Week Ten

Lecture Summary

The essence of this weeks lecture was on Atom-based information versus Bit-based information, and the ways in which to manage Bit- based info. such as documents, images, webpages, presentations, etc. into an organised structure so that when it comes to retrieving them, it is not such a difficult task to find them. The lecture went through the pros and cons of atom-based information and bit-based information, in terms of their accessibilty, costs and convenience. One pro of ABI is that it's real in space (we can hold it), but a pro is that it is costly to obtain. BBI on the otherhand, is cheap to obtain and easy to produce and broadcast for audiences who seek it, but the information may be false as it can be easily altered and subject to change. What followed in the lecture were examples of how the change from atoms to bits has increased in recent times, such as in internet banking, email use (rather than snail mail) and music. BBI tends to accumulate to a point where there is information overload. The best way to deal with this is to organise it by creating folders and subfolders, as well as meta-data about your documents so that we can easily see what the documents contain when searching for them. The use of the 'search' function is also helpful when trying to locate deeple hidden files.

Tutorial Tasks

Our first task was to create a 'favourites' list of sites we often use, as a helpful mechanism for web page locating. Here is a screen shot of mine:





Review:

After reading Negroponte's 'Being Digital', These are the points that i found show he knew what he was talking about when he wrote it:

• The part where Negroponte refers to the value of his laptop being "roughly, between one and two million dollars", which he meant in terms of its bits rather than the atoms of the laptop itself which would only cost around $2000. The same goes for now, If we lose all the files in our computer or on our USB's, it is like losing everything you have worked hard for.
• His comment on the mail delivery system being a pain in atom based form is also true. Physical material sent by snail mail is subject to delay in arrival at its destination, but sending emails over the internet is not.
• It is true that we have not yet been able to convert food or products into bits yet, as that is way too advanced of a concept (for now). However, nowadays it is possible to have traditionally atom-based services in bits now, such as internet bookings, internet banking, etc. There are even website communities or games where people become so obsessed or involved that they pay real money for bit products.

Readings