Topic 4 - Old Communication Technologies

Lecture

The lecture this week looked at many of the previous communication technologies that the human race have used in the past and how we have evolved to what we have now. Back in the old days, people obviously didn't have the ability or the equipment to write letters or send an email, so they resorted to other means. Things such as Rock Art - etching messages on walls- people did this to communicate with others and also to keep records. Since then, society has continued to bring out new and improved ways for us to communicate with each other. Things like the telegraph, phonograph, telephone, printing press, type writers, radio & television have all helped us communicate more often and with more accuracy so much so, that now in the age of computers, we are overloaded with information. Email, mobile phones, PDA's, mp3 players, digital cameras and if you're really lucky, you can get one gadget that has them all rolled into one.

Readings

This week the reading was by Walter Benjamin written in 1936. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction discusses and analyses the idea of art in different contexts and whether or not it can be defined as "art." It also looks at people reproducing someone else's artwork and why someone may replicate your work. People may be practising their skills, or looking to gain credit elsewhere, for something that is not theirs. Benjamin also goes on to discuss the concept of "aura," it being "that which withers in the age of reproduction is the aura of art work." I interpreted this as, the more replicas of a piece of art, the less valuable that piece becomes, whereas the original piece of art with always have the "aura" surrounding it, as it is a true piece of art. It also raises the question of whether or not someone creating a replica of someone else's artwork can be called a true artist.


Tutorial

Our exercises this week included using different search engines other than Google or Wikipedia to answer questions set by our tutor.


1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?

Reomel Ramones created the "lovebug" virus - (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/740558.stm)

2. Who invented the paper clip?

John Vaaler a Norwegian Inventor invented the paperclip in 1899 (http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpaperclip.htm)

3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?

The Ebola virus is named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola/qa.htm)

4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?

Southern Chile on the 22nd May 1960 (http://asc-india.org/lib/world10.htm)

5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?

1,073,741,824 kilobytes in a terabyte (http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/)

6. Who is the creator of email?

Ray Tomlinson invented email in 1971 (http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/email.htm)

7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?

The storm worm in computer terms is a family of Trojans (a virus), that uses email to infect peoples computers. It does it in the form of spam and has infected as many as 5 million computers. (http://what-is-what.com/what_is/storm.html, http://antivirus.about.com/od/virusdescriptions/a/stormworm.htm)

8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of Australia directly, what is the most efficient way?

To download a contact form and send it through to Kevin Rudd over the Internet. Or you can post a letter via Australia Post (http://primeministers.naa.gov.au/contacts.asp)

9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?

The Black Assassin (Courtesy of a student in 2005 doing this very assignment!) (http://www.users.on.net/~lenus/nct/2005/04/nct-week-6.html)

10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?

It is a new and improved version of the original interactive web program, that allows us to interact with different websites so much easier than we could 10 years ago.

Bonus Questions

How do search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet?

Search engines use automated software agents to explore websites and read the information. The agents then go on to index what they find and rank them in order of frequency of the keywords in each of the websites.

Who, or what, makes one page (that you might get in your search results) more useful than another one, so that it is put at the top of your search results?

A website that contains the key words that you use in your search over and over again is more likely to be at the top of the search results than websites that do not have them.

What are some of your favourite search engines? Why do you like more than others?

I like Google, because it's easy to read and understand and it usually provides the results I want. It also nearly always brings up Wikipedia as one of the first results which is not a great bibliographical source, but is awesome in giving you a basic information on a particular topic.