Increasing Dependency on Technology

Overview - New Media Cultures

2008-01-07T19:30:50+01:00

In contrast to my essay which contains theoretical debates, my blog attempts to deal with current issues in a slightly light hearted manner. The idea of analysing the development of the mobile phone and personal media players, as they should now be called, is to illustrate just how quickly the world we live in has transformed. The idea of contrasting the average day of a student today and 30 years ago was to demonstrate to what extent we rely on and use technology today. We rely so heavily on our mobile phones that it is difficult to imagine how we lived without them. The most significant change in the last 30 years is that today media technologies have followed us out of the home. If our phone isn’t in our pocket our iPod is playing music. If we are away from our desktop computer, we are sat on a train surfing the internet on a laptop. Technology has allowed platforms to become smaller, lighter, cheaper and in terms of computers, much faster. The evolution of technologies has had a massive impact on every form of culture which you can imagine. Anyone can now discuss their hobbies and interests on the internet and share ideas on any subject someone finds interesting. The recent success of websites such as facebook and myspace show how easily it now is to be creative and express yourself to a wide audience.

I have merely scratched the surface of the issues surrounding the module. I think that the issue of increasing dependency on media technology is central to the all elements of the course. Although the work of Stelarc may appear far fetched, there are elements of his work which mirror genuine likely developments. Much of his work focuses on how the human body has become obsolete in light of fantastic new technological advances. For more on Stelarc go to www.stelarc.va.com/au

On a smaller scale to Stelarc having an ear implanted to his arm, there are a number of ways in which humans are likely to ‘evolve’ in the future. It has been suggested that people will have microchips implanted which store credit data so they will need not carry a credit card with them. If this still sounds unfeasible, consider this – around 70 Americans have been implanted with a microchip to help identify them if they become lost and confused. Has the human body become so obsolete that we need the help of a microchip to identify us? A scary thought but one to look out for!

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A day in the life of a student continued

2008-01-07T12:07:39+01:00

The two average student days described earlier were obviously imaginary yet to get an idea of the difference I tried to fit in all the media technology available 30 years ago. I find it hard to believe that my parents actually sat on the park with friends listening to pirate stations on a transistor radio; I think they were being a tad nostalgic. I often ask ‘How did you manage to socialise without a mobile phone?’ and they assure me that at times they would write letters arranging certain events. My dad received a pocket calculator for Christmas in 1974 and he was the first in his school to have one, within 25 years, mobile phones would include them as standard. The major difference between the hypothetical day in 1977 and in 2007 is that technology is significantly more mobile and accessible to more people today due to it being increasingly small and cheap. For instance all but one of my housemates has a TV in their room, whereas in 1977 students would go to the students union to watch something on TV if they didn’t have one. People often listen to music to pass time today or eliminate boredom. In the past people would be more likely to go out of their way to listen to their music e.g. by spending time in their room listening to records. I am not saying that people no longer relax by listening to music but there are much more opportunities to listen to music today and people spend less time listening to music alone in their bedroom. Technology has allowed a number of typical student activities become more practical. For instance a student today can easily use a voice recorder in lectures to go back to and take further notes from. When typing up an essay today, a student can erase mistakes with the touch of button whereas in the past, students would have to go through the process of amending mistakes with tip-ex. As well as this, most students had their own dictionaries from which to check spellings they were unsure of. Again using my housemates as an example, only two of us have bought dictionaries. To edit spelling and grammar one can simply hit a button and allow the computer to do it for us. This raises the question of whether or not students today are becoming less intelligent because of it. Do the various advantages of the 21^st century student make for a less qualified, lazier individual? With lecture notes available online, are students as likely to turn up for a lecture knowing that if they miss it they can still access the notes? It has just occurred to me that I didn’t even mention the internet in the hypothetical day in 2007. This is probably because I have become so accustomed to it and simply take it for granted. The internet is a wonderful tool for students however again, does this advantage in some ways actually serve a negative side affect. Whilst a student would spend hours in the library trawling through information in 1977, a quick Google search can access similar information in seconds. This can be negative because students do considerably less reading than in the past and are learning less as a result of this. The internet, for all its fantastic advantages is all too often badly misused. With surveillance society one of the core concepts of the module, the debate surrounding monitoring of the internet is one which is likely to continue for the foreseeable future. This is one of a number of examples which shows how technology can have both positive and negative impacts. There are probably thousands of pieces of work handed in to schools, colleges and universities every year which contain American spellings of words because many computers (including the one I am typing this up on in Pandon building) have an U.S version of spell-check. One thing is clear however, there is little doubt that students of the 1970’s would have any hesitation in using the technology available today to aid their studies. Computers and the internet have made studying a much quicker process. It is somewhat amusing to look back on television and film representations in the 1970’s of the future as I am yet to see anyone wearing silver clothes or having a meal in pill form.

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The Rise of Mobile Phones

2008-01-07T01:35:30+01:00

The Rise of the Mobile Phone

Although companies such as Motorola can trace back mobile phone calls to the early 1970’s it is only within the last 15 years that the mobile phone has become somewhat of a necessity in many societies across the globe. One of my earlier recollections of the mobile phone was in an earlier episode of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air. On getting a new job, Will brags to his family and the audience that he has been given a mobile phone from his boss. This bombshell was greeted by disbelief by Uncle Phil and co whilst the audience cheered and whooped this amazing piece of technology that he had acquired. In the early 1990’s, owning a mobile phone guaranteed you status. You were rich, a high flier and fashionable. Today spotty 12 year old kids own about three each. My 74 year old grandmother, Rhoda, owns one. She topped up £10 in 2002 and currently has £6.60 credit, most of which was no doubt wasted checking her balance anyway. Mobile Phones are easily replaced and recycled. Most 12 month contracts come with the promise of a new handset every year. In the 1960’s, if your television broke, you would send it off to get fixed. Today you would buy a new one without batting an eye lid and the same is of the mobile. I wouldn’t mind guessing that close to 100% of students at this university own a mobile, particularly when considering how often they go off in lectures. People regularly lose their phone, have it stolen or quite regularly break by dropping down the toilet on a night out. Over 4000 GCSE students are penalised per year for malpractice regarding the mobile phone, most commonly sneaking it into an exam room. By 2003, 90% of 15 to 34 year olds owned a mobile phone. As with the page on personal music players, I will brief chart the progress of the mobile phone since it became commercialised in the late 1970’s.

1973: Motorola show off a prototype of the world’s first mobile phone. It weighed close to a kilogram and was over a foot long. It cost over £2000
1982: Nokia introduce the first in a long and successful line of mobile phones. It weighed twice as much three average sized babies and was designed for use inside a car
1983: The Motorola DynaTAC 8000X becomes commercially available and can store a whopping 30 numbers and boasted a cool one hour talk time
1993: IBM and Bellsouth launch the Personal Communicator which was a phone, a pager, calculator and address book. It was a beast and weighed close to a kilogram
1996: Motorola StarTAC is launched. The phone is small, attractive and light. Phones are increasingly concerned with fashion over function from this point.
2001: First ‘Smart Phone’ launched by Treo. It cost over £200 and had 8MB of memory
2002: Sanyo introduced first camera phone. The image quality is laughable compared to today. With 640 by 480, photos looked more like drawings
2003: Danger Hiptop released and offered functional web browsing for the first time
2003: Nokia go a step further than ‘Snake’ and ‘Bantumi’ when it offered the N-GAGE series which was a phone/gaming device. The idea failed to take off and was badly criticised
2004: The Motorola Razr was the must have handset of the year with its extremely slim and modern design
2005: Motorola incorporate Apples music software with the Rokr. Although limited to 100 songs and criticised for being slow to transfer material the phone represents just how far mobile technology had gone within a five years and was state of the art at the time
2006: The BlackBerry Pearl boasts a camera/video camera, audio/video player, quality email and all the standard features of other handsets
2007: iPhone launched in summer and does not include a numeric keypad. Has the phone set a trend? It is hard to say for sure but we are likely to find out very quickly such is the competitive nature of the market and vast technological improvements which allow such developments

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The Rise of Portable Music Players

2008-01-07T00:55:23+01:00

Personal Music Players

The two hypothetical days illustrate how much new media cultures have become part of our lives. By charting the development of the mobile phone and portable audio players it is clear that technological advances have made both as much a part of 21^st century life as television. Over time technology allowed personal media tools such as the mobile to become available to a much wider audience. The first portable personal stereo audio cassette player was invented as early as 1972 but it wasn’t until 1979 that they became universally available when Sony launched its Walkman series. Over the next 30 years the Walkman has changed significantly and is Sony’s latest offering is unrecognisable compared to its great grandfather, the original Walkman TPS-L2.

· 1979: Sony launch their first Walkman, the TPS-L2

· 1984: Walkman Pro goes on sale, it has high quality personal recording capabilities

· 1984: Sony launch the Discman, a CD based system. The name has since been dropped and Sony now market all personal music and video players under the name Walkman

· 1990’s: The cassette based walkman was gradually becoming phased out thanks to emerging digital technology such as the CD and Minidisc

· 2003: Sony launches the Network Walkman which relies on flash memory to hold and store data. Over the years the Walkman has become smaller, cheaper and with improved memory, capable of holding more songs

· 2000’s: iPod becomes the leading portable media player producer, selling 120 million units since 2002.

· Sony mobile phones now come with music players as standard. In response, apple release the iPhone or iPod touch

The Rise and Rise of the Apple iPod

· 2001: Apple unveils iPod. The first model comes with a 5 GB hard drive and will put ‘1000 songs in your pocket’

· 2002: The famous touch sensitive technology becomes available and the capacity is increased to up to 20 GB

· 2003: iPod classic memory now boosted to 60 GB which equates to over 10,000 tracks

· 2004: First colour iPod mini. Click wheel used now by mini and classic. Picture viewing now possible on the iPod classic

· 2005: iPod introduce the nano as a direct replacement for the mini. The nano is significantly smaller and has the capability to store photographs. The iPod shuffle is a cheaper offering from apple. There is no screen and its major selling point is that you don’t know in which order the songs will be plated

· 2006: Apple focus on boosting the memory of their players and improving the Nano and the shuffle

· 2007: Third generation nano has new design, improved memory and video capability. The sixth generation iPod classic now has 160 GB memory, the same as most computers and can store 40, 000 songs. The end of the year saw the launch of the iPhone which was seen primarily as a mobile phone rather than a music player but is a multimedia tool. The iPhone has visual voice messaging, text messaging, email, a camera, video camera and extensive internet access.

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Hypothetical Student Day: 1977-2007

2008-01-06T23:36:51+01:00

A Day in the Life of a Student – 1977

09:00 Woken up by wind up alarm clock

09:05 Put on the radio, choice of local radio or radio 1, 2, 3 or 4

10:00 Head to university, either write notes with a biro or on occasions use portable typewriter

12:00 Visual aids in second lecture shown in form of a slideshow on a projector

13:00 Listen to cassettes in University Library, useful for languages students

14:00 Spend time in students union watching one of three channels on black and white television

15:00 Sit with friends and listen to pirate radio on a transistor radio. No commercial radio available

15:30 Withdraw five pounds to pay for weekly shopping

16:00 Type up an essay on a typewriter at home, tip-ex out mistakes

17:00 Write a letter to a friend, send it off and wait a few days for a reply

18:00 Ring friend’s house phone and arrange to meet up later at 20:00

19:00 Get showered, dressed and if you wish, straighten hair with an iron

20:30 Friend arrives 30 minutes late, the bus broke down

21:00 Buy a round for less than one pound. Play a game of Pong on the arcade game

21:30 Play the quiz and win thanks to intelligence

23:00 Put on record player, listen to some music

00:00 Wind up your alarm ready for another day

A Day in the Life of a Student - 2007

09:00 Woken up by alarm on mobile phone

09:05 Put on the TV, choice of over 60 channels on standard digital TV plus all major radio stations

10:00 Head to university, either write notes with a biro or type up on laptop

11:00 If you are really lazy, go home and steal lecture notes available on blackboard

12:00 Visual aids in lecture either on video, DVD or on slideshow on PowerPoint

13:00 Listen to previously downloaded language tracks on iPod

14:00 Spend time in your bedroom watching one of 60 channels on HDTV

15:00 Spend time at home playing ‘Halo’ online with players from four continents

15:30 Order your weekly shopping online for £50

16:00 Type up an essay on computer, use spelling and grammar check to edit work

17:00 Write an email to a friend, send it off and potentially wait minutes for a reply

18:00 Text friend and arrange to meet at 20:00

19:00 Get showered, dressed and if you want straighten hair with £20 straighteners

19:45 Friend calls from his mobile to let you know he is running late

21:00 Buy a round for nearly five pounds. Play one of 50 games available on ‘itbox’

21:30 Play quiz and win thanks to sly calls to friends from toilet, quick text messaging under the table or use of mobile internet to check answers

23:00 Head home and download music from internet in minutes

00:00 Set your alarm on your phone ready for another day

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