Computer-mediated Textuality – Narrative, Author, Knowledge, Self and Power

Their has been much debate on how cyber culture especially cyber text will lead to the end of physical books and new visual technologies will lead to more newer and better way of carrying books. A few weeks ago Amazon, the online bookstore had come with an innovative ideal of storing books – the name of the device is know as Kindle which is basically a e-book reader, where people can store their books and read them whenever and however they want them to read. A similar kind of gadget is also available from Sony, called the sony reader. These technologies and improvements in screen technologies have long since being promising to change the way we read.

But till now not much has happened in terms of what can be gained from these devices, as they are not suitable in one way or another – like the resolution of the flickering of the screen, etc. Hypertext and the ability to navigate from one point to another in a synch and without any hassles unlike physically books have added to the appeal of devices that could replace books. However these devices and techniques are far from fruitions and will take many more time for them to become practical and have broad appeal among both the techies and not techies.

Links:

www.ebooktechnologies.com

www.upassoc.org/upa_publications/upa_voice/volumes/5/issue_1/ebooks.htm

blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/2007/11/18/amazon_will_launch_kindle_ebook_reader_on_monday.html

scobleizer.com/

The Commercialization of the Network

The growing commercialization of the internet and the topic of net-neutrality have been much debated and discussed both by the pundits and experts in the public domain. On the other hand the corporations that control the flow the data, by means of their infrastructure – what to control the web by dividing the internet into different categories, where by users are charged according to their ability to pay, in contrast to the flat rate system that they have currently.

The cable and telecommunication companies have been accused of imposing the tiered service model more for the purpose of profiting from their control of the pipeline rather than for any demand for their content or services. People have also compared the neutrality of the web as important as the preservation of the current freedoms. A recent controversy irrupted in the United States were, the issue of net-neutrality and the apparent commercialization of the web was being discusses in the U.S senate. Ted Stevens, a senator from Alaska was criticizing for the misinterpretation of how the net works.

The bill which pertained to the particular issue was also received as it proposed amendment to a committee bill which would have prohibited Internet service providers from charging fees to give some companies higher priority access to their networks or their customers. However, the topic how far the companies are allowed to charge customers the additional fees for their services and the ways to prevent the internet from being controlled and commercialized are still continues.

Blogs and Video links

http://foureyedmonsters.com/neutrality

http://wearetheweb.org/

www.isoc.org/internet/history/brief.shtml

The Wonderful World of Web 2.0: Blogs and Citizen Journalists

I first came across the term web 2.0 when a very popular computer language, which was written especially for the web, for making websites more interactive and astatically more pleasing. Couple by the phenomenon’s of web mash –ups, were two or more different application is mixed to create a new more useful product. A very popular video in you tube tries to explain this phenomenon it is called the machine is us. Web 2.0 is considered as the predecessor of the fires generation of web technologies such as the hypertext mark up language and other static technologies which were first used in the early web.

The web2.0 has been characterised by such thing as the Social Networks, Metadata the Editable Web, Mashups, allowing the site's services to be accessed entirely through web browsers. rich, user-friendly interface social networking features such as blogs, wikis etc. user participation user content contribution, which means that the users own the site's data, is a key characteristic of a web 2.0 site, giving it a vibrant and interactive feel and making it easier to navigate and accessible for a larger, non-techie people.

Links:

Videos

Web 2.0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsa5ZTRJQ5w&feature=related

The machine is us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gmP4nk0EOE

Wiki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2

Blog

http://web2.socialcomputingmagazine.com/

We the Media? Part I: The Emergence of News in the Age of Computers

Couple of years back, I remember reading an article on Business Week, about on how after the attacks on the twin towers in New York Krishna Bharat, Goggle’s principal scientist and inventor of the Google News came up with the idea of aggregating different news sources into clusters so that so that accessing relevant and useful news can be done without much problem and in a way which brings about important news to the fore. Google news has been a huge success and in the interview in the column he argued that ‘he is not out to crush newspapers’, but he does have advice on why most have got the internet wrong. He was quoted as saying that they ‘don’t want to replace anyone's favourite newspaper, we are complementary and add value,’ he says matter-of-factly.

Similarly, Kevin Rose of Digg is another online media outlet which decimates information through the popularity of the viewer’s ratings, through the use of technology. But these new technologies are also in one way or the other challenging the established players in a conference conducted by the World Association of Newspapers this February announced in a blaze of international publicity that it was considering legal action. It said that Google News, a global aggregation service that displays major news headlines and a snippet of text, was ‘building a new medium on the backs of our industry, without paying for any of the content’. Bharat is relatively unperturbed by the accusation that his product may be undermining the relevance, and therefore ultimately the revenue, of print titles. Therefore this interaction between news media and technology is huge implications, by making the accessing and segmenting it into niche segments.

Links

www.newtechnologytv.com

www.newvideotechnology.net

www.newscientist.com/blog/technology

The Body, The Mind and The Computer: ALife, AI, Cyborgs etc.

Human being has always been fascinated by the notion of thinking machines. The British scientist Alan Turing is regarded as the father of Artificial Intelligence. It was his idea to test if the human intelligence can be tested in machines in the Turing test. Turing’s idea came from insights that if a machine could be made to operations in a logical sequence then it could be possible to make machines that could be made to do many of the repetitions that human being perform. In 1947 Turing argued that the brain could itself be regarded as a computer. Working on his Automatic Computer Engine, he declared that he was more interested in producing models of the action of the brain than in the practical applications of computers.

Artificial intelligence took concrete shape as a subject in the mid-fifties when a conference on artificial intelligence was held at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire in 1956. It led to the establishment of the AI laboratories at MIT a renounce pundit in this field called Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy along with professor of Stanford University Edward Feigenbaum and Joshua Lederberg. The fascination with artificial intelligence has also led to many popular sci-fi novels and movies. The filed of artificial intelligence is still in a nascent stage and will a lot of resource is being on research and development in this field. Some of the common example of the day to day use of artificial intelligence is in the area of search. For example when searching for a something in a popular search engine say for example Google, suggestions for wrong spellings are shown on the top-left hand corner which is an example of Artificial intelligence.

Links:

library.thinkquest.org

www.imdb.com/title/tt0212720

aima.cs.berkeley.edu/

dir.yahoo.com/Science/computer_science/artificial_intelligence

The Birth (and Death) of Cyberspace

Cyberspace, as it widely known in the tech circle was coined by William Gibson in 1982. It is generally referred explain the non-physical terrain created by computer systems. Online systems, for example, create a cyberspace within which people can communicate with one another to do research, or simply window shop. Like physical space, cyberspace contains html pages, videos and graphics etc, and different modes of transportation and delivery.

Unlike real space, though, exploring cyberspace does not require any physical movement other than pressing keys on a keyboard or moving a mouse. Some programs, particularly computer games, are designed to create a special cyberspace, one that resembles physical reality in some ways but defies it in others. In its extreme form, called virtual reality, users are presented with visual, auditory, and even tactile feedback that makes cyberspace feel real.

Links:

www.cnyrocknrag.com/Links.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberspace

www.findlaw.com/01topics/10cyberspace/index.html

Media, Socialization, Identity: Taking Another Look at the difference between ‘New’ and the ‘Old’ Media

As the different aspects of media have evolved so has the tendency to distinguish between what is called as ‘new’ media and the ‘old’, but this distinction in many respects superfluous to say the least. In making such distinctions there are many assumptions involved certain perspectives that should be considered before any judgements about the media is made. One of the ways of ways of doing so is by looking at the society and the time period involved.

The internet is preserved in China which its censorship practices and in the west where it is regarded as a new form of communication and being informed, where as in some societies it is seen a threat to the status quo.

In the Western societies – part of the internets apple is in its ability to freely and openly discusses and interact: in the users the net there is the sense of freedom it gives them to look at, read, and say almost anything they want. By contrast, Chinese net use is much more restricted and those who dare to say anything about the some of the practices or discusses some of the past events are much circumscribed.

Much has been made of the so-called Great Firewall of China that censors what people see using technology built in to the country's basic net infrastructure. The Chinese authorities have used several methods to censor what people see online, according to one report, on the most basic level, the firewall blocks net addresses hosting WebPages that the authorities would rather people did not see. Those are some of the methods used to censor the internet. Another distinguishing feature is the way technologies interact.

For example the radio has been in the mainstream for many decades but when it is compared to deliver the same content in a different way it is termed as the ‘new media’ in the form of podcasts. The only key difference being podcasts can be accessed on-demand. As a blog on podcasting puts it, ‘In a world where everyone could agree on terms my thoughts are that anyone individual, business or company excluding traditional media outlets that are largely household names are creating new media. Take for example people putting content on YouTube that they have created.

Links:

http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20050430-4867.html

http://chartreuse.wordpress.com/2006/08/09/the-big-difference-between-old-and-new/

http://scobleizer.com/

Join the New Media Douchebag Club

nk.co.uk