Week 3 - Response to Content

The Internet and The Web

It has become clear that to understand new technology it's important that a distinction be clearly maintained between what the internet and the web represents.   Understanding them as seperate entities will be easier, as the development of both was clearly explained by Flew (2002).  It was so clear - and the explanation so concise that even a 'newbie' such as I could grasp the concept.



Development of Technology

The journey from the abacus to the electronic circuit board.


What has struck me has been how knowledge and the development of technology is constantly building upon itself. 




 A 'piggy-back' effect so to speak, initially taking some time, but always solely dependant on humankind's enquiring mind, imagination and right to freedom   of choice and free will. 


Flew (2002) highlighted another interesting angle in relation to the development of new ideas - that the success of many new technologies and new media inventions and innovations was driven by, depended on and constrained by economical needs and restrainsts.  For example, the success of the QWERTY keyboard, now universally used by all English speaking nations for everything from PC's to mobile phones, was not so much that it was the best keyboard layout but that it would have been too costly to change to another format as typists had been trained up using this system world wide after Remington flooded the market with mass-produced typewriters in the late nineteenth century.  So there you have it - 'social shaping of technology' which is still an important factor today.

Moore's Law


This lead me to query the prediction that Moore's Law would not be valid by 2015.  Moore based this on the idea that capital costs are rising faster than revenues and that this would inhibit technological development.   Isn't this when governments should step up their game and increase revenue available for research and development?   The incentive of future returns must surely be an enough to build a return policy for 'the community' into any funding that is given for R&D (perhaps it already is, I don't know).  My question is that once a development is globally accepted wouldn't that guarantee a return on investment?


Although it's true that the rate might slow, unless something amazing is discovered and developed on a regular basis, the flow of ideas will never stop while the traits and rights of humankind as I outlined above still exist. 






                                                                Reference List


Flew, Terry. 2002. New media - an introduction,  Oxford University Press, Melbourne. p.53.