Task 3

Think back to our discussions on Second Life. What are the social concerns of the development of the kind of technology discussed in this article? How is it changing the way we interact? What are the issues on control and censorship? Who is left behind?

Second life is one of the largest social networks who use avatars for the user. Anybody can make an account and an avatar, looking like whatever they want. Second life is an open environment and accessed by anybody. The site has been criticised by many over the past year. One of the main concerns was the fact that anybody colud get onto it, and it was difficult to ban offenders. by blocking a hardware hash, even with other accounts these offenders could will not make an account, but a hack was found, so there are still so called paedophiles online. There have been several very high profile cases where the users exchange full, real photographs of children via second life. Many have resulted to playing as child like avatars performing sexual actions to others. The use of chid avatars has been removed, but still some are using 'Anime' avatars. This enables the abusers to contact others. By posing as a innocent child, others could be vunerable to giving over information.

Task 2

Who is Chris De Wolfe and what does he say is the future for social networking? What impact will portable hardware have on this area of technology?

• Chris De Wolfe syas that the ever changing future of social networking is blurring online and offline worlds, causing them to evolve. Some of the key ideas involved in this evolution idea is advertising, music and politics. These ney claims are almost laying the foundations of a completely new type of social interaction. De Wolfe also states that the global village is becoming more personal and portable. With the use of mobile devices such as phones and laptops, the boundries of social networking are getting further away. The social aspect of networking is constantly becoming more portable and the industry, De Wolfe states is moving in that direction.

Who is Chad Hurley and what does he say is his company's goal? Is he a positive or negative technological determinist?

• Chad Hurley is the CEO of Youtube, now owned by google, one of the most successful video sharing websites of all time. Youtube's goal is to improove the ease of uploading videos onto the site. They also would want to increase the diversity of the videos, for example; more orientated around: "friends and family, news, music, sports, cooking and more." Chad Hurley is a Positive technological determinist. These believe that the use of new media is a good thind opposed to those who don't, obviously.

What does Maurice Levy say is the challenge for advertisers and what is 'liquid media' compared to 'linear media'?

• The use of 'digital', will enable advertisers to broaden their horizons and begin to advertise via the internet. The use of this web based advertising will give advertisers a chance to really show off their creativity.
• Linear media is said to be giving way to liquid media, moving in and out 'seamlessly' in and out of different settings. In context it gives the user ability to fast forwar throung adverts for example, more multi- tasking

What parallels does Norvig draw between Edison inventing electricity and the development of online technology in terms of searching for information?

What are the issues for the developing world? How is this evidence of a 'digital divide'?

• Due to the poverty of some in Africa, they will not be able to affort these new items of technology. In contrast to this some of the other African entreprenuers are making shedloads of money through telecommunications, creating an almost 'digital divide'.

Podcast

Some key concepts:
Digitality is basically the encoding used by computers, usually binary consisting of lots of zeros and ones. The computer is able to understand these electric pulses.
Interactivity is the streaming of lots of compressed information from a source to other computors either via a wireless connection/satellite or cables. The bandwidth the area you live in determines how much of this compressed information your computor will be able to recieve at a given moment, giving the user the ability to upload aswell as download.
Hypertextuality is the organization of text, whether it is going consecutively in on direction or nowadays shuffel. It may also be used to link more than on text, for examle gaps in television used for adverts etc..
Dispersal is how the information shared is divided through the market, and how it is acessed by the user.
Virtuality is how real something is, and/or how it is presented.
Convergence(a very important concept) is how more than one peice of technology has been combined into 1. for example Mp3 players nowadays have video playback, photos and are wifi enabled. Size was a critical issue when first making these new generation peices of technology but now they are able to be small and useful.

Audience: who uses certain technology?, is this use changing?, is it developing?.
Regulation: Compyright issues. Albums now cheap or else people will download.
Ownership: the brand name determines price, demand etc..