Final Assignment

INTERNET AS A POWERFUL TOOL IN THE MODERN ERA

Internet is the most outstanding innovation in the field of communication in the history of mankind. The Internet is a global meeting place where people from all parts of the world come together. The Internet is named after the Internet Protocol, the standard communication protocol is used by every computer on the Internet. The Internet can powerfully leverage the ability to find, manage, and share information. It has proved to be a valuable resource been available to people at a minimal cost. The Internet is a technology that has migrated across business boundaries into many areas of modern life and has become a necessary information technology for businesses and other organizations to contact and interact with potential and existing consumers.
(http://www.livinginternet.com/i/i.htm , accessed 8 December 2008), (Baker Thomas 1999)

Internet began as a network for the U.S. Defence Department in the early 1970s, and was called the DARPAnet. The purpose for developing the Internet network was to do research and to build networks that could withstand a variety of natural disasters such as earthquakes and lightning strikes, and wars. Thus evolved from research the Internet communication network is now used primarily by non-military individuals. In 1986, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) initiated the development of the NSFNET which today provides a major backbone communication service for the Internet. During the time of its evolution after 1989, the Internet system began to integrate support for other protocol suites into its networking system. The present focus of the system is on multiprotocol interworking, and in particular, with the integration of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocols into the architecture. A great deal of support for the Internet community has come from the U.S. Federal Government. Since the Internet was originally part of a federally-funded research program and has now consequently become a major part of the U.S. research infrastructure.

During the late 1980's, the population of Internet users and network constituents expanded internationally and began to include commercial facilities. The Internet system today is made up of private networking facilities in educational and research institutions, businesses and in government organizations across the globe. Over its fifteen year history, the Internet has functioned as collaboration among cooperating parties. The Internet Activities Board (IAB) created in 1983 was to guide the evolution of the TCP/IP Protocol Suite and to provide research advice to the Internet community which has two primary components: The Internet Engineering Task Force and The Internet Research Task Force. The Internet Research Task Force continues to organize and explore advanced concepts in networking under the guidance of the Internet. (Misic MM, Hill JA 1994)

Today internet is measured by the capacity of its cables to carry information bits to the users. The carrying capacity is called bandwidth. Each of the line support hundreds or thousands of simultaneous users (Baker Thomas 1999).The Internet working includes a technical design and a management structure. The management structure consists of a generally democratic collection of organizations and working groups. Whereas the technical design is founded on a complex, interlocking set of hierarchical tree like structures like Internet Protocol addresses and domain names. These entities are mixed with networked structures like packet switching and routing protocols which are all tied together with millions of lines of sophisticated software that are kept updated with the new version.
(http://www.livinginternet.com/i/i.htm , accessed 8 December 2008)

The Internet has got plenty of advantages. The major use of the internet is for communication. Communication from one part of a world to another could be done in seconds via internet. With the help of email, sending and receiving messages has become easy and the message is delivered instantly to people anywhere in the world, unlike traditional mail which takes a lot of time. Another major advantage of internet is information. Any sort of information can be got through the internet by using a variety of search engines, among which Google and yahoo are most commonly used by people. Students are among the leading individuals who use internet to access information for their studies. The Internet has spread so enormously that many people routinely engage in transaction-based e-commerce activities, such as registering for college courses; completing stock transactions, making Internet based online banking transactions instead of going to the bank physically, and engaging in information transactions such as submitting job applications online rather than filling out a paper form and sending it to the organization. The Internet also forms a platform of entertainment where people interested can share things such as music, news and much more through P2P (peer to peer). Internet also provides a lot of other services like online banking, buying movie tickets and also job seeking. Even business deals are done online by transfer of information. The amazing part about the internet is that people can download games, music, videos and heaps of software’s of which most of them are free. Shopping on internet has also become a common trend.There are online stores and sites that can be used to look for products as well as buy them using credit card.
(Pakhree, Jayashree 2007), (Ann D Rensel, June M Abbas, H Raghav Rao2006),
(http://www.pondered.org/the_internet.html accessed 9 December 2008)

While the World Wide Web received most of the publicity, another part of Internet also drew considerable attention. IRC, more formally referred to as Internet Relay Chat, provides a means by which one user can type a message in real time to one or more Internet users instantly. IRC is more immediate than e-mail exchanges because there is no need to wait a long time to receive a response. IRC also personalizes the Internet, which can sometimes seem cold and robotic. There are a lot of instant messenger applications. MSN and YAHOO are among the most popular ones available which help people to stay in contact with family, friends and loved ones globally. Messengers provide a medium to meet new people online, share experiences and also explore cultures of different ethnicity. The Internet offers yet another opportunity for developing a social network with people who share something in common .Social networking on the Internet took off in popularity several years ago. And now there are over 200 sites where people make new friends, find a date, exchange photos or make new business connections. Examples of other popular sites on the Internet include MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, Face Book and Linkedin. Many of these social networking sites allow people to add pictures and personal information. To attract new friends, it's very important that people remember to stay safe on the Internet Gaming and social networking sites. (Simpson, Carol 2000)

The Internet is also a powerful resource which is emerging as an important tool for business. A new inter-relationship among businesses has been created due to IT and the Internet that have expanded the scope of industrial competency to achieve competitive advantage .The Internet reduces the costs of obtaining, processing, and transmitting information, reduces the cost of marketing, advertising, and business operations, therefore improving the way firms do business . Firms with an aggressive and forward-looking technology strategy are turning innovative and creating new wealth because they are concentrating on improving existing practices through the adoption of computer-based information technologies. In medical field the physicians have adopted the strategy to integrate IT into the management processes of the medical practice. And thus improving the efficiency and effectiveness of information access, maintenance, and delivery. Some of the uses include automated patient scheduling, accounts receivable management, medical records management, and the use of electronic data interchange to electronically transmit medical information between doctors, hospitals and insurance companies. (Lauren B Eder, Marvin E Darter 1998), (Thompson SH Teo, Yujun Pian 2003)

Internet has a few disadvantages as well. Privacy of people is not secure on the Internet because personal information put up on the internet can be accessed by other people. For instance there are lot of cases where credit card details of people are stolen by fraudulent sites. Another problem prevailing online, which is most often employed by cyber thieves to steal a person’s personal details by the use of deceptive phishing attacks. Online phishing attacks for confidential personal information are launched in numerous ways among which most notably by means of deceptive e-mail messages. The phishing e-mail messages, which appear to come from legitimate sources, are carefully designed to trick the recipients into intentionally performing a series of actions that will provide access to their sensitive personal information. Spamming is another method where unwanted sites keep sending unsolicited emails in bulk, which serve no purpose and uses space of computer. Some of the online games on the internet involve violence and usage of abusive language which are played by teenagers and really have a bad effect on them. One of the major drawbacks of the Internet is the pornographic sites. There are lot of these sites online which may end up disturbing the lives of kids. There are also exists the danger of paedophiles who try to be friends with young kids online on social networking sites. (Butler R 2007)

Like any other public place, people need to be protective of their personal information when they are visiting sites on the Internet, and there are some bits of personal data that that should not share or have easily accessible on a social website. Younger generation should be educated about harmful things on internet, where parents can play a major role by blocking access to these websites and also increasing the firewall settings. Online games that have violence should be banned by the government or try to have an age restriction on them. The problems of spamming, virus threat and personal information theft can be solved by using spyware and antivirus softwares. Online consumers should familiarise themselves in a way in which legitimate organisations normally communicate with the clients.
Future of internet can be imagined saying that people would be working from home and no one would need to go to an office and that includes schooling for children as well. Teaching would be in form of virtual type. The broadband speed would be 100 times faster than now. (Pew Internet & American Life Project 2005)

Internet as a new communications system and advancement in digital technology has changed people lives in good way. It has improved the standard of life of people and brought world together. In business the Internet has made an integral part of an organization's technology. The more likely the resources the Internet has to offer, the more productive the workers would be. The illegal activities happening on the Internet that are frustrating for all Internet users, should not be ignored, but an effort should be made to try and stop these activities so that using the Internet can become a much safer place. Though, internet has created havoc, destruction, the advantages of it outweigh its disadvantages, and millions of people each day benefit from using the Internet for work and pleasure.
(Misic MM, Hill JA 1994)


REFERENCES:

Ann D Rensel, June M Abbas, H Raghav Rao (2006) “Journal of the Association for Information Systems” Atlanta 7(1): 19, 30

Baker, Thomas (1999) “Evolution of the Internet”

http://www.tiac.or.th/tiacweb/Baker/Section1_2.html (accessed 12 December 2008)

Butler R (2007) “The Electronic Library” Oxford 25(5): 517

David J. Henry (1998) “An Introduction to the Internet” http://www.oit.umd.edu/eis/staff/dhenry/inetintro/conclude.html
(accessed 13 December 2008)

“How the Internet works” http://www.livinginternet.com/i/i.htm (accessed 8 December 2008)

Internet Society (2008) “A Brief History of the Internet and Related Networks”
http://www.isoc.org/internet/history/cerf.shtml (accessed 14 December 2008)

Lauren B Eder, Marvin E Darter (1998) “Association for Computing Machinery of the ACM” New York 41(3): 52, 3

Martin.J, Turkel.S (1999) “Introduction to the Internet” http://www.brynmawr.edu/Acads/GSSW/jam/switr/orientation99/sld003.htm
(accessed 8 December 2008)

Misic MM, Hill JA (1994) “Journal of Systems Management” Cleveland 45(11): 5-6

Pakhree, Jayashree (2007) “Advantages and Disadvantages of the Internet” http://www.buzzle.com/articles/advantages-disadvantages-internet.html
(accessed 9 December 2008)

Pew Internet & American Life Project (2005) “The Future of the Internet”
http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/pip_future_of_internet.pdf (accessed 14 December 2008)

Simpson, Carol (2000) “Internet Relay Chat. Eric Digest.” http://www.ericdigests.org/1999-3/chat.htm (accessed 10 December 2008)

“The Advantages and Disadvantages of The Internet” http://www.pondered.org/the_internet.html (accessed 9 December 2008)

Thompson SH Teo, Yujun Pian (2003) “European Journal of Information Systems” Basingstoke 12(2): 78

Day 9 and 10: Tutorial Task

Today's tutorial task is about the influence of online world on lives of the current generation.

Emerging online life of the Digital Native by Mark Prensky:
Based on new communication technologies available to them, people are trying to make each activity happen. According to my experience on the internet, i can play games, socialize with my friends, do my assignments and you can also look upto things you really like. Letters which once took time to be written and sent were replaced by emails which can be sent instantly. Long distance communications went from being expensive to free. Chatting is another application which comes in different flavours and has taken the world by storm. Emails and texting are the applications for sharing. Digital natives share the most intimate and emotional details of their lives. This has been mainly successful through blogs. Nowadays people can setup blogs for free of cost. Usage of mobile phone cameras and webcams are the fastest means of sharing. People have also gone to the extent of shopping online. This takes place mostly at ebay which is the best online place to buy and sell your products and information. Digital natives define themselves with the desire to create. They adapt themselves at building new web sites, flash movies and other online creations. Meetings used to be a face to face activity but in the current generation meetings are done online through chat rooms and net meetings. P2P (peer to peer) applications are the most downloaded applications on the net. After emails, search engines are the second biggest use of the net. The most intriguing thing about the Digital Native's e-life is that it is continually evolving. In very short time technology has changed the behaviour of the entire generation radically.

New world by David Weinberger:
People usually use a different alias when they are online. Thats been the way the Americans. They use different avatars and chat id's. They try to show something which they are not. Even now the everyday world of the web seems alien than it was before. Then the writer talks about his experiences on ebay. Buyers and sellers adopt different names by which they are known. The web has sent a wave through our culture. We are meeting new aspects of ourselves on the web. I spend a lot of time shopping on ebay. My purchasing options are in electronics, sporting goods or clothing. In the online world we can do whatever we like by just sitting in front of the computer. Web has always helped me in socializing better. You cant meet every single friend of yours in person everyday. So you try to connect with them online. The web is like a place we have made for one another. I dont see the current generation living without it.

Sources:
http://www.smallpieces.com/content/chapter1.html
http://www.marcprensky.com/writing/Prensky-The_Emerging_Online_Life_of_the_Digital_Native-03.pdf

Day 10: Last day and Course Evaluation

Today's lecture was the last one of the summer semester. Today's discussion was supposed to about the complete overview of the course. But as there were only five students present in the class, Adam didnot go much deep into it. Usually in a proper semester this course has an end of semester exam. So just for the fun of it Adam conducted a small exam with 20 multiple choice questions. Some of the questions in the exam were from topics which were not discussed in the class. I still managed to get 11 correct. Then we moved to the tutorial room where we discussed about the academic essay and the last tutorial task.
Coming to the course, i am a student from the school of engineering but i had lots of fun doing this subject. In this course we have learnt about types of communication technologies, types of media and the technologies that have brought people closer. The main topic that fascinated me was when Adam was talking about differences between real world and virtual worlds. We also had guest lectures from Paul Hodkinson and Brady Robards. Brady's lecture was more of an open discussion lecture. Personally i liked Paul 's lecture and how he explained of bedroom acting as an social networking place. We have also studied about free and open softwares. Then there was cyberdemocracy. I like this topic and how Adam explained it in the lecture. I am going to be working on this topic for the final essay. We were also shown videoclippings in almost every class for a better understanding of the subject.
Adam Muir, our lecturer has done a fantastic job. The way he has handled the lectures especially has been great. He let students to interrupt the class inorder to get their doubts clarified. Even the atmosphere in the class was brilliant. Lastly i liked working on my blog and i think i am going to continue doing it.
Until next time....All the best to all of you....

Day 9: Lecture on Cyber democracy, Virtual Philosophy and Cyber Utopia

Cyber Democracy:

Democracy is described as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. The most obvious alternative to represent democracy is to participate. In Ancient Greece, all the citizens had the right to be involved in decision making. "Democracy can only consist in recognition of multiplicity of social logics and the necessity of articulation with no hope of final reconciliation"- argued by Chantal Mouffe in her preface to to "Dimensions of radical democracy". To be democratic, one should have a freedom of speech. In Australia, there is no constitutional right to free speech. An American was sentenced to jail as he had put up censored material on the internet. But the site continues to run without him with all the information. Once you put up something, you cant take it back.

Virtual Philosophy:

What is real?
"If you're talking about your senses, what you feel, taste, smell, or see, then all you're talking about are electrical signals interpreted by your brain" - said by Morpheus, character played by Lawrence Fishburne in the famous blockbuster movie "The Matrix". Film and TV production techniques have changed the way we see the world.

What is virtual?
Strapped to a machine, or in front of a computer, you tend to do acts which are next to impossible in the real world. The current century has seen development of communicaiton technologies altering the economy of the planet.

CyberUtopia:

Virtual reality brings in complex questions about nature of society. It alters the ways in which you build yourself as a person. This allows formulation of new cultures. With virtual world dominating, is the real world going to be natural? I don't think so, our society is not natural anymore. It is controlled by someone else. When this idea of a virtual world is taken away, you are going to wake up discovering that you are in hell. What future lies ahead, only time will tell.

Awesome lecture by Adam...

Day 7 and 8: Tutorial task on Digital Storytelling Project

The audio used in this video has been taken from a creative common site. The name of the sound track is "sunrise".

Source:http://radio.isg.si/audio/by/genre/Trance

Day 8: About Online Privacy

We started off with Adam showing us a book called "Game on". Main emphasis of todays lecture was about online privacy. Network neutrality was the topic that was discussed for the major part of the lecture. Then we had a video shown which had an interview of an American professor Jonathan Zittrain. Jonathan Zittrain talks about his new book "The future of internet and how to stop it". The books deals with censorship, content filtering and online security. The next topic was about Mark Klein, a former employee of AT&T. He exposes how his company was linked with the NSA (National Security Agency) in spying on American citizens by intercepting their internet and telephone lines. Every application we used such as google searches, email were being looked into by the NSA. Then we discussed about EFF (Electronic Frontier foundation). EFF also has an Australian branch called as EFA.
That was pretty much the topics covered for today. Altogether an interesting lecture.

Day 7: On Video Games and File Sharing

Today's lecture was about video games and file sharing. Video game studies include games, gaming consoles and computers. Games are usually separated into different genres like first person shooter, racing, adventure, sports and strategy games. Gaming consoles have been there for a long time now. Military have also used games to train their personel. Video games have always had effects in the real world. for example after playing a racing game on a console people like to go fast in their vehicles. This might lead to a disaster. Do games generate voilence? I would say yes, particularly after seeing the release of heaps of first person shooter and strategy games. Then we had a bit of a discussion about the types of softwares and hardwares used in games and their consoles. We had a group discussion in the class about how a particular game becomes popular. The majority of the answers pointed towards individual intererst and marketing techniques. Then Adam played a documentry "Steal the film 2". The video dealt with file sharing on the internet. File sharing online has been promoting privacy. Downloading platforms such as mininova and limewire are being used by everyone to download stuff which they are not to. This includes making duplicate copies of movies, softwares, songs..etc. Because of this the original makers of the products are not making the money they want to. Even the copyright policy protects only the economic interest of the maker. That's pretty much it and was one of the best lectures of the course so far.

Day 6: About Open and Free source softwares

Today’s lecture was about free and open source software. Software is written in programming languages that tell a computer what to do. In the past software was free. Anyone could use it. But as personal computers were introduced, the source code was locked and only secured personnel could see the code.

Free software’s run on four principles:
Freedom 0: We can run the program for any purpose.
Freedom 1: To study how the program works.
Freedom 2: To redistribute copies.
Freedom 3: To improve the program and to release it with improvements.

Open source was the name given to the free source software as to promote it in the business world. The other type of software which is used is proprietary software which is also called closed source (MS-Windows, MacOS, MS-Office, Internet explorer). Basic examples of free software include linux, open office and firefox. Then we discussed about how the open source software works. What are its benefits and problems? Linux is a highly successful operating system. It can be used as an alternative for MS-Windows or MacOS. It can run almost all computer architectures.

One of the tasks for today was to use a open source software. I have been using Mozilla Firefox for a long time now. When compared to internet explorer, it is faster. It has got better features. It is user friendly as well. I have looked into second software as well called opera. I think it is slow when compared to Firefox or the internet explorer.

Day 5: Tutorial task on virtual worlds

In the tutorial we were asked to run a 3D chat room called active world. After experiencing this new program it certainly opens your eyes to the three dimensional worlds. 3D chat room is a mixture of a computer game and a chat room. You can use your customized avatar in it. In some virtual worlds even audio and video communications are used so that it gives a realistic feel to the user.

What are the qualitative differences between IM and a 3D world?

IM programs certainly made my life easier, as all my friends were on it, I could get my message across. Also I could leave a message even if they were offline. Along with time internet has grown and more and more things are being launched on it. Newer IM programs are being launched which allow you to send different facial expressions and noises to anyone connected with you. In virtual worlds you can create your own avatars. You can customize them the way you want. It helps to bring out your creative side. Sometimes it also reflects what you want to be and do. But all of it comes at a price. Whereas IM programs are free to download and use. It takes a lot of time to understand the 3D programs and some of them are not user friendly. After some time you get bored of them. In my opinion IM are better when compared to the 3D environments.

What are the kinds of socializing that happens in these spaces?
We tried using the active world 3D software in the class today. It was something different but I wouldn’t call it as a satisfying experience in socializing with other people. You can’t share your stuff like files, pictures and videos. The only way you way you can chat are through messages. But in IM you can share stuff and also have video chatting.
By looking at both the chat rooms I can only conclude by saying that IM are the technology for today and 3D chat rooms may be for the future.

Day 5: Guest Lecture from Brady Robards

Today we had a guest lecture again. It was by Brady Robards. He is doing his PHD from school of arts. We started of by talking about internet as a extension of social life. Majority of people use socio networking sites these days. We were shown a video with an interview of Danah Boyd. In the video she speaks about social networking sites in US. She speaks about how people hang out on the internet. The main part of a social networking site is the profile, friends and the wall. Then we talked about the history of face book. Facebook was started in UK and then it was started for everyone in 2006. There was a survey through which it was believed that good kids used facebook and the bad ones used my space. Then we had another video played. The video shows us about the daily experiences of people in using social networking sites. Then we had a group discussion in the lecture about the privacy setting used in socio networking sites and how your information can be used against you.

Day 4: Tutorial task

In my own words search engines are used to exchanging and sharing information online. Search engines rank the stuff on internet to the exact words first then looks for the keywords in it. There is no absolute confirmation that these search engines give the right pages for the information required. Having said it should be noted that some of these search engines work on making sure that the pages they cover in the searches have information that is valid.

Some of my favourite search engines are Google and Yahoo because they are used by everybody and have more rated than any other search engines. And to be frank i never knew much about other search engines.

Questions answered by using search engines other than wikipedia and google.

Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
The creator of the virus is Onel de Guzman, a computer school student.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2000/08/21/tech/main226472.shtml

What is the world record for the largest watermelon?
The world record for the largest water melon is 255 ponds.
http://www.produceoasis.com/Items_folder/Fruits/Watermelon.html

How did the Ebola virus get its name?
The Ebola virus got its name from the Ebola River in Africa that runs through Zaire and the Congo.
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/From_what_place_did_the_Ebola_virus_get_its_name

What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (Mw) in Chile on May 22, 1960.
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/facts.php

In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
1,073,741,824 kilobytes are equal to 1 terabyte.
As
1024 Kb = 1 Mb
1024 Mb = 1 Gb
1024 Gb = 1 Tb
Therefore 1024×1024×1024 = 1,073,741,824 Kb

Who is the creator of email?
Ray Tomlinson in 1971
http://inventors.about.com/od/estartinventions/a/email.htm

What is the "storm worm", and how many computers are infected by it?
It is a Trojan type of a virus. It was first found out in 2006.
http://antivirus.about.com/od/virusdescriptions/a/stormworm.htm

If you wanted to contact the prime minister of Australia directly, what would be the most efficient way?
You can contact him through this address:

The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600
http://pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm

Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?
Black assassins
http://live-wirez.gu.edu.au/Staff/Stephen/default.html

What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words? What are some examples?
Web 2.0 is a second generation of online web communities and hosts. These have been done to improve the sharing, association and creativity between users using Web Blogs.

The common examples of this would be RSS feeds, social networking sites like facebook, my space and hi5.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Day 4: Lecture on media studies

We started of today’s lecture by watching a video “EPIC 2014”. The video talks about the origin of Google, Amazon.com, and Friendster. It deals with the advancements made by Google. Google forms a grid with all its applications. It is known as the Google grid. MSN launches the news botster. The video shows the merging of Google and Amazon.com to form Google Zone in 2008. Finally Google launches EPIC (Evolving personalised information construct) in 2014. It has contributions from everyone and some may even get paid for it.

Then the lecture dealt with new media, internet and cyber cultural studies. The popular media interest in early 90’s was the internet. By end of 90’s people started looking at the internet as a whole new area. They started studying about the social networking and economic interactions happening over the internet. The four types of investigations which were taking place online were contextualising interactions, discoursing cyber space, digital design, online access and barriers. There is a lot of research going on in the new media department. That sums up the lecture about the study on new media.

Day 3: Tutorial task on wikipedia guidelines

People use Wikipedia as a source to get information. It is a good site to get a feel for some ideas. Wikipedia depends on individuals who edit articles in it. It is not always accurate or comprehensive. Wikipedia follows a list of guidelines which are to be used by the editors to write articles. The seven points which are used in the guidelines are behavioural, content, deletion, editing, naming conventions, notability and style guidelines.

The first topic I have chosen is about an Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. This article is almost accurate. The only drawback that I have noticed is that more emphasis is not given on the early life and the struggle period of the cricketer. It covers the basic facts which are needed to be covered in this article. It follows all the steps which are needed to write an article. The article is fair and balanced. It shows the plus points and also the negative phases in the cricketer’s life.

wikipedia article source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sachin_Tendulkar

The second topic I have chosen is on an Indian actor, Shahrukh Khan. The article emphasizes about all the phases in the actors life. The article does not show any details about his inclusion in any controversies. But in reality he is more often into some kind of a controversy. The article basically follows the guidelines which are used to write a wikipedia article. But the article does not give me sufficient information after going through it. The article is not properly balanced. It give importance only to his career highs but not his lows. That’s pretty much it for tutorial task 3.

Second article source:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shahrukh_Khan

Picture source:

http://www.tadkashadka.com/bollywood/bollywood-actors/shahrukh-khan/

Day 3: Lecture on history of Computers and Internet

Today’s lecture was about history of computers and the internet.
Computers:
The first ever computer model was found in the 19th century by Charles Babbage. It was a difference engine which was designed to calculate and print mathematical tables. Even though it had proper funding from the government, the engine could not be completed in his life time. Later he created an analytical engine which was a mechanical computer. He was helped by a woman named Ada Byron. She later created the first ever computer program.

Apple, IBM, Microsoft and Linux
Apple was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak. Together they both produced the Apple I which was a primitive machine with a single circuit with no case and keyboard. Computers were not so much in use at that time so they sold only 15 units. Each unit was sold at a price of 666.60 US$. After two years they launched Apple II which was more of a consumer product. The model was a big hit and they had made enough money. Later through addition of an application on the computer, the market ran after their product. At very less age both the founders had become very rich.

After looking at the success of Apple, IBM wanted to strike big. IBM was a company which sold huge mainframes for big companies. They were determined get into the personal computer market. They had the hardware to do it but lacked the software. They met Bill Gates who promised them an operating system. In four months IBM had its own PC out in the market place. Each PC was sold for a price of 50$. Bill Gates became a rich man. In association with software giant (Microsoft) under Bill Gates, IBM started to capture the market. Apple still held on to their strong position as their computers had their own graphical user interface (GUI). But IBM and Microsoft came up with their own GUI and launched Windows 3. Apple started to loose its strong market hold.

A Finnish programmer, Linus Torvalds decided to go for his own version of Unix in 1991. When he finished his first draft, lots of people were interested. He named it GNU/Linux. It was a free operating system compared to the other expensive systems like windows, mac and unix. Thus an operating system was born.

Internet, The Web and Cyberspace:
Internet is a network which includes servers, mainframes and personal computers. It is connected to a telephone line, broadband cable, or satellite service. It is used to link people from different parts of the world. It is used as a domain where information can be shared. The Web (also known as the World Wide Web) came out in 1990’s. This was how people started to communicate with each other via computers. It was very hard to use until the availability of browsers such as Mosaic and Netscape. Web pages are written in a language called hyper text mark up language (HTML). People mistake internet and the web to be the same thing, but its not. The web is only a part of the internet. Cyberspace is like a interconnection of imagination and reality.

Electronic mail, File transfer Protocol and Internet relay chat:
Email is a virtual mail system which is used to send information/files from one person to another. The types of files may include images, animations, videos, worksheets and programs.
File transfer protocol (FTP) allows you to download files from another computer onto your computer. It can also be used to upload files.
Internet relay chat (IRC) is one of the basic applications which allowed people to type in real time. It is used mainly for chatting. Even file transfers can be done on it. This application rose into popularity due to launch of instant messengers such as MSN messenger and Yahoo messenger.

Today’s lecture gives you information about origin of computers, internet and its related programs.

Picture sources: http://www.briansolis.com/2007/09/crisis-communications-20-apple-and.html, http://blog.protectwebform.com/p/category/ocr,

Day 2: Tutorial task

New communication technologies have become a necessity in one’s everyday life. The main technologies which stand out are the internet and mobile phones. Internet is being used everywhere (homes, offices, public places). Internet allows you to stay in contact with your family and friends from any part of the world. Mobile phone is like the best thing that ever happened. I can’t imagine a life without internet and mobile phone right now. That would be like stepping back into the stone age.
Internet allows you to meet new people online. You tend to become friends with individuals whom you haven’t even met. As per the question asked there is lot of difference in meeting someone in person when compared to chatting with them over the internet. You can’t get to see the true side of the opposite person. You get to see only what the person wants to show you. But you don’t get to meet them in reality so that wouldn’t cause problems to your personal life.
I have been using these technologies for a long time. Mobile phone probably from my school days and same goes with the internet as well. The main influence is the change in technology. You try to play catch up with the advancements in technology. In my school days I wasn’t much into social networking sites such as facebook and my space. But your friends play a major part in getting you involved into it.
Privacy over the internet has always been a major issue, but that has never stopped me from trying out new things. But nowadays we have privacy setting’s over what ever we use (mobile phones security codes, email passwords).
That ends the task given on day 2.

Picture source: http://www.wlo2004.com/_img/ad1.jpg

Day 2: Guest lecture by Paul Hodkinson

Today we had a guest lecture by Paul Hodkinson, department of sociology. He is from University of Surrey, U.K. He emphasized on social networking and identity. The lecture was about impact of social networking sites on youth. He said that previous researches in the topic dealt with male socialisation in public areas. But in 1976 McRobbie and Garber showed emphasis on girls and their ways of socialisation. The main topic in today lecture was how a bedroom acts as a virtual socialising network place. Your bedroom is like your own personalised place. You have private communications with individuals over the mobile phone or in person. You can also have virtual communication with friends over the internet.
In the same manner social networking sites such as facebook and my space help you in creating a private space where you can hang out or stay in contact with your friends. Social networking sites are places where people gather publically through mediating technology. These sites lead to everyday interactions with the outside world just from your bedroom.
Then we had questions answered by the lecturer. Later in the tutorial we had a discussion regarding the lecture. The main question was about the privacy factor in social networking sites. People don’t want to share their information with everyone in their friend’s list. So they setup security settings as to who can access their files (pictures and videos) and who can’t. It was a great lecture and i learnt a lot about social networking sites.

Picture source: http://flickr.com/photos/oliver_godby/514524785

Day 1 in summer course

Hey, this is my first day in the class "New Communication Tecnologies". The course deals with basic information regarding communication and technologies. The main explanation is about the web blogs. Blog is like a place on a webpage where you can place your personal comments. Today we have discussed about the course outline and main assessment items.The topics covered today are basic web pages used in daily life such as facebook, instant messaging, news sites, online game sites....Discussion on topics such as communication, technology, convergence was done today.In the tutorial class we were taught how to set up a web blog. Thats pretty much it for the first day....