Communication 209 Exam 1 Study Guide Note This guide directs you to things that you should focus on in the course readings If an issue is not addressed in the study guide then it will not be appear on the exam Thurlow et al Fogg o Technology Broadly speaking technology is how people modify the natural world to suit their own purposes From the Greek word techne meaning art or artifce or craft technology literally means the act of making or crafting more generally it refers to the diverse collection of processes and knowledge that people use to extend human abilities and to satisfy human needs and wants International Technology Education Association in the US ITEA 2000 2 We are always surrounded by technology Two very important points to be made about such technological innovations o Over time they often come to be associated strongly with a single and traditionally male inventor Major developments in technology have found communication being mediated in a number of revolutionary ways such as Printing press Johannes Gutenberg Telegraph Samuel Morse Telephone Alexander Graham Bell Its largely immaterial that the telephone was initially intended as a practical technology for information exchange it seems that technology invariable buckles under the pressure of our human impulse to converse and socialize Television John Logie Baird o There is always a distinction to be drawn between what technologies are supposed to do the intentions and goals of the designers and inventors of different communication technologies and what people actually do with them based on ordinary people s needs and values 1 o Without a doubt we have all been catapulted into the so called Information Age through the relatively rapid digitization of just about every technology we have o Internet Global network connection millions of computers Using a number of agreed formats protocols users are able to transfer data or files from computer to the next o Originally the Internet was envisioned in the 1960 s by the US Department of Defense as means of securing information exchange in the event of nuclear war It later was taken up by academics to exchange information exchanging information about their research o One major application was exchanging and receiving emails it was taken up by users as a way of doing things social rather than things scientific o Convergence the coming together and or overlapping of different aspects of something o The Internet is not a single communication technology but rather a collection of different technologies for communicating o Web developed for information exchange in the 1990 s as a system of computer servers connected through the internet and which supports the exchange of files or webpages formatted mostly in a simple programming language known as HTML hypertext markup language With the help of browsers e g Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer these files can be translated from dull programing language plain text into colorful formatted webpages rich text and links can followed between documents by directing the browser to addresses other files on other computers elsewhere on the web o The internet and the web are NOT technically synonymous o The web is a technology within a technology the web is just a part of the Internet which also hosts the transfer of other types of documents or files such as emails and discussion group postings It cannot account for everything we do but it is unquestionably a major element in the larger system Currently the web is the most important and most dominant 2 component of the Internet o Genres of CMC technologies that are commonly studied text based genres of CMC which psychologists Patricia Wallace 1999 describes as the bread to butter of cyberspace These are all technologies within technologies which facilitate interaction To use spatial metaphors these are the places in cyberspace where people hangout together and the niches where they are sociable These are all technologies within technologies which facilitate interaction To use spatial metaphors these are the places in cyberspace where people hangout and the niches where they are sociable o Emails listservs and mailing lists and mailing lists o Newsgroups bulletin boards and blogs o Internet relay chat and instant messaging o Metaworlds and visual chat o Personal homepages and webcams o CMC is interested in the extent to which people simply bring existing ways of communicating to these new technologies of communication Those studying and learning about CMC want to know if and how communication is different its mediated by the Internet o Relationship between cyberspace and the real world Cyberspace is about the people who use the Internet and the different uses they put it to CMC scholar Steven Jones 1995 prefers to talk about cyber society which is a term perhaps describes better the way that communicated mediated by the Internet is all about social life people interactions relationships identities and communities Previously cyberspace was the exclusive domain of relatively few people In fact given the worldwide inequality of access to the Internet it still is Nowadays cyberspace is just an added dimension in the lives of many people The overlap between cyberspace and the real is so great that the differences between what s cyber and what s real are sometimes impossible to tell o Basic Theory Unit 1 what s been increasingly happening is that more and more people in the richer countries of the world have been coming online As a result the overlap between life online and life offline has been 3 getting greater and greater for many of us o Just as communication scholars see computer meditated communication as an extension of everyday communication for cultural critics cyber culture is merely another domain or expression of cultural life more generally it is intended to reflect their primary interest in the human social and creative aspects of internet use Diamond and Bates o What is ARPAnet The Advanced Research Project Agency ARPA was charged out in doing high tech research funds Among ARPA s first priorities were projects on command control and communication known among war planners as C3 The Defense Department wanted to use computers not only in the Pentagon but also in the field Bulky balky mainframes of the era were ill suited for the battlefield so ARPA sought a communications solution For signals sent from a battlefield terminal to reach a headquarters based computer they would have