Media, Computers and Society: Community Kathy E. Gill 1 November 2004

Overview Guest Speaker – Marc Smith Discussion Leaders Computing technology and Networks

Discussion – Questions Why community? How do technologies impact community formation, maintenance?

Changing Role of Info away from a view of knowledge as fixed, universal, and easily generalized, toward a view of knowledge as shifting, dynamic, local, and provisional How does this impact our need/desire for community?

Discussion – Peer Group 2 Armin Belinda Renata Jeremy

First Commercial Computers 1951 : 1 st Computer Sold to U.S. Bureau of Census - UNIVAC I 1954 : 1st Computer Sold to Private Corp., General Electric Company - UNIVAC I

Sperry Rand Now Unisys In 1968 you could pick up a 1.3 MHz CPU with half a megabyte of RAM and 100 megabyte hard drive for US$1.6 million. Oh, and you want a printer too...? [UNIVAC Prices]UNIVAC Prices Case 1107 (circa 1960) Case 1107

Recent History (1/5) 1957 : FORTRAN 1 st high-level programming language 1959 : COBOL Common Business Oriented Language 1961 : John F. Kennedy, Space Program

Recent History (2/5) 1964 : BASIC Beginners All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code 1975 : Bill Gates & Paul Allen, Microsoft 1976 : Steve Jobs & Steve Wozniack, Apple 1977 : Commodore “PET” computer

Recent History (3/5) 1979 : 1 st “killer app” 1st Electronic Spreadsheet – VisiCalc What is “killer app” in Winston’s context? 1980 : PC DOS 1981 : IBM - PC 1983 : Apple Macintosh Computer (GUI)

Recent History (4/5) 1984 : Laser Printers for PCs High quality affordable printing 1984 : CD-ROMS 1990s : Communications & Multimedia Audio Video Internet - WWW Browsers

Recent History (5/5) 21 st century? Peer-to-peer networks Miniaturization continues DRM DVD (burning) Time-shifting (Tivo, RePlay) Satellite radio

Categories of Computers Mainframes and PCs that run application software Embedded chips that control machines

Computing technology advances at exponential rates Memory capacity quadruples every 3 years Processor speed doubles every 3 years Number of hosts doubles every year Chip transistor densities double every 18 months at constant prices (Moore’s Law)

Computers and Networks Facilitate Concentration of knowledge and control Distribution of knowledge and control Have the power to Amass and analyze enormous volumes of data Process data at enormous rates for real systems and simulations

Computers and Networks Challenge: Constitutional definitions Social structures Lifestyle options None more challenging than “the Net”

Internet History Rand Corporation Plan for dealing with military and government communications… in the event of a “NUCLEAR WAR”

National Network with No Central Authority

ARPANET (Rand, MIT, UCLA) 1969 : 1st node on the Internet 1971 : 15 nodes 1982 : TCP/IP

Picking Up Speed 1987 : Apple’s Hypertext 1991 : Tim Berners-Lee at European Particle Physics Laboratory in Geneva conceived the World Wide Web 1993 : National Center for Supercomputing Applications [NCSA] - University of Illinois created a WWW browser named Mosiac

Faster... faster... faster April 94 : Mosaic Communications [Clark & Andreesen] Oct 94 : Netscape Beta Released Nov 94 : Mosaic Co ==> Netscape Aug 9, 1995 : Netscape IPO

Internet Hosts 1971 : : : 1, : 313, : 3,864, : 9,472, : 171,638, t_countries t_countries

What is a Host (aka Server)? A computer running software that allows it to provide (serve) documents via the WWW. The computer is assigned an IP address and connected to the InternetIP address Internet Somewhat analogous to the “printer” of a print document.

Parts of a Society Education Transportation Private Sector Business Government Entertainment Housing Currency (banking) Jobs Space Medicine Anything else?

The Net and Society In recent years this one area has affected society more than any other How? What are the issues?