Week 3 - Lecture Response and Tute*Spark

Hi,

This weeks lecture learnt about the history of computers and the internet, focusing on digital and analogue technologies. Old fashion cash registers were one of the first forms of digital technology, which was something I never knew before.

The computer itself originated in 'counting machines' or calculators. In the lecture we were told how there were computers as big as the lecture theatre and they wouldn't even have the power of todays average wrist watch.

I never knew before that the World Wide Web only emerged in the 90's, it's been around as long as I remember! I never knew that the internet and the 'web' are two different things. It kind of confused me but one part of the lecture notes cleared it up:

"...we don't see MSN messages in our browser. They're both seperate parts of the same underlying internet.''

In the lecture we were shown a video made by Apple in the 70's. It was a basic, slow loading, dancing man. I could believe in 40 years our technology has developed so much!

Computers have totally changed the way we view films. We can now go on youtube and view trailers and parts from films, or go to webpages like www.sidereel.com to watch TV shows and whole films. We can also use things like Limewire and Kazaar to download films.

That pretty much sums up the lecture for this week for me. A lot of it went over my head, I'm not very computer smart! Hopefully reading all the links available on Learning@Griffith will help me understand better.

This weeks Tute*Spark was to find three examples of digital devices that aren't electronic.

The first thing I came across is the Digital Mechanical Combination Push Button Lock, usually found in retail stores and office buildings. An image example can be found here: http://ep.yimg.cin/ca/I/853111_2115_303479

The second non-electronic digital device I found were smoke signals, because "an analog "carrier" (smoke) is modulated with a blanket to generate a digital signal (puffs) that convey information." (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Digital)

The third non-electronic digital device I found was morse code, which "uses five digital states - dot, dash, short gap (between each letter), medium gap (between words) and long gap (between sentences)" (http://www.wordiq.com/definition/Digital). It can be electronic communication if I used an electrical telegraph, however it isn't electrical if I knock on a wall to a person on the other side.

That's my response to this weeks Tute*Spark, thanks for reading!

Emily