Feedback #1

Well done Tom - you make some accurate observations on technology and its impact on the film industry. To improve, you needed to find some quotations / stats to back up your observations - secondary sources are vital for this unit. Also - take care with accuracy of spelling on your blog... can you check the last post for typos please.

B/1

How has digital technology changed the film industry?

Production: digital technology has changed the film industry immensely. Films are commonly shot using top of the range cameras, onto digital files instead of more traditional selluloid. A good example of this is the film "300"; shot purely in digital, resulting in limitless image manipulation and an overall crisp shot. The Post Production process consisting of editing: image, soundtrack, imag manipulation, Special Effects added in and the transfer of film to digital, and then back to the original tape.
Distribution: Films are accessed by most through the cinema, or DVD rental but now the illegal streaming and downloading of films had become a lot more common over the past few years. Films are distributed by couriers, and then to the cinamas. These original tapes were a lot harder to duplicate compared to the digital files being used now. Many simply download these films from popular torrent websites for example, isohunt etc... This forces the cinemas to charge high prices, and the reason why many are not going to there anymore.
Exhibition: As Explained abouve, many are not going to the cinema and are simply using legal and illegal services to watch films. for example Lovefilm.com offer a vast amount of films delivered to your house, all via the means of the internet. Home cinema systems; large TVs and Surround sound also are changing the way people act towards the cinema. Why go to the cinema when you can experience exaxtly the same but for a lot cheaper???

These links show the key statistics regarding the film industry:

• This shows the falling cinema admission figures from 1933 to 2003

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..

Feedback 1 CF

Well done - this is exactly the right approach.
CF

Second Life

Second life is one of the most popular, fastest growing inline social network. It is where a person creates an avatar online and can socialise and interact together. the market is worth well over $3M a year and some of the main companies investing in advertising space in the online world. Sony, Calvin Klein and reebok are just a few of these companies involved in second life, just to give you an idea into the sheer size of the global village. The money used in the world are Linden $. This is named after the street which "Linden Labs", the founder of second life. 500 linden dollars is the equivilant to 1 real dollar, all exchanged through a ATM based program called Lindex. some people even make a living through second life, for example Anshechung, one of the most successful second life entrepreneurs made over $1M in property development on the social network. The increase of revenue and people subscribing must be around 15% to 20% per month. And these virtual worlds are not cheap to create, just to give you an idea, around $50m. Even companies are orientated around second life, dealing with clients, making business transactions, all on second life. These are a few useful websites with links to appropriate information. These graphs show the Linden Dollar vs US Dollar 268.1 L$/USD as of 6:00am PST (above) and US Dollars spent in Second Life over last 24 hours $1,322,701 as of 5:59am PST

What "Second life" is


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