today we find these devices not only complimentary to our everyday lives but completely necessary to living out the lives we desire. Although, 50 years ago these devices might have been developed were it not for the humans’ fear of technology and the lack of resources and reliability of the expertise of that day. There were people with the ideas and abilities to create the automobile back in
Egypt’s days of Pharaohs and pyramids, yet technology’s reliability and costs outweighed the benefits of a new invention and creation. Just think what the impact may have been had an Egyptian citizen driven down Pharaoh’s main street in one of Ford’s first revolutionary vehicles? The impact would have been so extraordinary, almost to the point that mankind could not have handled the vast increase in technology so quickly. Although we have the means to create and expand our current technology beyond common thought today, the human race is constantly in denial and rejection to both considerable and small changes in technology; yet once we obtain a new device we can’t imagine how life existed without it.

Vannevar Bush’s description of the “memex” in 1945 quite resembled or seemed a precursor to the computers that would one day control our very routine and life-design. This “memex” would be a way for everyone from philosophers, historians, psychologists, doctors, teachers and the everyday commoner to research, retain and remember all that he could at an average library with the touch of a few buttons. He could pull up a page and scroll through the book by 1, 10 or 100 pages a time without having to flip through the actual physical pages of a book. The idea seems revolutionary to have a whole library at your fingertips, but with today’s technology of the computer and the internet you not only have a library at your fingertips but the entire world at the click of a button, whether that be a book, a film, a person or a country you wish you explore. The “memex” was like what pencil would be to the modern keyboard on a laptop- a simple, yet revolutionary and reliable means of recording and revisiting information that you could use day in and day out.

While the “memex” can be seen as a precursor to the modern internet and computer revolution I believe that the internet will proceed leaps and bounds from where it stands today till where it will stand in 2045. In 2045 I will be a whopping 57 years old and can only imagine my generation’s everyday reliance on the internet. I believe it will be the source of all our bank statements, bill paying, movie watching, shopping, theatre exploring, record keeping, art exploration and retention, as well as our sole means of communication with one another. It is almost a scary thought to think about the immense reliance our world has and will have in the future on the internet.

Discussion Questions :

Is our reliance on the internet a safe and resourceful way of living or will is one day catch up with our world and get the better of us?

If technology we have today could have been developed hundreds of years ago with more money, mankind’s approval and more reliability do you think that there are devices that could be developed right now that are NOT being developed because of these very same reasons? Is marketing and commercial profit have anything to do with these stalls in production as well? (ex: The Nano ipod could have been developed years ago, but think of all the money Apple made off of consumers in the first ipod’s years of discovery and consumption.)