What is the future of Digital Cultures?

In this week’s blog I will be looking into the future of Digital Cultures. I will be discussing the advances in technology that could be made in the coming years.

One form of technology that looks like it is becoming popular again is 3D television. With broadcasters such SKY starting to show sport in 3D it would appear that it could soon be in people’s homes. There are also more and more films being made in 3D such as Avatar and Disney’s Up.

However this isn’t the only change that looks likely to happen to Digital Cultures in the coming years.

According to chip giant Intel by 2015 more than 12 billion devices will be capable of connecting to 500 billion hours of TV and video content.
Intel has said its vision of TV everywhere will be more personal, social, ubiquitous and informative.
"TV is out of the box and off the wall," Justin Rattner, Intel's chief technology officer said.
"TV will remain at the centre of our lives and you will be able to watch what you want where you want."
Mr Rattner said: "We are talking about more than one TV-capable device for every man and woman on the planet.
"People are going to feel connected to the screen in ways they haven't in the past."
Speaking at Intel's Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco, he said the success of TV was due to the growing number of ways to consume content.
Today that includes everything from the traditional box in the corner of the living room to Smartphone’s, laptops, netbooks, desktops and mobile internet devices.


Intel have launched the Atom CE4100 system-on-a-chip (SoC) that can be used to bring internet content and services to digital TVs, DVD players and advanced set-top boxes.




It certainly looks as though the old TV world is fading fast and the future is here.



It is not only televisions where technology is developing it is also mobile phones. With the emergence and increasing popularity of Smartphone’s such as the iPhone and BlackBerry it is interesting to see what the future holds.





It certainly looks like over the next few years as smartphones will start behaving more and more like laptops. In June, DoCoMo started offering the Toshiba T-01A in Japan, a super-fast phone that uses an advanced Qualcomm chip. With these fast processors, smartphones will finally run full-blown apps such as Adobe Photoshop – and not just with the limited features offered in the current Photoshop app. There are already signs of other forthcoming power apps on the horizon as well, including tools that can handle photographic effects and process large, high-res images and videos.



There is now technology being developed that enables tourists who don’t know the language abroad to use portable translator and dictionary. This means tourists can overcome language barriers with instant and live translation tools online.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/8640862.stm


The future of Digital Cultures looks very exciting. I am sure that there will be brand new forms of technology that we have never seen before and old forms of technology such as 3D televison being developed to make it better than ever.

Digital Divide

In this week’s blog I will be looking into the topic of the digital divide. I will explore what the digital divide is and then I will try and answer the question, should the digital divide be closed or maintained?

The term 'digital divide' describes the fact that the world can be divided into people who do and people who don't have access to modern information technology, such as the telephone, television, or the Internet. The digital divide exists between those in cities and those in rural areas as well as between the educated and the uneducated, between economic classes, and globally, between the more and less industrially developed nations.

The advantages of closing the digital divide are that there becomes an increase in business trade across the world if everybody across the world has access to information technology. There is also an increase in job opportunities. These factors enable there to be less poverty across the world as everyone will have the latest information technology.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/mar/22/gordon-brown-superfast-broadband

Gordon Brown has said that he wants people to have superfast broadband in their homes to help bridge the digital divide. He says: “the world available to those with superfast broadband will be unimaginably richer than to those without."
He believes that "Faster broadband speeds will bring new, cheaper, more personalized and more effective public services to people; it will bring games and entertainment options with new levels of sophistication; it will make accessing goods and services immeasurably easier,"



However there are some disadvantages with closing the digital divide. For example the cost of computers and other forms of technology is high and less developed countries may not be able to afford such technology. There is also an issue in places such as Africa where people are sacrificing food and clothes to keep their mobile phones running.

It is my opinion that something does need to be done about the digital divide. In England alone there are people who do not have access to information technology. The government’s new scheme goes a long way to reduce the divide. However on a more global scale it is difficult to solve the problem. The main reason for this is cost; the less economically developed countries are always going to struggle to afford the cost of new technology. Therefore I feel that larger, wealthier countries need to do more. This could be by donating technology or build places where people can access the internet easily. The closing of the digital divide will be advantageous to everyone across the world because surely a world that is better for the global economy and reduces poverty will be a good thing.

Twitter the new Blogger?

In this week’s blog Iwill be developing my ideas on the topic of the impact social media is having on blogs.

In the first ever post i explored what the impact social media is having on blogs. http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/11/digital-cultures-lecture1.html
The aim in this blog is to see how many people are using social networking sites like Facebook and twitter. I will then discuss what I believe the future of these sites to be.

Statistics according to Mashable show that Facebook "counts more than 250 million active users, 120 million of which they claim login at least once daily." While Twitter statistics count users aged 18 and older who visit or use Twitter at least once per month:

• 2008: 6.0 Million Users (11.1% of adult Internet users.)
• 2009: 18 Million Users (3.8% of adult Internet users.)
• 2010: (Projected) 26 Million Users (15.5 % of adult internet users.)

60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within their first month of use.
However Twitter's retention rate is only 40% compared to MySpace and Facebook who enjoy a 70% user retention rate.

These statistics are interesting and they show how popular social networking sites are. It also shows that Facebook is more popular than Twitter this may be because it hasn’t been established for so long. However another reason for this could be because Facebook can be more interactive between people due to Facebook chat. It also enables users to have a status with as many characters as possible, because twitter restricts the user to 140.

In the original blog post I felt that social networking sites were having an effect on blogs because more and more people were using them. Although people might not be blogging as much as they once were they are still used by journalists to discuss their opinions on matters such as politics and sport. People will visit the Twitter profiles of friends, family, or their favourite celebrities, and access that information in different ways, whether it’s through clients or portals that attempt to aggregate it. With that in mind, it actually might be best to start thinking of Twitter as the new Blogger.

Long Tail

The topic of this week’s blog will be Long Tail. I will be looking into what Long Tail is and then answering the question, Is Long Tail a good or bad?

Long Tail was popularised by Chris Anderson in an October 2004 Wired magazine article, in which he mentioned Amazon.com and Netflix as examples of businesses applying this strategy. Anderson says that: “The theory of the Long Tail is that our culture and economy is increasingly shifting away from a focus on a relatively small number of "hits" (mainstream products and markets) at the head of the demand curve and toward a huge number of niches in the tail. As the costs of production and distribution fall, especially online, there is now less need to lump products and consumers into one-size-fits-all containers.”





One person who opposes Long Tail is Andrew Keen. Keen has written a book called The Cult of the amateur and in this book he is looking into: “How Today’s Internet is Killing Our Culture and Assaulting Our Economy.”
Keen complains that blogs are “collectively corrupting and confusing popular opinion about everything from politics, to commerce, to arts and culture”.
He goes onto say that Wikipedia perpetuates a cycle of misinformation and ignorance, and labels YouTube inane and absurd, “showing poor fools dancing, singing, eating, washing, shopping, driving, cleaning, sleeping, or just staring at their computers.”

So is Long Tail Good or Bad?
In my opinion Long Tail is a positive thing because it is encouraging niche markets to use the internet. The major companies and mainstream markets are always going to be at the head of the demand curve, however people should be able promote their own products or companies on the internet because even if only one person is interested, there is still an interest in the product. There are aspects in which I agree with some of Andrew Keen’s views because some internet sites are created for personal benefit (see my post about blog spamming.) However I believe that it is beneficial to the internet and to the people who use the internet if niche markets are encouraged.

What I have found interesting and not so interesting in Digital Cultures

In this week’s blog I will be look back on some of the previous topics discussed in this digital cultures blog. I will discuss the areas that I found interesting and others that weren’t so exciting.

The first blog studied what impact social media is having on blogs.

http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/11/digital-cultures-lecture1.html

I found this topic interesting because social networking sites such as Facebook and twitter are growing increasingly more and more popular. I learnt that these websites are encouraging journalists and broadcasters such as the BBC to use social networking as a way of breaking news. It also showed me how the development of technology has enabled us to change the way we live our lives. For example if you wanted to keep in contact with someone 20 years ago you might write a letter but these days we can use Facebook to search for old friends and see what they are up to. It will be exciting to see what the future of these social networking sites will be.

Another topic that I found interesting was whether Ray Kurstweil’s theories will ever become reality.

http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/12/will-ray-kurstweils-theories-ever.html

This was a topic that I found interesting because it focused on the relationship between humans and robots. If Kurstweil’s theories were ever to become reality then the world would be a completely different place to how it is now. The development of new technology makes his prediction that humans and machines will merge together in the physical and mental realms possible. Therefore this blog enabled me to learn about the ways in which robot technology is developing and becoming increasingly more likely that Ray Kurtweil’s theories can become reality.
However one area that i didn’t find particularly interesting was second life and simulators.

http://digitext09.blogspot.com/2009/12/do-second-life-and-simulators-serve.html

The reasons i didn’t find this that interesting was due to the fact that I don’t really believe that second life serves a purpose. I can see why simulators exist because they can help teach airplane pilots how to fly because its better to train in a safe environment where mistakes can be made. However second life doesn’t offer that much to society and it will never really develop. Some companies may like being able to hold meetings in second life so everyone can attend and this from a business point of view does make sense. I do feel that the reason many people use second life is purely to create a version of themselves that they like and live a life that they want to.

Overall the topic of Digital Cultures has been interesting as I’ve looked at the ways technology has developed and adapted over the years. In my opinion the future of technology is exciting and it will be interesting to see how the topics that I have discussed in my blog develop.

eGovernment

In this blog I will be looking into the concept of eGovernment. I will then try and give an answer to the question, is eGovernment useful?

What is eGovernment?
eGovernment is the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) to improve the activities of public sector organisations.





There are three areas that eGovernment focuses on are:

eAdministration
The purpose of eAdministration is to improve the internal workings of the public sector. For example these are things such as, managing process performance and cutting process costs. The government does things to strengthen productivity.

eCitizens and eServices
These initiatives deal particularly with the relationship between government and citizens. To do this the government listens to citizens on topics such as improving public services. The government will then try to go about resolving any issues.

eSociety
Such initiatives deal particularly with the relationship between public agencies and other institutions - other public agencies, private sector companies, non-profit and community organisations. The government will try to build partnerships with organisational groupings to achieve economic and social objectives. The public sector is almost always one of the partners, though occasionally it acts only as a facilitator for others.




So is eGovernment useful?
I believe that eGovernment is useful because it is convenient and cost-effective for businesses, and the public benefits by getting easy access to the most current information available without having to spend time, energy and money to get it. The future of eGovernment looks to be positive

Blog Spamming and Link Farming

The topic of this week’s blog is blog spamming and link farming. In this blog I will be exploring an answer to the question what is the effect of blog spamming and link farming having on the internet?



Blog spamming is creating non-value comments on somebody blogs to refer to their own site. The reason for this is to give the creators own site higher ratings in search engines. This is similar to "Link Farming " because it is the process of exchanging links with Web sites in order to increase search engine optimization.





Blog spamming shows how the internet can be controlled and manipulated by individuals interested in personal gain. Issues such as blog spamming and link farming enable people to give themselves higher ratings in search engine and I feel that this has a negative effect on the internet. This is because the internet becomes full of information that is not important or relevant to what the user has searched for. It also means that the search engines such as Google become less reliable because they are filled with people who are only interested in having their website number one in Google’s search engine. The concept of net neutrality proposes that there should be no restrictions on content, communications allowed or attachments on internet sites. However I don’t believe that this can be possible when some internet users continue to create fake blogs and exchanging links with other websites just to give themselves higher ratings in search engines.

There are ways to stop blog spamming for example disallowing multiple consecutive submissions. It is rare on a site that a user would reply to their own comment, yet spammers typically will do. Checking that the user's IP address is not replying to a user of the same IP address will significantly reduce flooding. This however proves problematic in the fairly rare instance when multiple users, behind the same proxy, wish to comment on the same entry.

With this is mind I feel that it is important that search engines such as Google cut out as much blog spamming and link farming to enable users to have more accurate internet searches.

Tagging

In this week’s blog I will be looking into the concept of tagging and discussing whether it is useful or not.
Tagging is a term assigned to a piece of information, for example an internet bookmark or digital image. This is a form of metadata. Metadata provides information about a certain item's content. For example, an image may include metadata that describes how large the picture is, the colour depth and when the image was created. A text document's metadata may contain information about how long the document is, who the author is and when the document was written. Tagging is also used as a way to describe data or content therefore acting as a way to locate it via search engines. This is effectively adding a new hierarchy to the way information is organized.




Tags are generally chosen informally and personally by the item's creator or by its viewer, depending on the system.
Tagging has become increasingly popular as a result of social networking sites, such as Facebook, Digg.com and Flickr. This is because more and more people are putting their own content online.



Websites that include tags often display collections of tags as tag clouds. A user's tags are useful both to them and to the larger community of the website's users.

I believe that tagging is a useful concept because it enables people to navigate themselves round a website quickly. For example with websites such as Facebook you can easily find your friends because they may have been tagged in a picture. It also benefits the internet and internet users because it makes links to other websites easily accessible.

Hackers

This week’s blog will be looking into whether hackers have a positive effect on open source software.
Open source is free access to the source code of a program and extensive free redistribution rights for this software, for example Linux. This type of software appeals to hackers as they can look at how the software is made and add things to it or create their own versions. Linux is an operating system, it is the software on a computer that enables applications and the computer operator to access the devices on the computer to perform desired functions. This makes it very similar to other operating systems, such as Windows. However Steve Ballmer CEO Microsoft says that “Linux is a cancer.”




So do hackers have a positive effect on open source?
It could be argued that without hackers the internet and technology would never develop. As Mitch Kapor, says in an interview with The Guardian, “Without the internet and the web, no open source – without open source, no internet or web.” Therefore without open source and hackers the internet and other forms of technology wouldn’t develop. The Hacker values say “All information should be free.”
In my opinion hackers can have a positive effect on open source as long as what they are doing is changing things for the advantage of other users.

Communications Data

This week’s blog will examine the problem the government face with communications data. To do this I will be looking into the problem faced by the government and asking the question whether the government should have the right to access information about its citizen’s communications.

http://security.homeoffice.gov.uk/ripa/communications-data/

Communications data is material, for example subscriber and billing records obtained from service providers such as telephone and Internet companies. As this type of information doesn’t contain any of the content involved in the material it can be used as evidence in trials.
The government is looking into ways keeping up with the changing communications environment. The existing capability of the police, the security and intelligence agencies and other public authorities is declining, and therefore they see change as necessary.
The home office published a consultation called ‘Protecting the public in a changing communications environment’. It looked at the importance of communications data in helping to protect and safeguard the public.

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2009-communication-data/

Here is a link to the response to the consultation paper

http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/documents/cons-2009-communication-data/cons-2009-comms-data-responses2835.pdf?view=Binary

Article 8 of the human rights act says that everyone has the right for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence. This raises the argument that the government should not be able to the right to access communications data as it calls into question the human rights act.
However I feel that the government should have access to its citizen’s communications data if people’s lives are put in danger due to acts of terrorism. If you are planning to cause harm or endanger lives then your qualified rights of article 8 should be inferior to those rights of others. I also feel that although the government aren’t allowed to use the content of communications in extreme circumstances they should be if it helps prevent terrorism or other serious crimes.

Copyright

The topic of this week’s lecture was Intellectual Property, Creative Commons & DRM. This involved looking into areas such as copyright and piracy.
There are several different forms of piracy; these include things such as illegally downloading movies and music. There are also counterfeit goods such as clothing and money. These types of piracy are costing large companies millions of pounds. Therefore in this blog I will look into answering the question, what effect is piracy having on copyright?
According to research by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property, at least 7 million people in Britain use illegal downloads. This is costing the economy billions of pounds and thousands of jobs. The research by the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property also revealed that shared content on one network was worth about £12bn a year.
More recently Australian band Men at Work are facing a big legal bill after a court ruled it had plagiarised a Girl Guides' song in its 1983 hit, Down Under. Larrikin Music had claimed the flute riff was stolen from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree. A costs hearing will take place in late February, with Larrikin seeking 40%-60% of earnings from songwriters Colin Hay and Ron Strykert and record companies Sony BMG Music Entertainment and EMI Songs Australia.
Here is a link to The Intellectual Property Office website which gives information about copyright laws
http://www.ipo.gov.uk/copy.htm
This also helps give an answer to the question asked in this blog because it shows how copyright laws have been broken.

Privacy and Surveillance

This week’s lecture looked into Privacy and Surveillance and how people’s privacy can be invaded by websites who survey what they looking at.
Therefore in this blog I will look into answer to the question, Are clubcards and privilege schemes forms of surveillance?
David Lyon, Surveillance Studies an overview suggests that everybody is involved in surveillance somehow “We are all in a sense implicated in surveillance, both as watchers and the watched.”
One company that uses a clubcard scheme is Tesco’s. This clubcard scheme encourages people to spend money in the store and receive rewards. Tesco’s gain from this because they can see what the individual customer is spending money on. They can then send offers and other promotions to their customers. This is a form of surveillance and it can be very popular with the customers because it looks like the companies value their customers.



This is similar to the ways in which Amazon survey their customers. For example when you purchase something off of this website Amazon recommends other things that you may be interested in because if what you bought.
Is this type of Surveillance fair?
On the one hand it is fair that companies such as Amazon and Tesco’s look at items we’ve bought and recommend and give us offers on things that we might be interested. On the other hand it might not be fair because what gives them the right to survey our lives. It is similar to facebook; this is because a picture of you may be put onto facebook. This picture maybe seen as embarrassing and one that you don’t want people to see. This could lead to you un-tagging yourself in the picture. However just because your name isn’t in the picture people will still recognise you. In my opinion the type of surveillance used by companies is fair because we can benefit from the information that they send us.

This is a link with information on Tesco Clubcards
http://www.tesco.com/clubcard/clubcard/

Game Studies

This week’s lecture looked at Game Studies. The lecture studied the ways in which video games appeal to people. One aspect of video games that appeals to people is interactivity. The cybernetic system is the dynamic system of input/output (the gameplay mechanics) looks into why we enjoy playing games. It is helpful to classify the cybernetic system of a game as existing upon a spectrum which has two poles: balanced and unbalanced. In this blog in will look into answering the question, Why has there been an increase in popularity of balanced video games?
The perfectly balanced cybernetic system would have a 1:1 ratio. This means that one kick from the user equals one kick from the avatar; one throw from the user is one throw from the avatar, and so on. Currently the Wii is closest games console to a having balanced system. There are several advantages to having a balanced system as it can lead to more realistic game play the game can be easier to understand for the user. Another advantage is that balanced video games often have a novelty control interface; the Wii remote and Nun-Chuk for example. In contrast unbalanced video games can lead to the user feeling frustrated and less involved in the game because the avatar isn’t following the gamers movements.





So why are balanced games so popular?

Since the Nintendo Wii launched, the monthly sales numbers of the console have been higher than its competitors across the globe. According to the NPD Group, the Wii sold more units in the United States than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 combined in the first half of 2007.This lead is even larger in the Japanese market, where it currently leads in total sales, having outsold both consoles by factors of 2:1 to 6:1 nearly every week from launch until November 2007. I believe the main reasons for the Wii having higher sales than other consoles are due to its high interactivity. The Wii is a very balanced console and it is great fun with friends and family. It will be interesting to see what the future holds for balanced video games.

Digital Literature: Is the physical version of the book going to die out?

This week’s lecture looked into Digital Literature. The lecture studied the ways in which literature and technology have developed together. The topic of Books Vs Computers was introduced so in this blog I will explore an answer to the question, Is the physical version of the book going to die out?



Annie Proulx: Books on Top: NYT 2004 says that “Nobody is going to sit down and read a novel on a twitchy little screen. Ever.” However this view in more recent times doesn’t seem to be that accurate. For example the emergence of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Reader has been well received by the general public. In fact on Christmas Day Amazon.com sold more e-books than physical books. The e-books are easy to get hold of as well. You simply go onto e-book website and download e-books onto the reader. This is much quicker and easier than going into a shop or ordering a book online and waiting for it to be delivered. As Jay David Botler, Writing Space: Computers, Hypertext and the Remediation of Print says, “Electronic literary forms constitute perhaps the most important and visible avant-garde in our contemporary, and otherwise conservative, literary culture.”
This is a link to Amazon.com. This link has product information and a video on the Amazon Kindle:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0015T963C/?tag=gocous0&hvadid=4139285297&ref=pd_sl_7p2cs87ah_b



So what future does the physical book have?
Although there has been a large increase in the number of people using e-books I believe that there will always be a place for the physical versions of books. The main reason I believe that physical versions of books will never die out is because they have been around for generations, and some people simply prefer them.

Cool sites, can you live by cool sites alone?

Cool sites, can you live by cool sites alone?
I think the answer to this is yes. If you can save as favourites all the current ‘cool’ sites then I don’t think you ever need go out again.
You can buy everything you need from i-Tunes, Amazon and e-bay and can get your food shopping from Tesco home deliveries. Your entertainment can come from YouTube and i-Player. Your social life can come from Facebook. Anything you want to know can be found on Wikipedia. Sign up to the latest web crazes and you’ll be well informed, trendy and have all the friends you need. Get on the message boards for real ‘conversations’. Get on X-Box Live for real entertainment. Why would you want to go out with real people!
This is a link to the social networking website facebook:

href="http://www.facebook.com/login.php">

Whether I have used Web 1 or 2 to achieve all this is pretty irrelevant. Did anyone even know Web 1 was Web 1, did anyone care!



All that matters is that the natural development of the sites enables me to do more and more - and that they are more interactive, respond faster and can be manipulated to do what I want to do or see. Like looking at a Google earth map of a place I'm thinking of visiting to see whether it’s actually worth going or to check out the route. To do a virtual tour of a hotel that I want to stay in, rather than just look at a brochure. A 360 degree look at this stuff in real time would be better still - will this require Web 3?

This is a link to a YouTube video made by Michael Wesch which looks into ways we use Web2.0 and the way the web uses us. Wesch calls this video The machine is Us/ing Us
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Do Second life and Simulators serve useful purposes?

Two things in today’s lecture stood out, second life and simulators. This blog will look into answering the question do they serve any useful purpose?



Second life is literally that engaging in an unreal, artificial dream like world where you can pretend to be who you want, look like Brad Pitt rather than Homer Simpson get all the girls, success and money you can’t get in your real life. Is there any harm in this probably not, for some though further failure in their second life could drive some over the edge and even end up with them being suicidal.
Some could see their second life as a way of practicing for their first life. Trouble is it’s not real. There are some cross over’s now with reference to the Stock Exchange. You can even attend college.

This is a link to the new avatar film which uses avatars similar to second life.
http://www.avatarmovie.com/

Here is a link to second life.
http://secondlife.com/whatis/?lang=en-US

Simulators though are in some ways part of this and yet, their purpose in a training environment seems far more ‘normal’ and useful. Better to train someone to be a pilot or doctor in a safe simulation environment than in the real world where life and death are the consequences of your actions. Better to practice in an environment made as real as possible without the dire consequences. You can still build into simulations real emergencies to respond. Like the pilot who landed the plane on the river in America who said it was down to his training that he accomplished such a successful landing – part of which would have been on simulators.
So to answer the question second life no, simulators yes.

Will Ray Kurstweil’s theories ever become reality?

Today’s lecture touched on Ray Kurtsweil and his three predictions for 2099. He reckons by then human thinking will posses no advantage over computer minds. This made me what to explore an answer to the question; will Ray Kurstweil’s theories ever become reality? Technology is moving forward rapidly but will computer technology have developed sufficiently to match human thinking by the. Computers tend to be rational and logical in their decision making and tend to rely on pre-programmed knowledge to inform decisions made. They can weigh up known variables and perform ‘what ifs’ when these are known. Can they do this to the unknown what about gut instinct, hunches and just feeling lucky can you replicate this. This is where there is always an advantage for human thinking that unknown X factor, which you can’t programme.
His second prediction is that machines will have attained equal legal status with humans. This probably will depend on the type of machine. A machine that has some form of independent thought or decision making ability may well be protected. Is this not a logical development from freedom for slaves, the animal rights act – next stage robots would seem logical. People are generally against exploitation and abuse and I can see this happening, if only around proper maintenance and care of the product. It will say something about the type of person the owner is and at present all machines are owned by someone, there are no independent machines. Machines are at the end of the day a tool for a purpose and robots thinking machines will be no different to this.
His third prediction is that humans and machines will merge together in the physical and mental realms. I think this is likely there are already signs of this in the medical world. With bionic fingers in the paper last week, and a range of machines that can keep the heart beating, the lungs breathing and the blood cleaned etc. We know the brain can control simple devices directly now what in the future. Artificial limbs become more sophisticated, hearing and seeing devices are common place.

This is a link to a video profile of Ray Kurtsweil
http://www.kurzweiltech.com/media/ray_profile.mov

The link below shows the news story relating to bionic fingers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/8401205.stm



On the entertainment front machines offer almost limitless opportunities. Gaming machines and avatars offer a new world experience and a life that you only previously dreamed about. Simulators offer opportunities to do all those things that you can’t normally do, fly planes, drive fast cars etc. Second worlds already exist in the gaming world and crossovers are already happening. 2099 read 2059.

What are interfaces and how have they developed?

In this blog i will be exploring an answer to the question; What are interfaces and how have they developed? I will be looking at some of the very first interface designs and see how they have developed over a period of time.
So what is an interface? One definition of an interface is “ a layout of an application’s graphic or textual controls in conjunction with the way the application responds to user activity.” For example the interface on a computer could be the desktop becasue of the icons it uses. One of the earliest interfaces was the mouse. The mouse was created by Doug Englebart, the mouse is important for because you can simply point to options and objects and click a mouse button.
The very first user interface was on the Xerox Alto which was built in 1973. This had a screen with icons.




The Xerox Alto influeced the very first commercially avaliable Apple Macintosh. The Mac was built in 1984 and as you can see in the picture below it uses icons, many of which are still used today.



This is the interface of the new Windows 7. As you can see it still uses icons, but it has developed significantly over time when you compareit the Xerox Alto and the Mac.



Interfaces have developed overtime and im sure in the future they will be enhanced again.

The Birth and Death of Cyberspace

The topic of this week’s lecture was “The Birth and Death of Cyberspace.” This began by looking into the origins of the term cyberspace. William Gibson defines cyberspace as, “A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. A graphical representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the non-space of the mind, clusters and constellations of data.”



One theorist who examines Gibson’s theory is Jari Peltola. Peltola says that Cyberspace “Is made of information, offering great power to those who can manipulate information.” One major search engine that has information on what people search for is Google. So in this blog I will be exploring an answer to the question, how does Jari Peltola’s theories relate to the way Google uses our information?
Jari Peltola states that, “Cyberspace is often conceptualised as a matrix, a place constructed out of information.” In this statement Peltola is saying that the internet is made up of lots of information. The most popular search engine is Google; therefore Google has the information of every search that people type into it. This enables them to store information on the interests that certain people use. Google state in their privacy policy that once you have registered with them they will use your information “For certain services, such as our advertising programs, we also request credit card or other payment account information, which we maintain in encrypted form on secure servers. We may combine the information that you submit under your account with information from other Google services or third parties, in order to provide you with a better experience and to improve the quality of our services. For certain services, we may give you the opportunity to opt out of combining such information.”
This shows that Peltola’s theory of Cyberspace being “made of information, offering great power to those who can manipulate information,” to be fairly accurate. This is because the information that Google stores can be used to help advertise things that you have shown a previous interest in. Google can also give the information to third parties who can try to get you invest in things that you might be interested in. This shows Jari Peltola’s theories do relate to the way Google uses our information.

This is a link to Google’s Privacy Policy it shows what they do with the information they receive.
http://www.google.co.uk/privacypolicy.html

Issues of the body: Cyborg and Alife

In this week’s lecture we studied, Issues of the body: Cyborg and Alife. The topic of Cyborg’s was introduced and how television programmes such as Doctor Who have introduced the idea of having a half human, half robot. This got me thinking about the future for humans and the development of artificial life and whether the fictional characters in TV programmes could become a reality.
This led me to want to explore the question; do you think there are any sci-fi films that can come true?

In some sci-fi TV programmes they focus on DNA or genetic reasons as to why people have superhuman abilities. For example in the television programme Heroes the characters have mutated genes. This has had enabled them to have superhuman abilities such as flying or teleportation. I think that this is an extreme case of mutated genes and therefore I don’t believe that this will ever happen amongst humans in the future.
However Doctor Who contains The Cybermen. The Cybermen were originally a wholly organic species which began to implant more and more artificial parts into their bodies as a means of self-preservation. This led to the race becoming coldly logical and calculating, with emotions usually only shown when naked aggression was called for.



The idea of the future containing Cybermen may seem extreme, but I feel that with the development of artificial life these fictional characters may influence future developments of artificial life. For example in the future we may be able to develop mechanical limbs for people who have lost their own.



In answer to the question, do you think there are any sci-fi films that can come true? I believe that one day there may be a development of artificial life such as hearts and limbs. In the future there maybe humans who have lost limbs who now have a mechanical arm similar to the Cybermen. However I do not believe that humans will ever be born with or develop superhuman abilities

Reference
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberman