Week 4 -- 25 October - Diffusion of Innovation
Reading:
"Technologies of the Third Mediamorphosis," by Roger Fidler (eReserve)
"As We May Think," by Vannevar Bush from The Atlantic Monthly, July 1945.
Assignment:
Discuss the effects of applying computing power to communication. What might Bush forecast today, if he were looking to 2050?
Computing power to communication ~ Fidler relays the history of a variety of communication technology over time. Once a world before computers, communication is now connected to computing power. Communication is instantaneous and no longer blocked by geographic barrier. The effects he sees are “powerful agents of technological change…a profound influence upon nearly every individual, society and culture…Human notions of distance, time, and reality itself have been radically altered by the new forms of media that have only recently emerged and diffused throughout the world” (107). Is McLuhan’s global village coming to life, getting rid of our isolation-independent past and bringing us more together? Maybe not a communal village but instead exists a concept of world-wide mass media and connection on demand. In an online world computing power connects us everywhere - in work, school, home and all the domains of human life.
Bush forecasts 2050 ~ Using both imagination and scientific knowledge, Bush was a visionary psychic. He talked about versions of digital cameras and computers before their time. If looking toward the next 50 years he would likely forecast more uses of scientific capabilities that help keep records faster, smaller, and more accessible to the human...something the size of a peanut that has all the capabilities of a man’s brain? He might advocate or attempt to inspire more valued everyday uses for war technologies. By speculating new supervening necessities and predicting unintended consequences Bush would inadvertently name the next “Information Revolution.”
As long as someone can imagine it, the future of communication and computing power is unlimited…to be continued…2050.
posted by Stephanie Wilder at
12:10 AM
1 Comments:
When mention about the human's brain, it reminds me that I discussed with my brother that whether robot can think like human or not. After 50 years, I think we can imagine many things in the SF movies and that looks really great. The development of technology is too fast to predict, and it is much faster than 50 years ago. So maybe what we predict now could be completed in next 20 years. And how about 50 years later......I think Bush might grab the trend and forecast it more precisely.
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