Week 4

This week’s lecture reflected upon Old Communication Technologies, with the lecture starting off with a look at an old rock scribing featuring animals in different positions with several humans scattered over the piece. Whereas the meaning of the work was unclear, it was still interesting to note the way humans communicated in that age.
Also discussed was the origins of the alphabet, ancient texts and jumping forward many years, print, telegraph, telephone, radio, cinema etc.
The subject of semiotics was also brought up, which seemed interesting, followed by the perspectives of several notable theorists.

During the tutorial this week, a scavenger hunt was conducted with the answers as follows; (Some were not found)


1.
2. Johan Vaaler, a Norwegian inventor with a degree in electronics, science and mathematics, invented the paperclip in 1899. http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blpaperclip.htm
3. The disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in Africa, where it was first recognized. http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola/qa.htm
4. The largest recorded earthquake in the world was a magnitude 9.5 (Mw) in Chile on May 22, 1960. http://www.cdli.ca/CITE/earthquakes_what.htm
5. 1,073,741,824 kilobytes in a terabyte; the power: 2^30 http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/
6. Ray Tomlinson http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/bhhall/e124/e124emailinvention.pdf
7. A fast-spreading bot/virus that participates in a network of infected computers and allows a hacker to control your computer http://resnet.ucsd.edu/stormworm.shtml Heise Security estimates that, as of early August 2007, 1.7 million computers were infected worldwide as part of a massive botnet, and that number has surely escalated since then. http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070902-storm-worm-adds-millions-of-computers-to-botnet.html
8.
9. Veteran Rex http://www.brispop.com/index.cfm?action=dsp_bio&artistID=611
10.

Also in the tutorial, the question was asked as to how search engines rank the stuff they find on the internet. I found this brief description on http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/6-10-2005-71368.asp

“It's common knowledge that Google relies heavily
on inbound relevant links to rank a site. Now they explain exactly how it works.
As well as the number, quality and anchor text factors of a link. Google
seems to also consider historical factors. Apparently the Google 'sandbox' or
aging delay begins count down the minute links to a new site are discovered.
Google records the discovery of a link, link changes over time, the speed at
which a site gains links and the link life span."

Another useful site I found entitled “Search Engine Ranking Factors” which was put together by 37 leaders in the world of organic search engine optimization and included 200+ ranking factors. Although too long to be summarised in this blog, it is of much value and is recommended for reading. The site is:http://www.seomoz.org/article/search-ranking-factors

When asked what our favourite search engine is, I decided have found Google to be my favourite search engine, for the simple fact that it provides a vast array of information closely related to the searched subject matter.

Week 3

This week’s lecture provided time for us to watch Jean Luc Godard’s film Alphaville, made in 1965. The film centres around a detective agent from the ‘Outlands’ who enters Alphaville – a large area controlled by Professor Von Braun and an obscenely large computer referred to as Alpha-60. The great power of Alpha-60 has caused citizens of Alphaville to lose the ability to think, feel and love. The movie was quite hard to understand, but the main issue derived from the it was that of ever changing and evolving technology and its impact on humans. It stirred thought as to the perceptions of the movie at the time of it's release. In 1965 the issues and ideologies explored would have been outlandish and hard to digest, whereas we now look back over thirty years later to find the technologies are now standard and widely accessed, although the computer has not yet managed to take over human thought. Once getting past the initial frustrations of subtitles, novice special effects and the like, the movie can be appreciated for it's artistic value and important place in the realm of communication and technology.

In this week’s tutorial the film Alphaville was discussed. Also touched on were the views on the movie from 1965 as opposed to today. It was found that the ideas the film presented would have seemed obscene and outlandish to those who viewed the film in 1965, but are now looked viewed as old and basic, with technology having evolved in leaps and bounds since the film’s making.
Also, the blogs were worked on, and a new feature of ‘friend adding’ was discovered. This will enable students to share ideas, provide constructive critisism and form an interactive online presence.