Topic 4: Old Communication Technologies & Theories

LECTURE: Old communication technologies and theories
Summary of lecture notes because there were so many…

History of communication:

Evolutionary bases of communication- 40,000 yrs ago human’s experienced anatomical evolution that gave better control over spoken sounds along with facial expressions.

Tribal Practices- consisting of costumes, paintings, dances, stories and songs that represent deeper mythological meanings, e.g. rock art

The origin of the alphabet- Writing has been around since 8-6 000BC including hieroglyphics in Egypt. Ugarit compiled the first alphabet in 1500 BC

Ancient text written by scribes first came from the Middle East, India and Europe where books were created and the first libraries came about Print then developed earlier in China but in 1452 Gutenberg printed the bible in Germany.

Telegraphy came about in 1837 by Samuel Morse

Telephone in1876 by Alexander Graham Bell

Phonograph in 1876 by Thomas Edison

Radio in 1895 Marconi invented wireless telegraphy initially carries Morse code. In 1930’s radio was modified and the radio industry was established. Australian radio broadcast pioneered by ABC.

Cinema- 19^th century inventors developed photography; the Lumiere brothers (among others) created an early form of cinema. The first full length feature movie was produced I Australia.

Television- In 1926 John Logie Baird first demonstrated television it was then marketed in the late 1930’s, though due to WW2 it wasn’t till 1940’s that T.V gained mass market in USA.

T.V first came to Australia in Sydney and Melbourne in 1956.

Video- Was first introduced in 1976 with the use of VHS this was challenged unsuccessfully by the Betamax system then challenged successfully by the introduction of DVD in 1997. DVD then overtook VHS in 2002.

Semiotics- The 20^th century saw a Massive increase in communication technologies.

Elements of a semiotic approach:

Semantics: The relationship of signs to what they stand for

Syntactic: The formal or structural relations between signs.
Pragmatics: The relation of signs to interpreters.
Reading: Walter Benjamin’s “The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction.”

Reading: walter Benjamin

Walter Benjamin's article 'The Work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction' written in 1936 discusses the way artwork is reproduced by man and the way technology has evolved has influenced the way man reproduces art. Benjamin also discusses how arts authenticity can diminish with the constant reproduction and how an artworks ‘aura’ diminishes due to mechanical reproduction. With the invention of photography and the influence it had on art being designed for reproducibility and wether photography was even considered and art. Then the development of film and how it was seen to represent an incomparable means of expression, and the way it changed acting in particularly the way stage acting’s ‘aura’ was changed by the use of flim.

It is a very long article and very hard to read and take in but i did find it interesting when I reminded myself it was written in 1936.

Tutorial Task 4: Questions
1. Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?

Onel de Guzman age 24, from the Philippines

www.altavista.com http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/29/philippines.lovebug.02/index.html

2. Who invented the paper clip?
Norwegian - Johan Vaaler invented the paperclip in 1899
www.yahoo.com

3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
Ebola virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in Africa
www.webcrawler.com
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/Spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola/qa.htm

4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
Chile, South America in 1960, 9.5 on Richter scale
www.aol.com
http://www.extremescience.com/GreatestEarthquake.htm

5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
1,073,741,824
www.answers.com
http://www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/

6. Who is the creator of email?
Ray Tomlinson in 1971
www.20search.com
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/entdev/article.php/1408411

7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?
W32.Storm.Worm is a worm that seeks out Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS) systems that have not applied the proper security patches. Any such systems that it finds are then infected with the worm. The payload of this worm performs a denial-of-service attack on http:/ /www.microsoft.com
Infected approximately one million and 50 million computers worldwide
www.ask.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2007/oct/21/1

8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly,
what is the most efficient way?
www.msn.com
http://www.pm.gov.au/contact/index.cfm
If you go to this website u can email the prime minister or mail him on this address which is also on the site.
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
Prime Minister
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600

9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School
of Arts) a member of?

10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
I have never heard of the term before but I just looked it up and its to do with using the web as a platform.