WiFi

I think the biggest implications of wireless technology for communication scholars is that it allows people to communicate from anywhere. In the past you would have to basically be with the person to communicate or at best write a letter. Then the telegraph changed things so that as long as each of you had a machine you could communicate with one another. Then the telephone, then the internet, etc. But one thing was in common. You had to be connected by a wire. Cellular technology gave people the ability to call one another from anywhere (within reason considering a tower was necessary) and now the internet and text messaging and video and all kinds of other ways of communicationg are being tacked onto this wirless technology. It's really amazing that no matter where someone is they can talk with someone else. There really is no escape anymore. At any moment somebody can contact you. It's rather unnerving.

Open source

Communications scholars need to pay attention to the open source software movement because it represents a growing aspect of the software industry. More and more people are becoming unhappy with having to pay high prices for software only because they have no other option. With a free interface and software developed for it then the consumer is offered an alternative to the corporate software. Why pay 400 bucks for photoshop when you can use Gimp or some other free software? Throw in the fact that so many people are so fed up with high fees that they download or steal the software illegaly. If the prices were lowered then people may be more willing to pay for a legal version. Consumers can only be taken advantage of for so long before they find another way.

Electronic Voting

I'm not sure that these articles really changed my perception of electronic voting, but they did make me more aware of the situation. The real issue to me was raised in the 2nd article. The United States needs to form some sort of overall election standard that all the states can agree on. Once there is a universal standard then strange things like the random alphabet of California can be fixed. Once these issues are straightened out a more specialized electronic voting machine could be created that addressed the concern of the 3rd article that the machines were too complex. My last issue on the machines is that to me electronic and computer based devices always run the risk of being hacked. While it's not impossible to tamper with paper ballots it is time consuming. With an electronic voting machine you could alter hundereds or thousands of votes with a mere click. That's what worries me most about electronic voting. The ease and usablitly is a clear plus over the old method.

Anlog

This weeks reading pretty much just bothered me. The author seemed to be making the claim that we as humans aren't quite fit for a digital world. The reason seems to be that humans are adapting and flexible while computers and digital media are exact and unbending. I don't see the point. To me if humans are able to adapt to other things why are they not able to adapt to digital media and a digital world. Just because the technology is precise doesn't mean that we can't use it to in ways that fit our lives. To me this was just a completely annoying reading that didn't fit my perception of humans or digital technology.

Newspapers

I initially agreed with the authors theory that more and more people are forgetting about traditional print media in the face of the internet and television news. However, I was shocked to see that around 90% of people still claim to read the daily newspaper. I for one do not subscribe to the Seattle PI or the Seattle Times and do not feel like there is anything available in these 2 newspapers that I could not obtain either online or from TV. While the authors theory that more national news is available then local news seems valid, as a reader I am able to search out information from local papers on the internet as well. I can find out what is happening in Spokane, Seattle, or even Los Angeles or San Francisco. All of this is available at (normally) no cost to the user and is quicker and easier then searching through newspaper archives. The newspaper may not be phased out soon but it is constant danger of being unnecessary.

Information

I think that the more information that is available the better. The problem with this then becomes how you access it. I can see the problem that the authors mention in that more and more information means less accurate retrieval of it. With personal webpages being easier to create it becomes more and more difficult to find who is telling the truth based on facts and who is offering their opinion. Thus, people need to be more trained in how to find accurate reliable information. Google search tips help narrow down results, using respected and recognized sites to find information weeds out inaccuracies. It just becomes a matter of knowing where to find the right information. This can somtimes limit the types of people that have access to the information. For example, my mom couldn't find cnn if she got on the computer. So, we are in effect creating a world where computers are very very necessary to succeed and be educated. We're not totally reliant on them but to excell it's almost a must have. Other road blocks inclued pay sites, sites with limited membership, and other weeding out factors. Almost anything can be found (which is a good thing) but you just need to know how.

I never would have guessed how many computers it took to do a simple email. Simple minded as I am I always just assumed 2 or 3. 1 to send 1 to recieve and maybe one to host the process. But 70? Good night moon. I don't exactly understand why the information needs to be sent all around the world however. It seems as if it would be simpler to just have different routers or servers that would be set up in then country of origin to make the process simpler and cut out 60 or so computers. Maybe I'm just not thinking big enough.
I also was pretty surprised to see that all of the information gets cut up and sent out then comes back to a computer which pieces it together. It makes sense that the information would need to be cut down in size to be sent out but it also seems to leave alot of room for error if the information doesn't come in completely. It's like the new bit torrent stuff where little bits of information are sent to the computer all at one time from many different users and pieced together. If every bit isn't there the file is corrupt. I wonder why that doesn't happen more often with emails, what with all the different computers sending the info.