Week 1 Lecture Notes

Defining Communication Technology

What is Communication?

• Communication is any process that transfers, transmits or makes information known to other people.
• Basic model of communication explained in the book Rhetoric written by Aristotle about two thousand years ago.
• The speaker produces a message that is heard by the listener.
• The speaker produces an effect on the transmitter which sends a message (which is degraded by the noise of the transmission process) that is intercepted by the reciever which converts it into an effect that is heard by the listener. (Shannon & Weaver - The Mathematical theory of Communication)
• Intersubjectivity - The listener interprets the message and changes it as they send it along.
• the active audience produces feedback
• Intertextuality - any message gains its meaning (for a particular person) from all the other messages person has previously recieved and sent.

What is Technology?

• Technology is the scientific study of mechanical arts and their application to the world.

Convergence

• Information technologies are converging as computer technology provides the means to draw together telephone, radio, television and print so that they can be accessed from the one point.

Old Communication Technology

• Oral (Storytelling)
• Graphic (Cave Drawings)
• Written (Letters, Articles, Books)
• Radio
• Television
• Morse Code

New Communication Technology

• Mobile Phones (SMS/MMS)
• Computers The Internet E-Mail
• Message Boards & Discussion Lists
• IM (MSN Messenger etc)
• Blogging
• YouTube, Flickr & Twitter
• Social Networking (Facebook, MySpace etc)

Convergence in Communication

• Technology's ability to help us communicate in a myriad of ways. (Smartphone Discussion)
• Important thing to understand is that the future of Communication Technologies lies in Convergence.

1501HUM New Communication Technologies

TUTORIAL 1

During the first tutorial of the subject 1501HUM New Communications Technologies we created new gmail accounts, so we could create our new blogs using the software blogger made by Google. As per instructions our blogs are to be used for blogging about the lecture as well as the activities undertaken during the tutorials. We can use pretty pictures and cool videos to help emphasize the information posted in our blogs. Now to answer the cool and innovative tutorial question brilliantly named Tute*Spark.

TUTE*SPARK

How do we distinguish between old and new communication technologies?

A lot of people state that the distinguishing feature between old and new communication technologies is the conversion to digital transmissions, such as tv signals going from analog to digital. But I think there is one important factor we can't leave out which is the feature of interactivity, this new relationship technology has with the user is an important fact especially in the field of convergence in communication. For example mobile phones today help the user communicate in a vast varitey of ways (sms, mms, email).

Under what circumstances will new communication technology become old communication technology?

What we consider today as new communication technology will one day be considered as old communication technology. Under the circumstances of the deliverance of the "message" to become more, quicker, more portable and more interactive. While also maintaining the informative and dependable features the user enjoys with the original technologies.