Transcript BRIGHT PROJECT . . . OR, FLASH IN THE PAN

I.T.I. SESSION 3:
Reach out and touch someone
Native American Indian
Computer Art
Artist: Peter M Figueroa
http://www.best.com/~fig/
redface.htm
“to honor the depth of
Spirituality and the
greatness of Culture
possessed by our
Indigenous Native
Peoples”
U
P
D
A
T
E
S
Dotcom-Uppance:
Language and the Net
Star-Ledger August 2001
Dot.Com
Dot.Con
Dot.Compost
Dot.Bombs
Dot-Carnage
Tech Wreck
Dot-Coma
Dot.Come and Gone
Not.Coms
Start Downs
Dot-commiserating
Dot-dissing
Entreprenerds
Review of Session 1/2

Introduction to key knowledge and
intellectual skills of the ITI: 103 and links to
the ITI major
 People-centered, social perspective: Impact
of information technologies on individual,
social, organizational, national and
international affairs
 Professional focus: career orientation, with
communication, thinking as well as
technical skills as core competencies
 Ethical focus: coming to terms with our
own decisioning processes and their
implications
SESSION 3:
Reach out and touch someone
Session Objectives

To situate the examination of ITI in
broader considerations of the emergence
of the information society
 To examine the historical development of
ICTs
 To identify some key interpretivist
frameworks for examining ITI
INFORMATION SOCIETY

Term coined in 1970s to create a new
concept for developed high-technological
society
 Based on information-revolution idea:
replacement of labor by technology,
computerizing of homes and offices, growth
of entertainment industries
TECHNOLOGICAL TRANSITION
DISCUSSION


Identify what you consider to be the
most significant events that have
helped shape the technological
development of our society.
Why do you consider these to be
the key events?
Information Society:
Multiple Perspectives

Historical Events/Inventions
 Historical Bench Marks
 Historical Era/Periods
Interpretivist framework labeled
TECHNOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
The Information Society
Michael Rothschild: President of Bionomics in
San Francisco
4 major Information Revolutions
1.Cro-Magnons vs Neanderthals
2.Invention of writing
3.Invention of Moveable type
4.Electronic Communications
1. Survival of the Fittest
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32,000 years ago
Cro-Magnons vs
Neanderthals
Reliance on hunting –
knowing seasonal
availability of game
Cro-Magnon’s development
of lunar calendar: scratches
on reindeer’s antler
Trace seasons and
migrations of animals
Availability of food all year
2. Invention of writing

5000 years ago
 Sumerians developed symbols (Cuneiform)
to represent things and syllables
 Ability to represent language in permanent
visible form
3. Invention of Moveable Type

500 years ago
 German goldsmith:
J. Gutenberg
 Modern science,
machine age,
Renaissance,
Protestant
Revolution
4. Electronic Communications
http://www.fht-esslingen.de/telehistory/
 1840: Samuel F. B. Morse (USA) develops Morse
code and improves telegraph
 1861: Philipp Reis, a German teacher, invents
the telephone 1876 : Elisha Gray and A. Graham
Bell (USA) take out patents for telephones
 1894: Wireless transmission of signals over two
miles by the Italian Marconi
 1917: AM transmitter: Modulation of a carrier
frequency using speech signal
Electronic Communications
1924: John Logie Baird is the first to transmit a
moving silhouette image
 1928: Station W2XBS, RCA's first television station, is
established in New York City, creating television's
first star, Felix the Cat
 1954: Transistor radio, stereo recording
 1980: Videotext, Cable Television, Video
Conferencing, Compact Disc
 1983: Personal Computers, Floppy Disks as storing
device
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CONVERGENCE OF PROCESSING AND
COMMUNICATIONS
Telephone
Telephone
Telephone
Datacom
Telephone &
Local Nets
Multimodal
Comm’n
CONVERGENCE
Pre1950
EAM
19501975
Mainframe
19751983
Early
Distributed
Computing
19831989
Full
Distributed
Computing
Information
Utilities
INTEGRATED
INFORMATION
PROCESSING
AND
COMMUNICATION
19901995
Network
Infrastructure
19952003
Information
Utilities
What is ….
Technological
Determinism?
Technological Determinism
Technological determinists interpret
communications technologies in particular as the
basis of society in the past, present and even the
future. They claim that technologies such as writing
or print or television or the computer 'changed
society'. In its most extreme form, the entire form of
society is seen as being determined by technology:
new technologies transform society at every level,
including institutions, social interaction and
individuals. At the least a wide range of social and
cultural phenomena are seen as shaped by
technology. 'Human factors' and social
arrangements are seen as secondary.
http://www.aber.ac.uk/media/Documents/tecdet/tdet02.h
tml (Daniel Chandler)
Technological Determinism

Often seem to be trying to account for almost
everything in terms of technology:
technocentrism.
 ‘Doctrine of Technological Primacy'
 Also associated with technological
determinism is the concept of technoevolutionism. This involves a linear
evolutionary view of universal social change
through a fixed sequence of different
technological stages
Technological Determinism

'the notion is that a kind of invisible hand
guides technology ever onward and upward,
using individuals and organizations as
vessels for its purposes but guided by a sort
of divine plan for bringing the greatest good
to the greatest number.” Purcell, Carroll (1994):
White Heat. London: BBC, p. p. 38

Carroll Purcell refers to a mystical, 'semireligious faith in the inevitability of progress'
Technological Determinism
'the
medium... shapes and
controls the scale and form of
human association and action’

McLuhan, Marshall (1962): The Gutenberg
Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man.
London: Routledge & Kegan Paul
What is your position on this idea?
Contemporary Philosophers
of Technology
 Martin
Heideger
 Jurgen Habermas
 Albert Borgman
 Marshall McLuhan
 Jacques Ellul
Technological Determinism

Marshall McLuhan: Technology has reduced
us to the “sex organs of the machine world”
 Heidegger: we are engaged in a
transformation of the entire world, ourselves
included, into “standing reserves”, raw
materials mobilized in technical processes”;
Technology constitutes a new type of cultural
system that restructures the entire social
world as an object of control: “The
instrumentalization of man and society is thus
a destiny from which there is no escape other
than retreat”
Technological Determinism
 Habermas:
The central pathology of
modern societies in the colonization of
lifeworld by system: “technization of the
lifeworld”.
 Habermas and Heidegger consider that
the restructuring of social reality by
technical action is incompatible with a
life rich in meaning
Technological Determinism

Albert Borgmann (leading US Philosopher)
 The “Device Paradigm” is the formative
principle of a technological society which
aims above all at efficiency: functionalizing at
the cost of distancing us from reality;
individual involvement with nature and other
human beings reduced to bare minimum;
possession and control become highest
values; human experience is suppressed by a
facile scientism and an uncritical celebration
of technology”
Technological Determinism

Borgmann: “Plugged into a network of
communications and computers, they seem
to enjoy omniscience and omnipotence;
severed from their network, they turn out to
be insubstantial and disoriented. They no
longer command the world as persons in their
own right. Their conversation is without depth
and wit; their attention is roving and vacuous;
their sense of place is uncertain and fickle”.
The Instrumentalization of
Technology

Decontextualization:  Automization:
reconstitute natural
technical actions
objects as technical
isolated from the
objects: de-worlded.
effects of its actions
Eg. dogs to Abio
on its objects
 Reductionism:
 Positioning: we are
process by which deinfluenced to fulfill
worlded things are
pre-existing
simplified, stripped of
programs that we
technically useless
would not otherwise
qualities.
have chosen
 Convergence
Issues of Technological
Determinism
 “From
Essentialism to Constructivism:
Philosophy of Technology at the
Crossroads”
 http://wwwrohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/feenberg/talk4.html
Is there space for
humans and
humanity?
Interpretivist Frameworks

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Social Constructivist Theory
Critical / Cultural Theory
Social Influence Theory
Media Theory
Functional Theory
Postmodern Theory
Feminist Theory
Sense Making Theory
Communication Theory
Information Processing Theory
I.T. MILESTONES

The Computer
Museum History
Center
 www.computerhistory.
org/index.page
I.T. MILESTONES
 Vannevar
Bush: 1945
 “Of what lasting benefit has been man’s
use of science and of the new
instruments which his research brought
into existence”?
 Concerned about growth of ideas, but
lack of time to grasp, remember, and to
make real use of them.
Vannevar Bush: 1945
“For mature thought, there is no
mechanical substitute. But creative
thought and essentially repetitive thought
are very different things. For the latter
there are, and may be, powerful
mechanical aids”
Vannevar Bush: MEMEX

“A memex is a device in which an
individual stores all his books, records,
and communications, and which is
mechanized so that it may be
consulted with exceeding speed and
flexibility. It is an enlarged intimate
supplement to his memory”.

Still a reality or fantasy?
1946 AVIDAC
1955 TRADIC
1966 ILIAC
1975
1984 APPLE MACINTOSH
Personal Digital Assistant
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32MB RAM
150MHz processor
65,536-color TFT display
Plays MP3 and MS Audio
through stereo headphone
jack, plays video movies
One-button voice recording
3 programmable
application buttons for
one-touch launch of
programs or files
Action wheel for one-hand
access to data
History of the Internet
http://www.isoc.org/internethistory
A Brief History of the Internet
by those who made the history,
including Barry M. Leiner ,
Vinton G. Cerf , David D. Clark,
Robert E. Kahn, Leonard
Kleinrock, Daniel C. Lynch, Jon
Postel, Lawrence G. Roberts,
Stephen Wolff. A Spanishlanguage translation is also
available.
WWW GROWTH

The Expansion of Networking
1975
Federal &
Research
1980
1985
1990
Federal
Research
Education
Some commercial
1995 2000
Widespread
Academic,
Government &
Business
Sectors
2005
General
Public
Internet Milestones

1957: USSR launches Sputnik, first artificial
earth satellite. In response, US forms the
Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)
 1962: J.C.R. Licklider & W. Clark, MIT: Galactic
Network concept encompassing distributed
social interactions
 1972: ARPA develops protocols which allows
networked computers to communicate
transparently across multiple networks:
ARPANET; First computer-to-computer chat
takes place at UCLA, as psychotic PARRY (at
Stanford) discusses problems with the Doctor (at
BBN).
Internet Milestones
 1972:
Bolt Beranek and Newman, Inc. (BBN)
opens Telenet, the first public packet data
service (a commercial version of ARPANET)
 1975: First ARPANET mailing list, MsgGroup,
is created by Steve Walker. A science fiction
list, SF-Lovers, was to become the most
popular unofficial list in the early days
 1976: Elizabeth II, Queen of the United
Kingdom sends out an email on 26 March from
the Royal Signals and Radar Establishment
(RSRE) in Malvern
Internet Milestones
 1979: Kevin MacKenzie emails the MsgGroup a
suggestion of adding some emotion back into the
dry text medium of email, such as -) for indicating a
sentence was tongue-in-cheek. Though flamed by
many at the time, emoticons became widely used.
 1984: Domain Name System (DNS) introduced (edu,
com etc) Number of hosts breaks 1,000
 1987: Email link established between Germany and
China, with the first message from China sent on 20
September.
 1988: Internet Relay Chat (IRC) developed by
Jarkko Oikarinen
EMOTICONS
~:-(
(:-)
:-@
%-)
fuming
bald
angry, yelling
stared too long at
monitor
:
ghost
AFK away from keyboard
CWOT complete waste of time
FAI
frequently argued issue
HAND have a nice day
8-)
wearing
(sun)glasses
:-/
skeptical
IOTTMCO intuitively
obvious to the most
casual observer
=^..^= cat
DDR
difficult data retrieval
(i.e. hacking)
EMOTICONS
Useful sources
 http://www.datacomm.ch/~silver/
smile2.htm
 http://www.omnicron.com/~fluzby
/sister-share/acronyms.htm
EMOTICONS
“Online culture's foremost
contribution to either the
evolution of language or the
death of literacy”
http://www.altculture.com/
aentries/e/emoticons.html
Internet Milestones

1989: Number of hosts breaks 100,000;
Countries connecting to Internet: Australia (AU),
Germany (DE), Israel (IL), Italy (IT), Japan (JP),
Mexico (MX), Netherlands (NL), New Zealand
(NZ), Puerto Rico (PR), United Kingdom (UK)
 1990: The World comes on-line (world.std.com),
becoming the first commercial provider of
Internet dial-up access
 1991: World-Wide Web (WWW) released by
CERN; Tim Berners-Lee developer
Internet Milestones

1992: Number of hosts breaks 1,000,000;
The term "surfing the Internet" is coined by
Jean Armour Polly
 1993: US White House comes on-line
(http://www.whitehouse.gov/) Internet Talk
Radio begins broadcasting; Mosaic takes the
Internet by storm; WWW proliferates at a
341,634% annual growth rate of service
traffic.
Internet Milestones

1994: Shopping malls arrive on the Internet;
First cyberstation, RT-FM, broadcasts from Las
Vegas; Order pizza from the Hut online; Arizona
law firm Canter & Siegell "spams" the Internet
with email advertising green card lottery
services;citizens flame back
 1995: Hong Kong police disconnect all but 1 of
the colony's Internet providers in search of a
hacker. 10,000 people are left without Net
access; Thousands in Minneapolis-St. Paul
(USA) lose Net access after transients start a
bonfire under a bridge at the Univ of MN causing
fiber-optic cables to melt
Internet Milestones
 1996:
Restrictions on Internet use around the world:
China: requires users and ISPs to register with the
police; Germany: cuts off access to some newsgroups
carried on Compuserve; Saudi Arabia: confines Internet
access to universities and hospitals; Singapore: requires
political and religious content providers to register with
the state; New Zealand: classifies computer disks as
"publications" that can be censored and seized
1997: Domain name “business.com” sold for
US$150,000
Internet Milestones
 1998:
Internet users get to be judges in a
performance by 12 world champion ice skaters
on 27 March, marking the first time a television
sport show's outcome is determined by its
viewers
 1999: Internet access becomes available to the
Saudi Arabian public in January; A forged Web
page made to look like a Bloomberg financial
news story raised shares of a small technology
company by 31% on 7 April;
“business.com” is sold for US$7.5million
How do we traverse real and
digital worlds
How do we use the best from both worlds to
increase the quality of communication and
exchange, augment the human intellect,
imagine and co-create, improve the quality of
life, even develop new approaches to
governance, democracy and participatory
management?
The WOW factor
Learning Tasks
 Read:
“As We May Think” by Vannevar
Bush Read: “Why the future doesn’t need
us” by Bill Joy.
 Read: Commentaries on Bill Joy’s Paper:
http://www.sparkonline.com/april00/trends/wacker.html