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Question 1

difference engine

Answer 1

production efficiency of mathematical tables

Question 2

analytical engine

Answer 2

would have been a programable computer capable of calculating any formula and, compare numbers and decide how to proceed with the operation it was performing

used punch cards, inspired by jacqards loom machine

Question 3

cybernetics

Answer 3

the science of communications and automatic control systems in both machines and living things

-Removes the mental process from the brain and applies it to the disembodied logical processes of the machine, leading to the invention of Artificial Intelligence.

Question 4

semiology

Answer 4

study of signs and their arbitrariness due to lack of context.

signs = sign is the signifier

aristocrats wore certain clothing and used certain symbols

Question 5

simulacra

Answer 5

art starts to be viewed as imitative of life, rather than representation of it.

Question 6

second order of simulacra

Answer 6

industrial revolution or mass production - lead to

• > Nature being continuously modified into new, unnatural things
• > Copies of ‘art’ became indistinguishable from the original.

Question 7

third order of simulacra

Answer 7

We exist in hyper-reality: copies of copies to the point where we cannot tell difference between copies and originals and (if anything, we prefer the copy to the original)

Ex: Real and the imaginary collapse into each other:

• Politics becomes based on opinion polls (simulations of the public and their views):
• Maps, tourist brochures and Google Street View, seen in advance, help to determine our experience of faraway places instead of the reverse.”

Question 8

morse and the beginning of modern commodity capitalism

Answer 8

• Local markets -> National Markets. Price of goods reflected as national prices, making geography irrelevant. Lead to widespread trading.
• Lead to divorce of signifier from signified. (Signifier = product) (Signified = product info)
• Morse developed an intricate code involving sending short signals for numbers, which could then be looked up in a codebook
• Further developed a far more practical system involving sending combinations of short and long signals to represent letters of the alphabet.

Question 9

general systems theory

Answer 9

Proposed by Bertalanffy

• Based upon an open-system model that allowed for the flow of inputs and outputs with the environment.
• General Systems Theory thus serves as a bridge for interdisciplinary dialogue between autonomous areas of study as well as within the area of systems science itself.

Question 10

structuralism

Answer 10

Emerged in France in the 1940s and 1950s, presented a powerful framework developed by Ferdinand de Saussure, where different things could be formalized and presented in abstract terms.

• > Lead to semiology
• > Lead to semiotics.

Question 11

analog

Answer 11

• A person or thing seen as comparable to another.
• Relating to using signal or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position, voltage, etc.
• Linear (i.e: Sound of your voice, mechanical watch, etc.

Question 12

digital

Answer 12

Digital Info is:
Binary, manipulatable, transferable, reproducible.
-Not continuous. (i.e: Digital sound is broken down into bytes of data)

Question 13

tabulating machine

Answer 13

form of analog computer

Developed in response to movement of population from rural areas to urban areas. -> effect of producing both a new kind of individual and a new mass society. (no longer subject to the old forms of power, therefore new methods of social control were needed).
.

-The constitution of the individual as a describable, analyzable object and his or her placing within a comparative system. (People became discrete signs)

Question 14

james watt

Answer 14

• First practical self-regulating technology
• Lead to later conceptions of self-regulating technology
• Device that steam pressure caused to rotate centrifugally. If rotation was fast enough, it was designed to self-rinse, releasing pressure. (Governed pressure generated by steam engine).
• Steam power later on inspired the development of thermodynamics. (19th century)

Question 15

manchester Mk 1

Answer 15

• First proper digital computer
• Exploited a method of storing data using cathode ray tubes
• Invented in U of Manchester, England.

Question 16

symptomatic determinism

Answer 16

This refers to a form of determinism whereby social conditions create environments in which technologies are seen as either necessary by-products of social processes or, as early sociologist of technology William Ogburn argued, were inevitable, given the correct set of social conditions.

Example:
Edison was trying to create safe lighting (as opposed to gas/fire light). He also had intentions of making a profit by selling light.
Resources available were the results of a social context (capitalism). Along with this are the unexpected consequences of a mere invention.
The invention was constituted by a set of social and economic arrangements.

Question 17

technological enablement

3 things

Answer 17

1. Fulfil a need or solve a problem.
2. Bring about a certain condition in the future.
3. Create a profit or some sort of personal gain.

Question 18

tech can be seen as setting up a system of enablers with two potential outcomes

those are?

Answer 18

• ‘Preferred’ -> conventional or intended uses.

- ’Unexpected’ applications and novel cultural form.

Question 19

new information communication technologies allowed for

Answer 19

Overcoming of distance, and real-time communication (Time:space compression)
Capitalist enterprises are actively trying to lower the ‘friction of distance’ in time, which includes:

1. Locations of raw material
2. Labour markets
3. Consumer markets

Question 20

automated

Answer 20

Digital products and media can be automatically modified or even created through software and programs instead of being specifically created or modified by people. Happens through the increasing personalisation of media. When using a service like Google, personalised targeted advertising is automatically generated on our screens based on our web footprints and email content

Question 21

variability

Answer 21

The uniqueness of digital media objects not only emerges from this ability to personalise, but from the fact that most digital media objects change over time. Manovich refers to this as the property of variability. “digital media objects tend to be characterised by variability. They are not finite or finished products (let alone mass produced material ones), but instead are objects that are continually updated, reassembled and recreated and exist in potentially infinite versions.

Question 22

rhizome

Answer 22

Deleuze and Guattari
The internet possesses features such as hypertext, networking and variability, the internet, and many parts of it, articulate the concept of the rhizome. Rhizome is a metaphor that is used to describe a form of organization that is not based on hierarchical structure, but a kind of horizontal network of relations.

Question 23

immersive experience

Answer 23

The notion of telepresence: the experience of presence in an environment by means of a communication medium. Being in two places at the same time: physical environment in which our body is located and the conceptual or interactional ‘space’ we are presented with, through the use of a medium.

Question 24

virtuality

Answer 24

‘The real’ or ‘The actual’. The practice of contrasting the virtual with the real is problematic, as ‘reality’ is made up of both the concrete and the virtual in many ways, including the practices of religious rituals, abstract planning, and even in the imaginings of our own and other communities”

Question 25

technological convergence

Answer 25

The movement of almost all media and information to digital electronic formats, storage and transfer: the digitisation of all media, communications, texts, sound, images and even currency into a common digital format or language.

Question 26

why digitizing is efficient?

Answer 26

Networkable-> it can be easily distributed through networks

Compressible /Uncompressed digital data is very large, and in its raw form would produce a larger signal
-Another spin-off of compression is the density of digital data in the sense of how much information can be stored in a small space
Manipulable

Digital information is easily changeable and adaptable, because all manner of text, sound and image are essentially the same
Impartial and/or homogenous What is meant by this is that no matter what the source, no matter what the content, no matter who or what the creator or the original intent of the content, all digital data is inherently the same thing … zeros and ones

Question 27

regulatory convergence

Answer 27

“deregulation of the media and telecommunications industries.”
-Happened due to technological convergence, and everything becoming digitised many industries, such as, media, telecommunication, and computing were starting to erode.

-This posed a problem for governments who, because of these technological changes (along with economic imperatives under globalisation), needed to change the legislation that governed these separate industries. This led to a second kind of convergence sometimes referred to as regulatory convergence, which is a deregulatory strategy in the media and telecommunication industries adopted by the governments of many industrial economies.

Question 28

media industry convergence

Answer 28

Once everything started becoming digitized, it was important for larger industries to try that as well, which meant that larger corporations would swallow the smaller ones, leaving the larger ones to dominate the global media market. Two forms of expansion:

Question 29

broadcast concern about media convergence

Answer 29

•The concern, for authors like McChesney and Shiller, is the inherent threats to democracy and accountability that follow when media and the public sphere become dominated by a small number of large corporations.

Question 30

rhizomatic format concern

Answer 30

•Many would suggest that the internet, because of its networked (or rhizomatic) nature and the ability of internet users to be both producers and consumers of media, can never be controlled to the same degree by large corporations, and in that sense is an antidote to the continued trend towards oligopoly in mainstream media.

Question 31

•Participatory Media Culture:

Answer 31

Convergence is also a consumer-driven process, seen largely as an extension of fan culture. In all of these cases, the experience of the object has spun out of the exclusive control of the producer. This is evident of how contemporary audiences seek to engage with media increasingly on their own terms and, will seek out new information, alone or in collaborative groups, in order to enhance their enjoyment of the product.

Question 32

•Produsage:

Answer 32

“information and cultural products are ‘produced’ in a networked, communal environment involving both traditional consumers and producers, and where such information or products are not finished products owned and controlled by an author, but communally owned, unfinished ‘processes’.

Question 33

produsage’s 3 main points

Answer 33

• Open participation/communal evaluation, which allows diverse individuals to contribute to the product in question.
• Fluid hierarchy/ad-hoc meritocracy, in which all participants, whether equal in skill or not, have equal ability to contribute.
• Unfinished artefacts/continuing process, which involves the move from conceptualising media products and objects not as finished or finalised ‘products’, but as ‘artefacts’ that are continually in construction.
• Common property/individual rewards, where content is less seen as owned by an author or producer in a traditional sense, but has become more communal in nature, having been created by a produsage community, and providing rewards for that community.

Question 34

how many people world wide have no 3g coverage?

Answer 34

2 bill

Question 35

have 3g coverage, but no access

Answer 35

3 bill

Question 36

how many have no access to 3g

Answer 36

5 bill

Question 37

internet penetration rates for north America

Answer 37

88% highest in world

Question 38

lowest penetration rates

Answer 38

africa - 31%

Question 39

causes of digital divides

Answer 39

• Levels of Education
  
  • Levels of Income
  • Geographical location (urban vs. rural)
  • Economic location (developing vs. developed)
  • Density of Population (high population density vs. remote communities)

Question 40

information society vs industrial society

developed vs under developed

Answer 40

Information society revolves specifically around (unsurprisingly) information and communication - access to it, the ability to use it effectively and the rights to produce it. This leads to greater exposure/participation within these 4 activities:
Production activity
When people are engaging in socially or economically valued activities .
Political activity
Engaging in some sort of collective effort to enhance or maintain the social or physical environment
Social activity
Engaging in meaningful activity with family, friends, communities or groups.
Consumption activity
The ability to consume a level of goods and services that are considered normal.

Question 41

mobile phones are successfull for 3 reasons

Answer 41

•Economic Reasons:
Mobile telephony has lower installation costs, thus making it more immediately profitable for companies to invest in the infrastructure. Telecoms companies are able to achieve a return on their investment in comparably little time, making them more likely to invest in further infrastructure”

•Social Reasons:
Mobile phones can be purchased for low up-front costs in ‘pay as you go’ payment schemes or, as mentioned above, a variety of other models that lowers the entry barrier for those on low incomes. Consumer friendly

•Legislative Reasons:
Governments have put obligations on companies to expand mobile phone infrastructure to certain minimum requirements as part of their ‘Rollout’ obligations for telecommunications licenses