Competition between digital & analog worlds?

In Paul Virilio’s paper on the speed of information, he attempts to make sense of the transition from an analog world to a digital one. Although I think that many of the points he makes are valid, I would argue that digital reality is not at odds with what he considers to be the “real” world.

Firstly, I must define what digital reality and tangible reality are. The digital world is just that: it requires the existence of computers and technology to keep it running. The internet itself is merely the result of connections between computers. The digital world does not, however, ignore temporal boundaries. The digital world does not tell users what the future is (at least beyond a few days of weather predictions), but it does catalog some of what the past has taught us. In this way, the internet is like a book. The digital world is accessible to any person around the world with a working computer and an internet connection. It does not permeate everything everywhere, but where it does exist, it shortens the time and space between users.

Daily Cardinal: Digital Video Games and Madison’s Resellers

http://host.madison.com/daily-cardinal/science/video-game-re-sellers-are-adapting-to-digital-downloads/article_40b5378c-ac47-11e2-8d1a-0019bb2963f4.html

Expandable Memory in Mobile Computing

One popular argument that Droid smartphone owners use to justify purchasing it against another phone is that it has the potential for expandable memory. A device with expandable memory might have very little storage but has space for an SD card to upgrade the capacity by 16, 32 or 64 GB depending on the size of the SD card.

Some businesses, however, have not adopted this policy. Apple’s mobile computing devices like the iPhone and iPad do not have expandable memory, but models are available with a certain amount of storage. The iPad with Retina, for example, costs $499 for the 16 GB model. The 32 GB model is $599, 64 GB costs $699 and 128 GB is $799. These models cannot be upgraded: in other words, the only way to get 32 GB if you purchased a 16 GB model would be to do a return, or to sell the original and then purchase the larger option.

Present-Day Cyborgs and Body Modification

Changing technologies within the past 50 years have given rise to fears of the power of these new technologies. In the movie Blade Runner (based on the book “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick) for example, robots in human form live among the general population and are only distinguishable by their inability to feel emotion. What happens when the line between android and human is blurred? This is where the concept of a cyborg comes into play. A cyborg is a human who has been altered with computer technology either for the purpose of replacing missing parts (think Luke Skywalker’s robotic arm) or make existing parts better (think Terminator, as pictured).

Instant Video Games and the Console Player

Over the past year, downloadable games like Angry Birds and Plants vs. Zombies have become household names. Children are being introduced to mobile gaming platforms at a very young age through their parents’ smartphones and tablets, and free games become a gateway to hardcore gaming in the form of MMOs. How does this translate for the gamers who still prefer platforms and gaming on their televisions? Older platforms like Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s XBox 360 have been adapted to access the internet, and gamers can pay for and download certain titles right from their living room.

Anonymous Threatens Zynga With Release of Games

Anonymous is a collective of unknown, unnamed people associated through the internet, and in this case the term refers to an organization of hackers who claim they safeguard the public good. Zynga is a video gaming company famous for its Facebook-based game Farmville.

Anonymous released a statement on AnonNews.org detailing a wonderfully dramatic kind of blackmail that could save almost 800 jobs. I’m not a fan of small groups claiming to represent the greater majority, but this is suggestive of an epic battle along the lines of Clark Kent versus Lex Luthor. Anonymous has apparently hacked into Zynga’s servers and extracted games that normally cost money, threatening to release them to the public for free unless the company “will cease immediately the plan.”

Interviewing in the Digital Age

After reading through Tompkins’s “Aim for the Heart” chapter 6, I thought about how technology influences the interview processes. He made a lot of good points, touching on a few that are probably familiar to most people already. The most interesting things that came to mind during this reading, however, were the changes in technologies over the past few years.

What is the best way to interview someone if that information is going to be filtered into written stories for publishing or alternative story forms?

The Greatest Blog Post Ever Sold

… but not really.

Courtesy of FireCritic.com

This blog doesn’t get nearly enough views for me to put advertisements up, but if I did, I would be getting paid just because you’re reading this. This is part of the reason Facebook makes money- not a lot, granted, but Facebook is currently worth a few billion dollars.  For every page on which an ad is shown, the proprietor of a website will make a few cents. Given the number of ads on each page, and the number of viewers, this can add up fairly quickly.

So why don’t we use ads to pay for more? In a sense, we already do. Twitter shows ‘promoted’ feeds that pay for more views even though you might not subscribe to the sender. I once heard a great quote that went something like “If you do not pay for a product or service, you are the product being sold.” Essentially, this is true. Free services like most e-mail servers, website hosting (including, dear friends, my blog), social networking and other such web-based platforms are all fueled by advertisement revenue.

Presidential Visit to the University of Wisconsin

A note to all readers: unlike my other posts, this one is entirely opinion-based (not related to technology whatsoever) and should be read as such. As always, comments are expected and encouraged.

As I write this, I am taking shelter from the impending rain in a cafe outside the University of Wisconsin’s communications building, sipping a double espresso and watching crowds of liberal voters walk by. The vast majority of them are headed to Bascom hill to see the ‘leader of the free world’ give a speech about why he should be reelected. 

Apple’s iPhone 5: ‘The Biggest Thing to Happen to iPhone Since iPhone’? (EDITED)

iPhone 5 Dimensions. Photo courtesy of Apple, Inc.

In 2007, thousands upon thousands of people stood in line for hours to witness the advent of Apple’s first iPhone. It was considered to be revolutionary (and marketed as such). Being only 15 years old at this point, I remained unenthused. To begin with, I didn’t have an income to afford such a luxury. I wasn’t particularly thrilled with my SideKick 3, but I knew that only the richest students in my school would buy the iPhone. Few would, especially knowing there would be connectivity/signal problems given how isolated we were, nestled between the mesas in Sedona, Arizona. I didn’t give in to the pressure of everyone around me using the same technology provided by the iPhone until I finally asked for the iPhone 4 as a birthday gift from my mother nearly two years ago. I am not much for following ‘fads’, but I quite like my iPhone. The question now becomes: Will the iPhone 5 be worth the switch?