About globalization

For references:

1.Confusing Columbus
Mar 31st 2005,From The Economist

http://www.economist.com/books/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3809512

2.Globalization

From Wikipedia

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

W5- Friedman & Postman

The author of “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology.”, Neil Postman, was a chair of Dept. of Culture and Communication at NYU. From his background, you can smell what kind of perspective he will look at such as education. If you turn to the back cover of the book “The World is Flat.”, you will find the story that describes a conversation between a father and a child. The conversation is about how the whole labor market becomes so competitive and the components are cross the countries. Compared to Friedman, is it a warning? A warning to what?

Just take Postman’s words “All technological change is a Faustian bargain.” for example, Faust is a person who traded his soul to devil in exchange fro knowledge from the legend. Therefore, what Postman said is that what technologies bring to this world is to sacrifice anything to satisfy a limitless desire for knowledge or power. In my opinion, I cannot agree it all. However, it points out the impact to human beings.

Let me think this way, we all agree that technologies are invented by human beings and it is pretty hard to predict the changes. But what is the original purpose for the technologies: help people’s life or not? OK, I understand there are some weapons just for the political or religious uses and they are so destructive. Besides them, what does come up to your mind? Most of the people would respond the answer “help.” So if that is true, what are we worried about?

During my life so far, it is still a challenge for me to live in the global village. How come? Maybe you will argue that I am the generation of internet. No doubt, I am. “The World is Flat” means I can have competitors all over the world. In the meanwhile, it also means I can have many friends across the cultures and boundaries. No things are perfect. Just depends on how we deal with that. To me, Friedman explains the facts or the trends we are encountering in more optimistic way. However, I still believe even we live in the flattening world and have the equity in everything, we still have to pay attention to the tricks that technologies set.

W4- As We May Think

The practice of the science idea really needs courage to imagine and describe. It is amazing that Vannevar Bush predicted the his future for the world in 1945 and compared to the development of the technologies now, it is almost on the track. Which element dose he base on in his foreseen? The needs or desires of man to communicate? That is a critical question to think about.
Vannevar Bush mentioned that the era of cheap complex device of great reliability had arrived. Take hypertext for example, it is more versatile but easy to connect all of the information in one platform. Over than 50 years ago, Bush pointed out the dreams of life in various views from hypertext, computers, the Internet, the World Wide Web (WWW), speech recognition, to online encyclopedia. Now here is a point, what is the next stage? From my personal expectation as a consumer, go mobile and digital family will be in practice in 10 years. There is an interesting CF produced by DoCoMo: http://www.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/corporate/mobilelife/index.html

Group 1--Supplemental resource for chapter 10

In terms of Chapter 10 of Media Technology and Society, there are three suppression elements for computers: no buyers, no languages and no babies. The following article is about how web language is ready for the mainstream use as your reference.
http://news.com.com/Semantic+Web+ready+for+mainstream+use/2100-1007_3-6076152.html
Title: Semantic Web ready for mainstream use
By Jonathan Bennett
Special to CNET News.com, Published: May 24, 2006.

Group 1--Supplemental resource for computer

ENIAC--monster and marvel--debuted 60 years agoBy Michael Kanellos Staff writer, CNET News.com February 13, 2006 .

http://news.com.com/ENIAC+A+computer+is+born/2009-1006_3-6037980.html

You can also listen to this news: http://news.com.com/2009-1006-6037980-2.html

Related to my research field--podcast, I also find the relative program introducing ENIAC and believe that may help you to understand about the evolution of computers. Please use the following link: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1057313

W3

Discuss the importance of "supervening necessity" - can you think of other examples?
According to Chapter three, it points out that the supervening necessity of speaking telephone is the limited liability company. Under my explanation, I would say that is a kind of change of social systems, industry standard or the rising needs of something. For example, if the science has idealized to the technology already, what kind of necessity is important to push this technology to the next stage “invention” or even “diffusion”? That is definitely related to the market scale. During the baby-booming generation after world war, the consumer needs were a big deal. In other words, they bought what they need such as food and clothes. In contract, if people live nowadays need information and the business can provide it matching their needs, the technology will keep moving forward and be adopted. Therefore, supervening necessity plays a key role in the development of the new technology without doubts.

Do you agree the cassette is an old-school thing? In my childhood, a music store such as Towers Record always displayed plenty of cassettes or discs. However, with the standard changed and following the portable and convenient wants of the consumers, we no longer use the cassette. Old-school technologies such as MD, Dos are weeded out partly because the trend of the industry. Another main reason is they cannot fulfill the consumers. So here comes some points, technologies are all possible to be taken over. How to predict and understand what the future is in the industry is more critical and needs time to dig out.
What about the law of unintended consequences?
Firstable, I want to make sure that we both have the similar understanding of “the Law of Unintended Consequences”. From Wikipedia Encyclopedia, the Law of Unintended Consequences holds that almost all human actions have at least one unintended consequence. Another way of saying this is that each cause has more than one effect, including unforeseen effects. For instance, scientists alter the genes of crops and the original idea is to help people to get enough nutrition. These days the effects of genetically-modified foods are still unknown, but this issue has already caused arguments. And back to the aspect of technology, it is never one-sided in terms of technology giveth and taken away. You never know. Remember the movie ”the butterfly effect”, who can tell a butterfly's wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear?
How might U&G theory apply to your research this quarter?
There are three hypotheses in U&G Theory: the audiences are active, they look for the media that can fill their bills and the media can satisfy their needs. Related to my topic this quarter “the impact of the new service (podcasting) on the NPR audiences”, I will apply both U &G and Diffusion of Innovation. Find out few questions:
1. Will NPR audience search podcasting on their initiative?
2. what kind of original audience of NPR will use the podcasting service and which program will they be interested in?
3. Will the audiences adopt the new podcasting service that NPR offers?
4. Which kind of adopters are the audiences of NPR?What is the present stage of NPR in AIETA Model?

Big Purchase- worth or not?

Today's big news is that Google bought YouTube with the price of 1.65 billion dollars. Ah-ha! Big Deal, right? Last week we just heard thery were in talks. Today they are done. What does Google buy? The audience, the thousands of videos online, or a litany of copytight infringement. Time will tell. Each business has to take risk and chance as well.
There is an aphorism "Winners take all." That's reality. Clearly to say, that's the way the society runs. From Wal-Mart to Starbucks, they all hit mom-and-pop stores, even killed. No matter what they treat their employees bad or not, they are the part of globalization. I am not saying that is bad, ironically, it is the fact.
Remember "The Long Tail", it shows that diverse market makes money. Therefore, not only do we focus on pop music but also the unique music. I am still observing what kind of pattern will exist in the We the media era?

W2- Meida, technology and society

What is Digital Media? Digital media is broadly called new technology included factors: mediators and digital format. However, new technology nowadays might become the foundation of the development tomorrow or nothing. How do I know the next stop the technology will lead us? What do I predict the direction of industry?
Knowing the past and understanding the present will help. However, the examples in the book ”Media Technology and Society” are pretty hard to image the old technology such as telegraph. For instance, what is pith ball telegraph?
Whether the technology develops, people are the lessons that we need to consider. And those are demands and regulations from. A good technology can change the view of world as the idea “global village” McLuhan said. I think the evolution of internet is the best example. However, it is also alter the relationships among people. The social network is enlarging and becomes individualize. In my personal experience, I feel that this world goes extremely. Friends get closer, in contract, people become indifferent.
To synopsize, I would define technology is a bridge to connect people and the society. Based on the media landscape, we have to identify what the reality is and to learn not to be influenced by the media. That is always a big issue.

W2-How the internet killed the phone industry?

A bunch of business entities related to telephone or internet business are waiting for the new communication model that SKYPE provided. What kind of know-how do the bidders want to learn or to own?
According to this article “How the internet killed the phone business” retrieved from The Economist, VOIP will take over the place of traditional telephony in the future. This inference is highly possible, even so it still takes a long time. From my point of view, there are some reasons as followed.
Firstly, I think the needs of consumers are included the idea “go mobile.” So the challenge they will face is the equipment. If VOIP becomes a common service to everyone, it means the infrastructure of internet can be connected everywhere as stable as possible. Then the consumers can call and communicate with their friends without difficulties. Moreover, we have to assume there is no digital divide among cities and countries.
Secondly, in terms of VOIP business, the leading company SKYPE has an objective to offer the internet phone for free and keeps working on the value-added services which part is the large margin for SKYPE. Therefore, it is a brand-new model for communicating to both service provider and consumers. Are people willing to adopt it quickly and without entry barriers to the older generation.? Even though the target market of SKYPE is the youth or people who need to make phone calls quite often, the total scale of market should be achieved to certain amount. That this new service “VOIP” is capable of working effectively among networks.
The last part I want to mention is you still have to pay the internet fee for the cable company. In other words, this service is not for free. But the more services offer via internet, the easier internet oriented businesses start. That is why I am pretty optimistic for VOIP service.