Internet

Internet, a photo by hughes_tuj on Flickr.

One of our readings for class was The History of the Internet in a nutshell. We haven't discussed much about this reading in class yet, but I suppose that we will get to it very soon. This reading is quite interesting and gives bullet point facts on a timeline about the Internet.

The Internet has progressed so much within such a small amount of time. And with the Internet growing at such a fast pace, so has the media. Pop culture (Popular Culture) has so much variety nowadays because of how fast the media is able to collect so much information. Pop Culture is basically everything that the media and popular celebrities consider to be new trends of that time of year. What I mean by that is, last century's pop culture is different from this century and so on.

For example in the 70's Bob Marley was considered as part of Pop Culture. However nowadays not many people know him unless they grew up in the 70's. Of course though, people don't really follow what the media says...but if the media had certain popular celebrity faces on their ads or music videos, then it is easier for people to follow. And when people follow up on which celebrity does what to their hair, for example, that is what is considered as pop culture. And with the power of the Internet, pop culture is even more accessible.

Flying pigs in the Future?

Flying pig, a photo by hughes_tuj on Flickr.

Hello World! This is my very first blog post! I have decided that since this post is the first one, then like everything else, I would like to start it off with baby steps. In class, we had a very interesting yet difficult reading which was Vannevar Bush's "As we may think". And I say difficult as in the language and vocabulary was a bit of a challenge. I beleive it was a challenge because of the era it was in, which is 1945. And that is about 2 generations apart from the college students of 2011. In class we hit so many different points. We talked about the stone Adze, Selection by association, Index, Ratheon, The era during 1945, Dwight Eisenhower,

 Military Industrial Complex, Ted Nelson, Doug Engelbart, the Memmex or the theory to the modern day computer.

I feel that we got to so many points...But out of all those points this is one point that I could discuss more about and fully understand:

Communication Loss and Limits

It was about how we have done so much research, but yet for example, "Mendel's concept of the laws of genetics was lost to the world for a generation because his publication did not reach the few who were capable of grasping and extending it; and this sort of catastrophe is undoubtedly being repeated all about us, as truly significant attainments become lost in the mass of the inconsequential." (pg.4)

So to explain, out of all the time that Mendel put into his research, it was lost for a good amount of time because no one could further his research. And even though we have a record, the publication is far beyond their present day knowledge of research to put it into good use. I believe some people could comprehend or relate to that....

I mean sure we could want flying cars or hey, it might be interesting to see a flying pig just to prove some people wrong :D But our imagination can only be put into reality depending on what is provided now, through research. But not only research, because we also need tools. The tools that we need though, have not been invented yet. So maybe 40 years from now we might see flying pigs ;)