- Software used in a broad sense, not just computer programs
- Communication technology described by an umbrella diagram
- Factors exist on all levels:
- Enabling factors improve capability of technology
- Limiting factors are the opposite
- Motivating factors drive the adoption of new technologies (increased profits, more/faster information)
- Inhibiting factors (cost)
- Motivating factors do not exist in hardware-hardware cannot motivate (yet!)
- Factors in the Social system has the most powerful effects on CT
Notes on ch. 10
- Core functionality of a computer was established in 1800s: Data goes in, gets transformed, comes back out at you
- IBMs role in computer development reached its pinnacle in the early 80s
- MS, however, continues to grow
- Hardware/Software: Chapter 10 gives an inconsistent description of how software fits within the umbrella perspective.
- 1947: Transistor overtook vacuum tube as a better way to hold "on/off" information
- 1958: TI invents a bunch of transistors collected on a "wafer-thin" crystal or "Chip"
- That number of transistors that fit on a chip has approximately doubled every 2 years (moore's law)
- Two types of memory: RAM (volatile) and "Storage Memory"
- Exercise: Describe RAM and "Storage Memory" using analogy/metaphor.
- Ram and Storage memory come in many forms.
- Input and output devices
- Figure 10.1 is absolutely useless
- 3 categories of Software: Operating systems, Applications, and Utilities.
- Prices are dropping as machines become more powerful (although the rate of the former is substantially less than that of the latter)
- Microsoft's "Monopoly": how do you feel?
- "Longhorn" (now Vista) is still not released
- Big names in the industry: Windows, Apple, Dell, HP, Intel, AMD, NVidia
- Piracy and viruses a continuing problem
- Questions
Notes on ch. 26
- Convergence is the transformation of many into one.
- Cell phones are a good example of digital convergence.
- Convergence is hard to predict and happens unexpectedly-consider Web TV's failure and Cell phone camera's success
- Exercise: Cite an example of Organizational Convergence not mentioned in the text
- Convergence in the media-good economically for distribution owners, bad for individuals
- Convergence as multitasking.
- Convergence as "Jack of all trades, master of none"-swiss army knife, "it slices it dices"
- Convergence in education: when Philosophy students study CSS