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Gena Broadus

The Technium: Consequences of Technological Convergence - 0 views

  • For the most part all civilizations are converging toward one global flavor of technology.
    • Rachel Cofer
       
      Technology is truly beginning to bridge generations. Even though we speak different languages, there is a common goal. As with previous inventions, such as telephones, printing presses, etc, they are cross cultural. We seem to have similar goals.
  • Today, technology has converged so that how we build urban life is very similar around the world. We perceive that some places are "ahead" or "behind" others. California is ahead in solar, or the US is behind in bandwidth. Or we say that Africa is leapfrogging in cell phone use. In our heads we have a sense of a uniform development path. While specific cultures may drift a little sideways in the river of technological advance, the flow is all in one direction.
    • Rachel Cofer
       
      We must remember that there is such thing as relativity. Poverty in the US is a whole different animal than poverty in Africa, for example. The same goes with technology. However, technology is being used to help future generations escape this poverty.
  • My hunch is that we are headed towards a path between 2 and 3.  For the most part, technology will converge to uniform usage around the globe, but occasionally some group, or subgroup, will devise and perfect a type of technology or technique that has limited appeal. But that subgroup or group will not continue to produce further isolated innovations in a sustainable offshoot -- simply because the advantages and pressures of a global society constrain success towards a global standard. (Note this technological convergence should not be confused with the media-centric technological convergence predicted for television, movies, books and the internet, although that will probably happen too.)
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    • Rachel Cofer
       
      Even though technological advances are somewhat relative to various countries and cultures, they are beginning to merge. Certain things that wowed us years ago are the big thing in other cultures. Things that we don't even consider "tech" anymore, such as running water, are still future aspirations in some places. It is weird to think that electricity itself is still not in some places.
    • Rachel Cofer
       
      Even though some tech is relative, we are coming closer to merging. Certain things that were big for us years ago are just hitting other markets. Some things that were once considered "tech," such as running water, are still in the future for some people. It's hard to believe that some things that we don't even think of as tech anymore such as electricity are still not a reality for people.
  • Fourth, the forces that conspire towards convergence don't seem to have strong counter-forces, suggesting that convergence will tighten over time. Perhaps in one hundred years, or two, technological development will not vary much around the globe. In this sense "the future will be more evenly distributed" to paraphrase William Gibson. In reaction to this homogeneity, perhaps the variation we see in regions we will see in individuals. People will choose to abstain or forsake particular global standards of technology in a form of idiosyncratic distinction. (See my post on the Neo-Amish.)  They will re-distribute the future themselves. But like the Amish they will harbor these "redistributions" as a personal choice within an ocean of planetary convergence. When everyone has access to all technologies (and all the same technologies), no one will have time to use or load them all. Then the only course will be to carry or "distribute" your personal slice of the technium. In this way while the planetary culture slides toward convergence of technologies, billions of technology users will diverge in their personal choices as they edge toward using smaller and more eccentric selections of available stuff. Your identity will be displayed by what you don't use.
    • Gena Broadus
       
      After a while I believe a couple of coporations will own all the marketing outlets. Therefore they will force everyone to use their products because theirs will be the only ones with products avalible
    • Rachel Cofer
       
      Some groups rebuke technology as evil. These plain people, however, separate themselves and do not get in the way of making new products. Hopefully, some day we will come to having a uniform technology. I think that at this point those of us in major countries can stop where we are and allow everyone else to catch up.
    • Gena Broadus
       
      We are always making advances in technology. Technology is constant just as "time" is. All countries feel a need to keep up with the new wave of communication to make sure messages are sent and received.The thought is to have a world wide system to make transactions easier to the common good.
    • Gena Broadus
       
      Comparing advances in technology is a never ending cycle of communication.Technology is only used for communication with others.We are always connect with the media we are consumed with. One place might have a system and it might be considered their new technology but somewhere else there system is exactly the same so Who is to say which one is NEWIER
    • Gena Broadus
       
      I dont ever believe the world will ever be on the same playing field when it comes to technology. I believe we will al be completeing the same task using different methods. Different frachises will want people endorsing their products Ex: Vista, Google,Microsoft
Jared Slaweski

The Technium: What Technology Wants - 0 views

  • then so can the growing, complexifying technological assemblage we have surrounded ourselves with. Its complexity is approaching the complexity of a microscopic organism.
    • Lauren Trogdon
       
      Technology is growing so fast that it is starting to have wants. Is technology eventually going to have many, complex wants like a human being? For example, robots. Technology is becoming more alive.
  • For the last 1,000 years, this techosphere has grown about 1.5% per year. It marks the difference between our lives now, verses 10,000 years ago. Our society is as dependent on this technological system as nature itself.
    • Lauren Trogdon
       
      Technology changes so quickly that many people from previous generations can not keep up with new advancements. However, the world is now based on these technologies and could not function without them. Life over the past 1,000 years has been redefined because of this technium and has advanced our way of life in ways we do not even comprehend. No one could survive without technology.
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  • More ways, more choices. Over time technological advances invent more energy efficient methods, and gravitate to technologies which compress the most information and knowledge into a given space or weight. Also over time, more of more of matter on the planet will be touched by technological processes. Also, technologies tend toward ubiquity and cheapness. They also tend towards new levels of complexity (though many will get simpler, too).
    • Lauren Trogdon
       
      Technology will continue to get smarter, smaller, faster, and cheaper. Therefore, technology will be more widespread through out the world. These technologies will be able to hold more information and do more tasks while taking up little or no space. Technology will continue to change and reinvent itself.
  • • The varieties of whatever will increase. Those varieties that give humans more free choices will prevail. •  Technologies will start out general in their first version, and specialize over time. Going niche will always be going with the flow. There is almost no end to how specialized (and tiny) some niches can get. •  You can safely anticipate higher energy efficiency, more compact meaning and everything getting smarter. •  All are headed to ubiquity and free. What flips when everyone has one? What happens when it is free? •  Any highly evolved form becomes beautiful, which can be its own attraction. •  Over time the fastest moving technology will become more social, more co-dependent, more ecological, more deeply entwined with other technologies. Many technologies require scaffolding tech to be born first. •  The trend is toward enabling technologies which become tools for inventing new technologies easiest, faster, cheaper. •  High tech needs clean water, clean air, reliable energy just as much as humans want the same.
    • Lauren Trogdon
       
      Technology is a tool to create new technologies. These advancements will create a better life. Information will be even more easily accessed and shared. Which will hopefully will lead to new cures and inventions to better our planet.
  • None of these parts operate independently. No mechanical system can function by itself. Each bit of technology requires the viability and growth of all the rest of technology to keep going. There is no communication without the nerves of electricity.
    • Jared Slaweski
       
      In nature, most things happens because of some other action. Land is created when lava pours out of a volcano. Technology follows a simlilar path. The growth of technology depends on the technology around it.
  • Once they discover electricity, their electronics will share some, but not all, attributes with our electrical devices. That which they share can be counted as the inherent agenda of electrical technology. Throughout  the galaxy any civilization  that invents nuclear power will hit  upon a small set of workable solutions: that set is the inherent "agenda" of technology.
  • ) More importantly, the major predecessor system to technology is organic life. Many of the dynamics of evolution and syntropy extend from living organisms into artificial systems, primarily because they share similar disequilibrial states.
  • In the long run, technology increases the speed at which it evolves and encourages its own means of invention to change. It aims to keep the game of change going.   
Guillermo Santamaria

Digital Domain - Will Piracy Become a Problem for E-Books? - NYTimes.com - 11 views

  • But e-books won’t stay on the periphery of book publishing much longer. E-book hardware is on the verge of going mainstream. More dedicated e-readers are coming, with ever larger screens. So, too, are computer tablets that can serve as giant e-readers, and hardware that will not be very hard at all: a thin display flexible enough to roll up into a tube.
  • With the new devices in hand, will book buyers avert their eyes from the free copies only a few clicks away that have been uploaded without the copyright holder’s permission? Mindful of what happened to the music industry at a similar transitional juncture, book publishers are about to discover whether their industry is different enough to be spared a similarly dismal fate.
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      This is what has been predicted for a time now by visionaries like Kevin Kelly and others. The publishers will have to come up with a new business model. Of course authors and publishers have to make money! But they can no longer do it by keeping knowledge and thoughts away from the public. The internet is democratizing all knowledge. The model of charging someone for information will have to change.
  • Total e-book sales, though up considerably this year, remained small, at $81.5 million, or 1.6 percent of total book sales through July.
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      This is partly because of the resistance of some publishers to see Amazon as their friend. Despite their high-tech approach they are still following an outdated business model. They are a transitional force.
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  • We do know that people have been helping themselves to digital music without paying. When the music industry was “Napsterized” by free file-sharing, it suffered a blow from which it hasn’t recovered.
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      This is a curious statement to make since record companies for decades have been "helping themselves" to the work of artists, stealing from them and in some cases not even paying them royalties (James Brown).
  • A report earlier this year by the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry, based on multiple studies in 16 countries covering three years, estimated that 95 percent of music downloads “are unauthorized, with no payment to artists and producers.”
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      The new age is coming. New business models have to be formulated. Copyright laws have become the enemy of progress and human advancement.
    • Guillermo Santamaria
  • After verifying that each file claiming to be the book actually was, Attributor reported that 166 copies of the e-book were available on 11 sites. RapidShare accounted for 102.
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      This attempt to stop one site will fail because hundreds of others will spring up until they give up trying to stop it.
  • My book reappeared on RapidShare a few days after it was taken down
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      Of course!!!!
  • Publishers and authors are about the only groups that go unmentioned. Ms. Scheid, of RapidShare, has advice for them if they are unhappy that her company’s users are distributing e-books without paying the copyright holders: Learn from the band Nine Inch Nails. It marketed itself “by giving away most of their content for free.”
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      Why are they not listed? Because publishers and authors of the magnitude they speak of are NOT "ordinary citizens."
  • as soon as authors can pack arenas full and pirated e-books can serve as concert fliers.
    • Guillermo Santamaria
       
      This is just ONE business model that happens to apply to the music industry. There are OTHER models that will apply to the publishing industry.
Ashley Zielinski

Amazon.com: Prey (9780061703089): Michael Crichton: Books - 0 views

  • High-tech whistle-blower Jack Forman used to specialize in programming computers to solve problems by mimicking the behavior of efficient wild animals--swarming bees or hunting hyena packs, for example. Now he's unemployed and is finally starting to enjoy his new role as stay-at-home dad. All would be domestic bliss if it were not for Jack's suspicions that his wife, who's been behaving strangely and working long hours at the top-secret research labs of Xymos Technology, is having an affair. When he's called in to help with her hush-hush project, it seems like the perfect opportunity to see what his wife's been doing, but Jack quickly finds there's a lot more going on in the lab than an illicit affair. Within hours of his arrival at the remote testing center, Jack discovers his wife's firm has created self-replicating nanotechnology--a literal swarm of microscopic machines. Originally meant to serve as a military eye in the sky, the swarm has now escaped into the environment and is seemingly intent on killing the scientists trapped in the facility. The reader realizes early, however, that Jack, his wife, and fellow scientists have more to fear from the hidden dangers within the lab than from the predators without.
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