Interface Culture: Week 8 Discussion Questions

The direction for the future advancement of communication media.

The method of communication is moving toward more advanced graphic communication and electronic transmission. Devices such as computers, mobile phones and pads are constantly adapting to our lifestyles and environment. The future of these devices are only limited to our capacity to change the world. The method of communicating through the web has changed the way we use books, newspapers, magazines, ads, and other resources. The internet is the most important information exchange, and has become the core of our communication environment for social and human interaction. The internet is evolving and providing more advancements in technology for mobile phones, social media sites, and video broadcasting.

One thing for sure is that the mobile phone is becoming cheaper and a more useful in our everyday lives. More applications are being created so that we can easily bounce back and forth from our computer usage to phone usage. So the future of the apps continue to be graphically designed in a creative way to help enhance the user experience. Graphic communications are becoming more and more advanced with the use of passing information via these devices. Most of the apps are designed for the visual appeal and ease of use. The mobile phone is increasingly evolving to accommodate our lifestyles. Another feature for the future apps would be the increasing use of voice-enabled applications to help make using the mobile phone more user friendly. With voice enhancements we have the ability to use the phone hands free and allow the user to have more flexibility while using the phone.

As more people depend on the mobile for interaction through social media applications will evolve to accommodate more networking sites. The activity among social networking is happening around the world and people use it for communicating to friends and family, uploading music, and placing ads. And therefore, the future of the social media is becoming more personal and portable with the use of mobile phones and personal computers. Pretty soon social media will substantially reduce communication through emails and your email address may soon become your personal social profile and may very well be used as your internet address.

Video broadcasting ever since YouTube people have communicated through video excessively online. The future for communicating with video through personal media devices will become widespread as video production tools become more affordable and the web more accommodating by making it easier to upload and share videos in seconds instead of minutes.

We can acknowledge that the use of mobile phones, social media sites, and video broadcasting has changed the way we communicate and these devices will continue to impact the future of our culture and communication media.

Interface Culture: Week 7 Discussion Questions

Chapter 1 – Bitmapping

1. In 1968 Douglas Englebart introduced “direct manipulation” of data. How was this different than how data was interacted with before?

The mouse was easier to use because you can interact directly with the computer files by pointing and selecting an object and then execute an action on that object.With the mouse you could directly interact with the computer and move anywhere on the screen. It made guiding through the computer easier. Before the mouse interaction with the computer was impossible. The computer before was just used with a keyboard so it was basically used to type documents.

2. By creating an “information space,” how did Englebart’s advancement change the way people thought about machines/computers? In what ways did it lead the way not only to interfaces as we think of them today but virtual spaces and augmented reality?

Douglas Engelbart changed the way computers worked, from specialized machinery that only a trained scientist could use, to a user-friendly tool that almost anyone can use. He also created the bitmapped screen which allowed the user to actually see pictures, files and folders on the computer.

Chapter 2 – The Desktop

3.As discussed in Chapter 2, describe some of the advancements that took place at Xerox PARC, the people involved and what they contributed.

3. The scientists of Xerox’s PARC made various improvements to the prototype desktop interface that Englebart had introduced several years earlier. Alan Kay, for example, introduced the concept of desktop windows stacking on top of one another, which allowed them to utilize the full width and height of the screen without competing for space with other open applications. This stacking of windows, compared to the stacking of boxes on a table, which gave rise to the modern metaphor of the desktop. This one “stacked boxes” metaphor soon gave way to others, such as working with “files” and discarding things in the “trash can”, that made the use of a computer more approachable to those used to working with actual boxes and trash bins. And while Xerox’s own operating system and computer never took hold, their desktop metaphors remain an integral part of using a personal computer today.

4. Memex is an information processor that enables a user to “thread through” massive repositories of data. Vannevar’s Bush Memex is a hypertext engine. The way we communicate on the internet through hyperterxt language.

Week 6 Questions

Chapter 9: Survival of the Media Fit

1. What were the years before T.V. Like for radio? What types of content was provided?

Before television most companies were advertised by radio broadcast. Celebrities relied a great deal on getting there music out there through this media medium. Radio was the largest medium of its time for showcasing anything live.

2. Explain the economic impact of T.V. On radio.

Television did all the same things that radio did only better. It was a lot more profitable for advertising movies and comericials.

3. What is the economic model for both radio and T.V.?

The economic model for radio and television is providing the audience with entertainment, news, and information about whats happening in the world.

4. In the brief description of film history, Levinson discusses the work of D.W. Griffith, Sergi Eisenstein, and Lev Kuleshov. What methods did they use to help develop a visual vocabulary for film?

5. Technology alone was not the sole savior of radio. Explain the roll of Rock and Roll in radio's transformation.

Rock n' Roll was the radios savior. Back in the 1940's when technology gained capacity not only to record musical performance, but improve them in the recording process. Sound could now be the same as listening to a concert live versus listening to it through the radio. Rock n' Roll was new and hip and was greatly accepted by young teens which brought a larger audience to listening to the radio more.

6. “Talkies”, replaced silent films entirely, but T.V. Did not replace radio, why?

Radio survived because it trumped its competition from the very beginning it satisfied, approximated, literally spoke to, a basic pattern of human communication.

Chapter 10: Remedial Media

7. In your own words describe Levinson's parable of the window shade as remedial media.

The level of noise in the final iteration can be so low that the case for further remediation is effectively closed.

8. Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of the VCR as a remedial medium.

Advantages

• The VCR gave viewers of television a mechanism for both retrieval and anticipation of programming .

Disadvantages

• Television advertisers paid money to television networds and stations for potential viewers of their ads, they had no way of knowing if a human being or a video recorder was at the recieving end, and if a video recorder, if the people who later watched it did not "fast forward" right past all the commercials making television advertisers loose audience and possible revenue.

Week 4 Discussion Questions

Chapter 5: Telegraphy

1. What are telegraphy's strengths as a medium? How do these compare to the then existing media forms?

The telegraph's strengths as a medium was the ability to send messages instantly to anyone in the world. The telegraph made it easier to communicate with people from great distances. This medium is just an earlier invention that contributed to the idea of the telephone. Which also stemed to the invention of other forms of communication like mail, email, and other ways of conversing with people across the world.

2. What are some of the reasons that telegraphy was so distrusted?

The reason telegraphy was so distrusted was because at that time this medium had the ability to commuicate in such a speed that no one could even imagine. Who knows what information could have got lost in the transfer of this data. Who knows who was also receiving such private information. In someways it was a big risk to take with communicating information. Information that could have been altered in the process or not even received by the receiver they're many variables.

3. Levinson discusses the introduction of “noise” into our various systems media forms. Explain what he means by “noise” in the system and discuss some examples of media systems and the way “noise” is introduced.

Levinson talks about how noise is being introduced in some media forms and the possibility information being lost between representation and original in the system. Dolby sound systems provide clearer, if less "punchy", sound. But concern over possible loss of meaning in one form or another.

4. What roles did the telegraph play in increasing more immediate/instantaneous public awareness of events around the world? How did the press evolve with the use of the telegraph?

The invention of the telegraph made it easier to not only deliver but aware the public about important news going on around the world in a timely matter. The telegraph provided a more close connection with what was happening across the public. It kept the public alert and updated on events going on around the world. The press certainly became more established with the use of the telegraph which gave birth to telegraph companies, And through years at a time information dispersed from the company became trusted.

Chapter 6: Telephone

5. In your own words, Explain and describe Levinson's term “anthropotropic”.

Technologies work better when they respect the nature of the human body and the human mind. Alternatively, as media evolve they replicate human characteristics, behavior and/or adapt to them.

6. Why hasn't video phone taken off ? What is Levinson's stance on the video phone? Would/do you use a video phone? Explain your answers fully.

The video phone hasnt taken off because there is to little to no sign of demand for it. Levinson's stance on it is that the video phone has yet to provide an alternative to the telephone in the way that television has for radio. Meaning the video phone has yet to come up with a better way to communicate. I dont use a video phone.

7. What is the telephone's main strengths over any other existing forms of media? What power does the telephone have over people?

The telephone not only has informational access to out homes, but extraordinary purchase on our attention.

8. Explain what Levinson means by “remedial media.” Give an example of a remedial media that was developed recently in communication media.

Remedial media is how humans can rationally design technologies to reduce problems of other technologies.

9. Levinson describes how the telephone promotes a level of intrusion beyond other media. Does this still hold true? In what ways has telephone technology been adapted since Levinson wrote this to reduce or increase this intrusion?

Yes this still holds true cause the telephone is what we use to connect so its like we rely on the telephone so much that it dictates our actions. Its the one interuption that is hard to avoid. We use the telephone for sexual activities, we use it to ease drop on conversations, we use it to access all kinds of hidden information.

Week 3 Discussion Questions

Preface – Chapter 3: The Printed Authorship of the Modern World

1. Why does Levinson propose that printing in Europe had more impact than China?

Gutenburg and earlier developers of the press in the West of course had no such ideographic barriers, working with an alphabet whose twenty-six different letter - in contrast to the Chinese 20,000 - were already interchangeable in their representation of a potentially infinite number of words, and thus could not have been better suited to the workings of the press interchangeable type. The Phoenician invention thus had one last unintended consequence, certainly among the biggest: It made the press possible as a vehicle for mass production of text. The wine press already in use n Europe had interchangeable parts; it was Gutenberg et al.'s genuis to see how this could apply to letters - to meld the grape press and the Chinese printing press into a press of mass media.

2. Martin Luther thought that people should read the bible themselves rather than rely upon the clergy. Would Luther’s “Ninety-five Theses” have had the same impact in 1517 if Gutenberg had not started printing bibles 50 years earlier? Explain.

Luther's "Ninety-five Theses" wouldn't have had the same impact on society because the "word" of the printed bible wouldn't have been so easy to come by because they weren't printed copies yet. So the society wouldn't have the luxury of reading the word for themselves versus hearing it from a pastor where the pastor could be possibly be preaching the "word" on how he understands it versus you reading the bible and getting your own understanding from it.

3. Describe how books were reproduced before the printing press and by whom. Describe how this changed after development of the printing press.

Books were reproduced by spoken word as a conveyor of its memes to the larger culture. This changed after the development of the printing press cause it provided descriptions in black and white that could be counted on, and banked upon.

4. Why does Levinson propose that the Norse exploration of the New World did not create more impact? Contrast this with how Columbus' reports of the New World fueled the “Age of Discovery”.

The Norse expeditions invited only a limited number of other Norse voyages. The Newfoundland foothold was never developed, and in a few hundred years even the Greenland settlements- on the eve, ironically, of Columbus disappeared. It was ahead of its medium. Medium they didn't have the printing press to make headlines to promote it at all it was mainly word of mouth and word of mouth didn't go that far at that time.

5. The distribution of books is not enough to spread knowledge. For the power of the book to be yielded there needs to be a literate public to access that knowledge. Discuss the role of literacy in building our modern world.

The power of reading and getting knowledge for yourself promotes advances in the world for each generation and the knowledge for our modern world. The role of literacy is greatly embraced and is fundamental of getting ahead in our society. If you don't have knowledge you lack power and therefore you lack intelligence.

6. A “meme” is an idea, behavior, style or usage that spreads from one person to another within a culture. For example, the fashion of platform shoes, the idea that the earth is the center of the galaxy, or “rickrolling”. How were cultural memes exchanged before printing? In what ways are they exchanged now?

Cultural memes were past down in the family from generation to generation to keep the future generation knowledgeable and up to date with cultural customs. They are exchanged the same ways now only now i addition with help of the social media.

Chapter 4: The Age of Photography and the Ageless Image

7. French film critic André Bazin stated that “Photography is free from the sin of subjectivity”. Explain what he meant by that statement. To what extent is this true?

If we subsitute "unreliability " for "subjectivity," we can easily see one high-profile component of the sin.

8. Levinson reminds us that each form of media is subject to inaccuracies; error can creep into our understanding because of the detachment from direct experience. Describe the ways in which photography can be perceived as an exact depiction of reality. Describe ways in which photography lies.

With a photograph you can see how exactly a scene is depict but it also has its downfalls whereas you don't know what caused the scene cause your not experiencing it for yourself. It is mearly a picture you can observe what you think is going on but you lack the knowledge of what is actually going on.

9. In 1839, French painter Paul Delaroche exclaimed, “From today on, painting is dead!” Consider painting at the time. To what extent was he right? Explain. What are some of the ways photography changed painting and art?

Photography change the efficency of quick you can see a scene versus painting it and it time it takes.