Wednesday 28 November 2012

Our Digital Voice

It's easy enough to think about the digital body and the digital mind, but what about the voice...computer-mediated communication. By looking at the digital voice it can then help us look into how the web works today, looking into topics such as cyberstalking, identity and our own internet representation.
The digital voice and communication is not a new idea, and when researching it you realise that communication and the ability to transmit messages occured long before digital culture begun. I looked at the book "When Old technology was new," by Carolyn Marvin to help me understand these ideas. Communication was previously transmitted by runners, riders, beacons and eventually by telegraph.
Before long the printing press was invented, which gave society the ability to print books and newspapers, this helped move messages forward it was a progression for the digital voice. Shortly after in the mid 19th Century society underwent the Industrail Revolution. Revealing the birth of the steam train, this along with the printing press meant the birth of journalism.
So when digital culture began to take form, the ideas were not new ones, it was not unique because the ability to transmit messages exsisted long before this. The progression is unbelievable, from telegraphs to emails digital culture has progressed the ability to transmit messages uncontrolably.

Monday 26 November 2012

Humans vs Robots

The idea that robots could take over our jobs, our world and us is a scary one. How can we expect a piece of machinery to fullfil the roles that we play? In my eyes this seems ridiculous and something that we would never buy into...except we are. To me it seems we are putting so much money, effort and time into creating robots purley out of curiosity, how far can we really take it and how human like can we really make these machines? https://inlportal.inl.gov/portal/server.pt?open=512&objID=536&parentname=CommunityPage&parentid=7&mode=2&in_hi_userid=3338&cached=true
This link shows what we seem to be expecting of these robots and it begins to give an explanation of what they might do and why we might want them... seems to me that humans lazyness is to blame for this fascination.
To me a robot is simply a servant or a slave, a way to get something else to complete the jobs that we do not want to do, a "Reprogrammable multifunctional manipulator." Behind every great idea there is always the potential of a threat, by creating these robots surley we are preparing ourselves for the possibility of creating a creature far more intelligent than us, and in my opinion this poses a huge threat to our world and us.
David Hanson is a prime example of a man who seems somewhat obssessed with the idea of Robots being as intelligent and capable as humans. He said, "I see an amazing future relationship between Humans and Robots. We’re going to make our robots more like animals and people. We’re going to give them advanced cognitive capabilities. We see so many technology trends moving in this direction – from machine perception, which allows us to understand speech and see faces and see gestures. We’ve seen great strides forward. We’re really in the infancy of these kinds of machine intelligence technologies." This comes from and interview by EarthSky, to see the full interview look at http://earthsky.org/human-world/david-hanson-creates-robots-with-human-faces. This shows just how amitious some people are in wanting to create humanoid robots, but what is really the point? The world is massivley over populated as it is, so what real benefits will robots bring to us? Robots should remain doing the jobs that humans are unable to do and we shouldnt be attamepting to make them more intelligent than ourselves.
Robots in effect are simply computers that we are attempting to make more human like, but they surley will never really be like us. They will never have the capability to feel or show true emotion like we can, so how will they ever be one of us? We can make them look and sound as human like as possible, but they will never truly be human, and therefore it seems our curiosity to create these things is spiralling out of control and we should save the money and time we are wasting. But thats just my opinion, on the other hand Rodney Brookes, chairman and chief technical officer for Rethink Robotics, would say that "within 10 years we're going to see humanoid Robots," it seems we had better watch out.

Monday 12 November 2012

History and our internet dependancy.

The Internet is an invention which astounds me more than anything else. A concept which can link the world together with a click of the mouse. A concept which holds and shows millions of different websites, images, blogs and videos for people all over the world to use. The Internet seems to be a forever evolving concept, getting bigger and bigger everytime it is used. But how did it really come about? We use it now for social media, to keep in contact with friends, to advertise and to buy, but what was the orignal purpose?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZSPWDMn730

This video shows how the internet has been transformed over the last 40 years (and progressed even further since then) and how it first began. The war, in my opinion, seems to be the starting point behind the internet being born, the US military wanted to learn how to control weapons and by beginning to create a computer, this allowed that to happen, which in turn allowed progress for the internet to be made. This youtube clip clearly highlights key points in the History of the internet. It clearly shows that as the internet has developed we have developed our needs to it, we are now dependant on the internet. If the internet was taken away from us would we be able to survive? It seems in todays culture and society the internet is like our food and water, we are depenadant upon it. It is obviously important to recognise the history of the internet, how it started and what it was orignially used for because then we can truly realise how it has affected our relationship with technology today. By looking at the history we are all able to see how the internet has changed from a military weapon and government use to a worldwide social media platform. It is now used on a daily basis by billions of people making it a necessity within our lives. http://createbusinessgrowth.com/marketing/have-we-become-too-internet-dependent I came across this blog which sums up our dependancy on the internet, it shows a useful example of how many time we actually come into contact with the itnernet, sometimes without even realising! Will the wonders of the internet cease to grow bigger and bigger and ever became less of a necessity within our lives? Who knows.

Monday 5 November 2012

Google Glasses- One step too far.

Google Glasses are the latest crazed invention which are attempting to take computing to the next level, whether they are ridiculous or genius is yet to be decided. Splitting the tech world into frenzy as to whether or not these strange glasses are a good idea, or whether they are simply taking technology one step too far. The concept of the glasses is Googles attempt to create a computer which you wear all the time, by tilting your head in deifferent directions you will have full control of the glasses and what you see.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=9c6W4CCU9M4#!

This link is to a video which better explains the general idea of the glasses, and how they will work whilst your wearing them. The glasses seem to be like a wearable smart phone, they allow you to take pictures, send messages along side many other fucntions. However, it seems to me that these glasses with 'augmented reality' are showing us just how addicted to technology our society has become. It isn't enough that we can get out our smart phone and take a photo or make a phone call, society is becoming so lazy because of the increased need to create a better technology than the one gone before. Google Glasses represent societys need for something better, but for me this isn't a good thing, it is simply taking us further away from reality and making us more dependant on technology. Will it ever stop?