-Edwin Howard Armstrong taking David Sarnoff's attractive secretary in a ride in the "fastest car he could find" and then marrying her soon after, seems like an episode of Mad Men (85). But what is interesting is that Armstrong, after having his ego and reputation take a hit after he lost a patent and AT&T started calling some other guy the "father of regenerative circuitry", devoted almost all of his waking hours to solving the AM frequency radio static problem (85-86). He invented what was called a "limiter" and a "discriminator" which significantly decreased radio static and allowed for a stronger signal to carry further. In a demonstration, apparently audiences could hear and discern activities over the airwaves such as water being poured and paper crumpling (86-87).
-I for one, assumed that with the creation of FM radio, it wouldn't bring the whole FCC, RCA, and NBC to its knees. Like Armstrong, personally, I am all for technological growth and new developments, and care little about how the major corporations are going to make their money on new products that make their i.e. 1000% profit margins obsolete. So because of the potentially disastrous bottom line for RCA, and with their hopes being pinned on the TV destroying the radio, Sarnoff misrepresented the FM invention, fired the biggest proponent of the radio signal, Dr. Baker; and asked Armstrong to essentially clean out his lab and that he was replaced by the TV wonderboy and his lab (91).
-On a side note, obsolescence is a necessary part of the capitalist economy. Speaking to economics here: manufacturers make a product; people buy this product; the product is improved and now the manufacturer markets the new and improved product to the same people that just bought their old product. This is how our economy works, and this is how a free-market economy works. Without obsolescence due to new and better products, we would all have Soviet era type appliances and automobiles. That wouldn't be good at all.
-Another part of this obsolescence idea is that of automated assembly lines and faster, more efficient manufacturing practices that eliminate time and manpower. If the costs can be lowered, and manufacturing times lowered, this means that it is possible to still sell the same product for the old sale price and make more money per sale...or you can drop the price and sell more units. Either way, it is the obvious choice to make when owning a company that sells things like radios and TV's to the public. So when Motorola streamlined their making of the hand-held radios, these products could no longer be fixed, they simply had to be discarded and a new one would be bought, they helped facilitate the move towards the "death dating" part of planned obsolescence (113). In this case, the prices were likely dropped significantly because the product had a short or variable life expectancy. Either way, this was necessary to do so in order to keep customers coming back time and time again when their old radios would break.
-The Japanese were smart people; when their silk export business dried up in about 1931, they increased their hold over Manchuria, established a puppet ruler, expanded their drug trade considerably, and the icing on the cake here, they got their puppet ruler's wife addicted to drugs so they could control all of Manchuria (117). That was actually a very savvy and very effective way to maintain power and maintain money coming into Japan.
-So what did the U.S. do when Japan became even more aggressive in the seas and in China? That's right, we created nylon and seriously cut their importation of raw materials from the U.S (117). The U.S. chemical company DuPont finally made nylon stockings available on "N-Day" May 15, 1940 (125). On a personal note, I went to high school with two of the DuPont heirs, the older one was a few years ahead of me, I can't remember his name, but the younger one was a grade below me. His name was August DuPont V I believe. Either way, they had a lot of money. I'm not too sure if any of the family members have anything to do with the business side anymore, but I do know their father was on the board of Trustees and he was on the board of trustees at Pingry, which was my high school. The Pingry School's board of trustees reads like a Fortune 500 best companies conglomeration; I'm serious.
-But what is interesting about nylon and silk is that nylon would never, and in fact has never, taken over for silk, it has merely been an acceptable substitute. The contest between the two is not a story of "superior technological innovation replacing an inferior natural product. It is the story of a symbolic contest between two cultures fighting for economic dominance (128)". So although silk was not made obsolete, the silk war in this case created a status symbol for the real deal and a cheap substitute which everyone could enjoy in the case of nylon.
-Brooks Stevens said he coined "planned obsolescence" which isn't likely to be true, but for him, "planned obsolescence was simply psychological obsolescence, not product death-dating. It grew out of the 'desire to own something a little newer, a little better, a little sooner than is necessary (153). This is actually very interesting because this is sort of how most Americans who aren't on the strictest of budgets live. Times now are tough, I get that, and I get that what we would collectively "splurge" for in 1999 most of us can now no longer afford now. However the idea that we can have something newer, better, and quicker has always been the idea that most Americans have as the idea behind research and development. I know that when a new toy comes out, be it childrens action figures or high def tv's, we're always looking at what our neighbors got and trying to one-up him. You got the 50' well I got the 55'; your kid just got the lego set with awesome shit that we didn't have growing up, my kid just got two of those lego sets. Its all about competition and ego in a market economy like ours that drives the new and better products. I'm getting a new car. I have an '03 with 94K miles on it. It works but its dying and before it goes kaput, I need a new one. If i didn't absolutely need a new one, i probably wouldn't be getting it, however I am, and since I am, I'm gonna ball out with a new 2011 model instead of a 2010 or even a 2009. Why? Well because since i'm spending the money anyway, lets go all out. Its a mentality that drives obsolescence almost as much as the products themselves. If that crazy super computer that China just came out with was available all of a sudden in a laptop size for say $200,000...I know a ton of people that would buy them immediately no matter how expensive it is. I know that's actually a very low figure but i was trying to pick a price significantly higher than any laptop we have now. So not only would the product itself make every other laptop immediately obsolete, it comes down to the consumer and whether or not he wants to make that purchase to own a crazy powerful, crazy cool, crazy expensive device. However because of the genuine obsolescence to existing computers as well as extensive physical inventories of laptops and laptop components, not a single company which exists today would come out with this lightning fast Chinese computer. It would practically put them out of business with how much capital and assets they have in their physical inventories and manufacturers of the components. It would need a new company, one that has no share in the existing market, to come out and compete dangerously with powerful tech companies. And because this won't happen, ever, we have to live our lives with he planned death of existing technologies and when new toys are made available. -On a paranoid stint here, I truly believe that most major tech, chemical, and defense corporations have already developed cures for cancer, aids, missiles that do crazy things, and computer chips the size of red blood cells that have double the computing power of existing processing chips. If it isn't these things its others which unfortunately, cannot be released to the public just yet due to the huge profit hits these corporations would take.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Wiki 2
I got confused I guess, I thought the second wiki was for this weekend. Next week i'll catch up on all the posts and we'll be square.
-Right off the bat in Chapter 5, we learn who the first Wikipedia users were. I, for one, never knew nor ever really questioned who the first users and editors were. I always just assumed it was a group of knowledge nerds who made articles for self-indulgent reasons and had an "I'm smarter than you, so there!" kind of attitude. But in reality, "they came largely from the academic, scientific and information technology communities" and were professionals; real academics and scientists who had jobs as professors and scientists (114). That is awesome! They were originally working on a site called Nupedia "which required its authors to have academic accreditation" so naturally when they made the shift to the easier and more receptive wikipedia, they were able to post more and edit more because there was no hierarchy of admins and regulators. This is astonishing to think about, and a little ironic.
I first learned about Wikipedia when I was a senior in high school, 2005. Yes i guess that was a little late, but then again I attended a private school and most of our research was done in books only, they rarely if ever accepted internet sources so it wasn't until my bullshit senior year science class that we were allowed to look up things on the web and wikipedia was the first hit usually. In class our teacher said that Wikipedia is great for a quick reference look up but be VERY wary of its credibility considering anyone can post and change things from factually accurate to factually inaccurate just because they're being an asshole, and yes, my teacher actually said asshole. So what i find to be ironic is that this was about 4 years after Wikipedia really got off the ground and already the culture and posters had changed dramatically. If in the beginning it really was ripe with academics and scientists, how in four years time had it become so unreliable?
-On page 120, Dalby states that Esprit Fugace's, a French admin, obsession and addiction to Wikipedia was similar to an RPG addiction. The comparable addiction part is for me a stretch to make that comparison, however when he says that its the interaction of members of a community which is not only addicting, but similar to an RPG, that i buy. Everyone wants to be accepted and wanted...its part of human nature. "Fitting in" is the stereotypical challenge for all middle and high school students, and it simply continues onto adulthood and into old age. So when Dalby says "We the people of this virtual world" (120), he is forcing an acceptance of the users who spend hours editing and writing and creating Wiki posts, to all the other people who do the same thing. There is a commonality and a community which these people now belong too.
-A side note here, the way Dalby uses these online pseudonyms as comparable to first name basis with friends tells us a great deal about his feelings towards this online Wikipedia community. He feels as if he himself is a member and it feels almost-nature for him to discuss what a person named "The Cunctator", or simply as "141". To Dalby, these are people whom he feels a connection with because of the time he has spent reading about what they post and edit and comment on. I also have no doubt that he has contacted a few of the people in this book for more discussion on certain topics. These are friends...monikers personified to be real people.
So my gamer tag is Oscar Wiilde, and my internet gamer tag is Rraven. However I am not Oscar nor Rraven, I am Daniel Scheininger. Dalby treats the names like people. I understand that your online handle is anonymous on purpose, and yes, I understand that people who post under names like "141" almost have to be referred to exclusively as 141 because we know no other such name for that person; however his level of familiarity with these online handles seems a little excessive and a little obsessive. I know nothing about Dalby nor is what I am about to say accurate at all, but it seems as though he feels like these are his friends even though he has never met them. He falls into this familiarity with these names without a second thought which leads me to question how many real people friends he has not in the online community. He is expressing personally his first reason for "why we love it" first hand, that of a community where people feel welcomed and accepted. I know a few people who are stuck in MMORPG land, and its not pretty. While I am not judging Dalby, it certainly feels as if his connection to this online community is maybe stronger than many real world connections.
-In the personal biography pages, 148-154, Dalby makes an interesting point. Don't edit your own biography! That to me seems a little strange, however I understand why. You don't want to be bias like Joshua Gardner, a sex offender, nor Richard Worth, a minister of commerce and create or edit your biography to either flat out lie, or cast yourself in an unwavering positive light. This actually brings me to a real life issue: my father. Since you yourself may not even be reading this far, it is fair to say that no one will find it in here so i'll type it, but my father, Jeff, same last name, is somewhat of a politician, but that's not whats cool. What is cool is that in a few months time, my dad will be Chairman of the NJ State Chamber of Commerce. There are only 50 such people in this country and he will be one of them. He was also in charge of The NJ Health Care Reform Initiative which unfortunately got destroyed with the advent of "Obamacare". He does not have a wikipedia page, however when he was asked to run for State Senate which he declined, they said that he should get a wiki page up a.s.a.p. He is a Republic Politician in Union County, i forgot his exact title but he actually is elected to his office and his term is two years and he's been re-elected 3-4 times now. He asked me if I would make him a Wiki page and I said I wasn't sure if I could because taking his word for things without having cited sources wouldn't be very safe. Now, after reading this section, I am almost sure I don't want to do it for him; however who should write his biography if it isn't me or him? Because he needs one, newspapers call him for comments and have to ask personal questions about his professional career as well as his educational history all the time. So I guess i'm asking you who should make one?
-Right off the bat in Chapter 5, we learn who the first Wikipedia users were. I, for one, never knew nor ever really questioned who the first users and editors were. I always just assumed it was a group of knowledge nerds who made articles for self-indulgent reasons and had an "I'm smarter than you, so there!" kind of attitude. But in reality, "they came largely from the academic, scientific and information technology communities" and were professionals; real academics and scientists who had jobs as professors and scientists (114). That is awesome! They were originally working on a site called Nupedia "which required its authors to have academic accreditation" so naturally when they made the shift to the easier and more receptive wikipedia, they were able to post more and edit more because there was no hierarchy of admins and regulators. This is astonishing to think about, and a little ironic.
I first learned about Wikipedia when I was a senior in high school, 2005. Yes i guess that was a little late, but then again I attended a private school and most of our research was done in books only, they rarely if ever accepted internet sources so it wasn't until my bullshit senior year science class that we were allowed to look up things on the web and wikipedia was the first hit usually. In class our teacher said that Wikipedia is great for a quick reference look up but be VERY wary of its credibility considering anyone can post and change things from factually accurate to factually inaccurate just because they're being an asshole, and yes, my teacher actually said asshole. So what i find to be ironic is that this was about 4 years after Wikipedia really got off the ground and already the culture and posters had changed dramatically. If in the beginning it really was ripe with academics and scientists, how in four years time had it become so unreliable?
-On page 120, Dalby states that Esprit Fugace's, a French admin, obsession and addiction to Wikipedia was similar to an RPG addiction. The comparable addiction part is for me a stretch to make that comparison, however when he says that its the interaction of members of a community which is not only addicting, but similar to an RPG, that i buy. Everyone wants to be accepted and wanted...its part of human nature. "Fitting in" is the stereotypical challenge for all middle and high school students, and it simply continues onto adulthood and into old age. So when Dalby says "We the people of this virtual world" (120), he is forcing an acceptance of the users who spend hours editing and writing and creating Wiki posts, to all the other people who do the same thing. There is a commonality and a community which these people now belong too.
-A side note here, the way Dalby uses these online pseudonyms as comparable to first name basis with friends tells us a great deal about his feelings towards this online Wikipedia community. He feels as if he himself is a member and it feels almost-nature for him to discuss what a person named "The Cunctator", or simply as "141". To Dalby, these are people whom he feels a connection with because of the time he has spent reading about what they post and edit and comment on. I also have no doubt that he has contacted a few of the people in this book for more discussion on certain topics. These are friends...monikers personified to be real people.
So my gamer tag is Oscar Wiilde, and my internet gamer tag is Rraven. However I am not Oscar nor Rraven, I am Daniel Scheininger. Dalby treats the names like people. I understand that your online handle is anonymous on purpose, and yes, I understand that people who post under names like "141" almost have to be referred to exclusively as 141 because we know no other such name for that person; however his level of familiarity with these online handles seems a little excessive and a little obsessive. I know nothing about Dalby nor is what I am about to say accurate at all, but it seems as though he feels like these are his friends even though he has never met them. He falls into this familiarity with these names without a second thought which leads me to question how many real people friends he has not in the online community. He is expressing personally his first reason for "why we love it" first hand, that of a community where people feel welcomed and accepted. I know a few people who are stuck in MMORPG land, and its not pretty. While I am not judging Dalby, it certainly feels as if his connection to this online community is maybe stronger than many real world connections.
-In the personal biography pages, 148-154, Dalby makes an interesting point. Don't edit your own biography! That to me seems a little strange, however I understand why. You don't want to be bias like Joshua Gardner, a sex offender, nor Richard Worth, a minister of commerce and create or edit your biography to either flat out lie, or cast yourself in an unwavering positive light. This actually brings me to a real life issue: my father. Since you yourself may not even be reading this far, it is fair to say that no one will find it in here so i'll type it, but my father, Jeff, same last name, is somewhat of a politician, but that's not whats cool. What is cool is that in a few months time, my dad will be Chairman of the NJ State Chamber of Commerce. There are only 50 such people in this country and he will be one of them. He was also in charge of The NJ Health Care Reform Initiative which unfortunately got destroyed with the advent of "Obamacare". He does not have a wikipedia page, however when he was asked to run for State Senate which he declined, they said that he should get a wiki page up a.s.a.p. He is a Republic Politician in Union County, i forgot his exact title but he actually is elected to his office and his term is two years and he's been re-elected 3-4 times now. He asked me if I would make him a Wiki page and I said I wasn't sure if I could because taking his word for things without having cited sources wouldn't be very safe. Now, after reading this section, I am almost sure I don't want to do it for him; however who should write his biography if it isn't me or him? Because he needs one, newspapers call him for comments and have to ask personal questions about his professional career as well as his educational history all the time. So I guess i'm asking you who should make one?
Sunday, October 17, 2010
Wikipedia
-A quick fundamental argument flaw that I've discovered may be corrected later, however at first glance, "Any errors you have seen and not as yet corrected are your fault". This is fundamentally inaccurate because if his first argument is that Wikipedia is the most used and most visited encyclopedia out there; 1), how do we know the post is factually wrong if we're looking it up in the first place, and 2), since, as he has stated that wiki "began to drive other fact sources out of business", where else can we look to fact-check the fact we're looking up? Therefore, it is by no means at all, my fault that there are errors on wikipedia if I in fact don't know the source material nor have another place to look up the same data. (7) In my opinion, it is the person who knows the correct answers and is browsing and/or trolling pages that they could update and edit but choose not to.
-With regards to the Italian earthquake paragraphs, specifically after the article had been translated into 20 different languages and edited and updated 200 times, there was a push and an continuance to stay on that piece of news when the rest of the worlds media had moved on. These contributors stayed with it, picking up new information and updating it days or weeks after it had happened and weeks after it left people's thoughts. What I found to be very interesting was the intricate detail and want and even need for this detail about the specific towns affected, the nationalities of victims, and the foreshock and aftershock data (9).
-In discussing the "Criticism of George W. Bush" and subsequently the denying of the existence of a parallel "Criticism of Barack H. Obama" (13), it is interesting to note why and how these articles are not in existence any longer. For three years Dalby noted, the bashing of Bush article was posted on wikipeda. Bush bashing was not only popular but it even achieved popular culture status. Socially, especially in college, when Bush came up, if you didn't publicly state your displeasure with him and his policies, then you were shunned. This was somewhat difficult being a Republican. Yes, I am a Jewish Republican...I'm breakin' through boarders and stigmas my friend. So yes, I in fact voted for him twice because I'm old and his first term was when I was an 18yr old senior in high school, so I actually voted for him twice. Not that it mattered because I live in NJ and this state goes blue no matter what; but for personal gratification, I voted for him twice. So this Bush bashing was rampant and popular, and the second the Democrats won the presidency, all of a sudden any opposing view point was exiled by Wikipedia? Yup. That's the short answer. The Bush article was allowed to stay up longer than any anti-Obama article. Soon after Obama's presidency though, the anti-Bush article was removed. Now a second point. By trying to sneak in personal dissatisfactions with Obama, one had to either put them in existing articles or make new ones like the "Obama Bear Market" (13). This title was changed to not include Obama's name at all. I just searched for "Obamacare" which is a common phrase used to describe the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" which is exactly the match that will come up when searching for Obamacare. This is actually somewhat disconcerting because there isn't even an article which refers to the fact that people and the media consider the Patient Protection etc. act to be named Obamacare, nor is there any reference to the popular culture fact that Obama's name is attached to the phrase Obamacare because it was under his watch that our health care system was "revamped". The internet, especially wiki, has to have Obamacare as an article even if it speaks about how the Patient Protection etc. law is referred to as Obamacare, just like wiki must have an article that discusses historically the Bush bashing and how and why it was popular.
-Dalby cites three things that allows Wiki to exist. First are the works of Pliny the Elder and a Chinese philosopher and astronomer named Shen Kuo. Second is the formation and even creation of the dictionary. And third is the sourcebook. Each one as a stand-alone book is alright, but not complete. Dalby argues that "we must plait the three traditions together into a perfect encyclopedia, logically arranged, quick to access, properly sourced" (26). He goes on to state that a printed version of this would be almost impossible to use and access and therefore needs to be not in a print format. Transferring the knowledge to other languages was paramount in order to achieve this harmonious encyclopedia concept of a perfect knowledge source. Only in 2001 was Wiki first able to be written in other languages and then only a few languages. It took a few years for the Wiki contributors to actually start writing in other languages and for authors to request new language formats in which they could write in. (35-43)
-On page 53 when discussing the 9/11 updates to WP which happened faster than their "rival" of Britannica, the user Clasqm wrote that we should be looking beyond beating Britannica and do something extraordinary, like have a page dedicated to each person in the world (53). I find this somewhat funny in that we now have Facebook which is essentially a page for everyone in he world, however I obviously understand the differences between WP and FB; I just found it humorous that his idea was a great idea that was about to happen in a few years.
-When searching in Google for something, it is often times the case that if WP has an article on it, it is the first hit, and if it's not the first hit, it is almost guaranteed to be in the top 5 hits. Dalby says there are three reasons for this. First, WP has a lot of local links on its pages and apparently Google search software likes pages with lots of links. Second, lots of other sites link to WP. So there is a back-and-forth of linking which the Google search software also finds attractive and will therefore place the site with lots of links to it on top. Third, people tend to click on the WP hits and they are favored by the browser, therefore Google remembers and counts the number of hits and places the site with the most hits on top (84). So to sum up, WP and Google are almost a perfect match for each other, although they at one point tried to be enemies (83). I wonder if Google helped facilitate the powerfulness of WP? Even if it didn't directly affect the articles on WP, it certainly showed and lead browsers to the site whom then had the freedom to add information. So while Google didn't help make WP, in my opinion, it certainly helped it grow and become the dominant search database on the web.
-With regards to the Italian earthquake paragraphs, specifically after the article had been translated into 20 different languages and edited and updated 200 times, there was a push and an continuance to stay on that piece of news when the rest of the worlds media had moved on. These contributors stayed with it, picking up new information and updating it days or weeks after it had happened and weeks after it left people's thoughts. What I found to be very interesting was the intricate detail and want and even need for this detail about the specific towns affected, the nationalities of victims, and the foreshock and aftershock data (9).
-In discussing the "Criticism of George W. Bush" and subsequently the denying of the existence of a parallel "Criticism of Barack H. Obama" (13), it is interesting to note why and how these articles are not in existence any longer. For three years Dalby noted, the bashing of Bush article was posted on wikipeda. Bush bashing was not only popular but it even achieved popular culture status. Socially, especially in college, when Bush came up, if you didn't publicly state your displeasure with him and his policies, then you were shunned. This was somewhat difficult being a Republican. Yes, I am a Jewish Republican...I'm breakin' through boarders and stigmas my friend. So yes, I in fact voted for him twice because I'm old and his first term was when I was an 18yr old senior in high school, so I actually voted for him twice. Not that it mattered because I live in NJ and this state goes blue no matter what; but for personal gratification, I voted for him twice. So this Bush bashing was rampant and popular, and the second the Democrats won the presidency, all of a sudden any opposing view point was exiled by Wikipedia? Yup. That's the short answer. The Bush article was allowed to stay up longer than any anti-Obama article. Soon after Obama's presidency though, the anti-Bush article was removed. Now a second point. By trying to sneak in personal dissatisfactions with Obama, one had to either put them in existing articles or make new ones like the "Obama Bear Market" (13). This title was changed to not include Obama's name at all. I just searched for "Obamacare" which is a common phrase used to describe the "Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act" which is exactly the match that will come up when searching for Obamacare. This is actually somewhat disconcerting because there isn't even an article which refers to the fact that people and the media consider the Patient Protection etc. act to be named Obamacare, nor is there any reference to the popular culture fact that Obama's name is attached to the phrase Obamacare because it was under his watch that our health care system was "revamped". The internet, especially wiki, has to have Obamacare as an article even if it speaks about how the Patient Protection etc. law is referred to as Obamacare, just like wiki must have an article that discusses historically the Bush bashing and how and why it was popular.
-Dalby cites three things that allows Wiki to exist. First are the works of Pliny the Elder and a Chinese philosopher and astronomer named Shen Kuo. Second is the formation and even creation of the dictionary. And third is the sourcebook. Each one as a stand-alone book is alright, but not complete. Dalby argues that "we must plait the three traditions together into a perfect encyclopedia, logically arranged, quick to access, properly sourced" (26). He goes on to state that a printed version of this would be almost impossible to use and access and therefore needs to be not in a print format. Transferring the knowledge to other languages was paramount in order to achieve this harmonious encyclopedia concept of a perfect knowledge source. Only in 2001 was Wiki first able to be written in other languages and then only a few languages. It took a few years for the Wiki contributors to actually start writing in other languages and for authors to request new language formats in which they could write in. (35-43)
-On page 53 when discussing the 9/11 updates to WP which happened faster than their "rival" of Britannica, the user Clasqm wrote that we should be looking beyond beating Britannica and do something extraordinary, like have a page dedicated to each person in the world (53). I find this somewhat funny in that we now have Facebook which is essentially a page for everyone in he world, however I obviously understand the differences between WP and FB; I just found it humorous that his idea was a great idea that was about to happen in a few years.
-When searching in Google for something, it is often times the case that if WP has an article on it, it is the first hit, and if it's not the first hit, it is almost guaranteed to be in the top 5 hits. Dalby says there are three reasons for this. First, WP has a lot of local links on its pages and apparently Google search software likes pages with lots of links. Second, lots of other sites link to WP. So there is a back-and-forth of linking which the Google search software also finds attractive and will therefore place the site with lots of links to it on top. Third, people tend to click on the WP hits and they are favored by the browser, therefore Google remembers and counts the number of hits and places the site with the most hits on top (84). So to sum up, WP and Google are almost a perfect match for each other, although they at one point tried to be enemies (83). I wonder if Google helped facilitate the powerfulness of WP? Even if it didn't directly affect the articles on WP, it certainly showed and lead browsers to the site whom then had the freedom to add information. So while Google didn't help make WP, in my opinion, it certainly helped it grow and become the dominant search database on the web.
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Old Assignments
Ok so i'm a little behind due to the various personal issues i've discussed with you. I'm hoping to get caught up this weekend. Here is the second half of the computers book:
-Microcomputers, the type of computers that we use everyday, were only possible with the Intel creation of the "central processing unit" or CPU. However due to Intel's business model, they didn't want to work directly with the customers so they, in essence, failed to possibly the become the largest computer manufacturer (84). Up until the CPU was implemented and utilized to condense the size of the computer, the enormous tape-type computers that filled up entire buildings were still the most powerful and normal type of computer.
-The dream of Gary Kildall to "create a 'desktop' computer-- a singular computer for [his] own personal use" (85) was revolutionary, and only now possible with the invention of the CPU. Having personal computers would, being repetitious here, legitimately revolutionize computing on the whole. If people could have this so called "desktop" computer, there could be multiple computers in a single room with multiple people all working independently on separate things. Productivity would skyrocket, innovation as well. I don't truly believe that Kildall could ever imagine that his original desktop concept would be carried so far, however since he died in 1994, he invariably saw a dramatic evolution of the PC. Kildall also worked on development of the optical disk drive, which are now CD-ROMs. So what Edward Roberts created was in fact the first desktop computer named the Altair 8800.
-Roberts had intended the computer for hobbyists because it was fairly expensive, $397 and the base model came unassembled (86). You had to like computers to spend this amount of money, and you had to have the tech knowledge to build it. It was also excessively brilliant because it came with accessory slots to add different pieces of hardware later like keyboards and monitors (86). So what was originally designed for a limited amount of people, in some years time was in every household in America and many households throughout the world. If it had not been for Roberts' Altair, according to Swedin and Ferro, Microsoft would never have launched (88).
-Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the first software code which they had already developed on their own for the Altair 8800. It was a huge improvement in the functionality of the machine and opened limitless doors for Gates and Allen.
- On a side note here, the Commodore 64 was one of the first gaming platforms. Not many people had one, but I remember years ago my uncle who is a huge tech nerd and lawyer, was telling me about the first games he ever played at home at they were on the Commodore 64. I can't remember what they were but he said it was absolutely mind blowing. The book says in 1982 that annual sales of games stood at $1.2 billion (103). This doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless their definition of what "gaming sales" is is different from our current one. In 2009, U.S. game retail sales totaled $19.66 billion with only $538 million coming from PC games (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6246425.html). I know that with the creation and evolution of gaming consoles thats where the money and the excellent gaming experience is, so I'm wondering back in 1982 if in that 1.2 billion was arcade games which also count as "total game sales". I feel the book is using some fuzzy numbering on this one, attempting to give more credit to computer game sales than actually took place.
-Starting in 1977 with the Apple II, it represented a shift in the technological computing universe. Hobbyists with skills and money could create pretty good machines with enormous potential for use and for making a profit. IBM got in the game a bit late in 1981, but it was still early in terms of the products circulation for at that time, not many people had one of these PCs.
-This reading was about the PC and the rise of the desktop and later laptop computing. What we have today is all due to the creation of the CPU by Intel and a man named Ted Hoff.
-Microcomputers, the type of computers that we use everyday, were only possible with the Intel creation of the "central processing unit" or CPU. However due to Intel's business model, they didn't want to work directly with the customers so they, in essence, failed to possibly the become the largest computer manufacturer (84). Up until the CPU was implemented and utilized to condense the size of the computer, the enormous tape-type computers that filled up entire buildings were still the most powerful and normal type of computer.
-The dream of Gary Kildall to "create a 'desktop' computer-- a singular computer for [his] own personal use" (85) was revolutionary, and only now possible with the invention of the CPU. Having personal computers would, being repetitious here, legitimately revolutionize computing on the whole. If people could have this so called "desktop" computer, there could be multiple computers in a single room with multiple people all working independently on separate things. Productivity would skyrocket, innovation as well. I don't truly believe that Kildall could ever imagine that his original desktop concept would be carried so far, however since he died in 1994, he invariably saw a dramatic evolution of the PC. Kildall also worked on development of the optical disk drive, which are now CD-ROMs. So what Edward Roberts created was in fact the first desktop computer named the Altair 8800.
-Roberts had intended the computer for hobbyists because it was fairly expensive, $397 and the base model came unassembled (86). You had to like computers to spend this amount of money, and you had to have the tech knowledge to build it. It was also excessively brilliant because it came with accessory slots to add different pieces of hardware later like keyboards and monitors (86). So what was originally designed for a limited amount of people, in some years time was in every household in America and many households throughout the world. If it had not been for Roberts' Altair, according to Swedin and Ferro, Microsoft would never have launched (88).
-Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote the first software code which they had already developed on their own for the Altair 8800. It was a huge improvement in the functionality of the machine and opened limitless doors for Gates and Allen.
- On a side note here, the Commodore 64 was one of the first gaming platforms. Not many people had one, but I remember years ago my uncle who is a huge tech nerd and lawyer, was telling me about the first games he ever played at home at they were on the Commodore 64. I can't remember what they were but he said it was absolutely mind blowing. The book says in 1982 that annual sales of games stood at $1.2 billion (103). This doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless their definition of what "gaming sales" is is different from our current one. In 2009, U.S. game retail sales totaled $19.66 billion with only $538 million coming from PC games (http://www.gamespot.com/news/6246425.html). I know that with the creation and evolution of gaming consoles thats where the money and the excellent gaming experience is, so I'm wondering back in 1982 if in that 1.2 billion was arcade games which also count as "total game sales". I feel the book is using some fuzzy numbering on this one, attempting to give more credit to computer game sales than actually took place.
-Starting in 1977 with the Apple II, it represented a shift in the technological computing universe. Hobbyists with skills and money could create pretty good machines with enormous potential for use and for making a profit. IBM got in the game a bit late in 1981, but it was still early in terms of the products circulation for at that time, not many people had one of these PCs.
-This reading was about the PC and the rise of the desktop and later laptop computing. What we have today is all due to the creation of the CPU by Intel and a man named Ted Hoff.
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