HSCI Final Exam

Anthony Comstock

Anthony Comstock was a politician and a United States Postal Inspector in the 19th Century. Comstock is important because he promoted censorship in America. In 1873, the Comstock Act was passed which prohibited certain things to be mailed, such as birth control and personal letters with any sexual content, anything that was seen as "obscene." This severely limited media in a way that was infringing on freedom of speech. This was largely unopposed until after World War I, when it was applied to wartime political censorship. Because of this, a new interpretation of "freedom of speech" emerged.

Jazz music and the radio

Before radio, most popular songs were distributed through piano sheet music and word of mouth. This necessarily limited the types of music that could gain national prominence. Radio networks mainly played swing jazz, giving the bands and their leaders a widespread audience. Jazz bands became nationally famous through their radio performances, and a host of other jazz musicians flourished as radio made the genre nationally popular. White musicians were able to use African American jazz music and gain notoriety off of it. Jazz impacted radio in a positive way because it broadened the amount of listeners radio had. Radio impacted Jazz positively because it allowed for Jazz musicians to become stars and radio made Jazz music something that was easily accessible to the general public. Radio's presence in the home signaled the evolution of consumer culture in the United States.

The Kodak camera

By far the most significant event in the history of amateur photography was the introduction of the Kodak camera in 1888. Within a few years of the Kodak's introduction, snapshot photography became a national craze. The Kodak camera is important because it was another form of media that the general public was able to participate in without having to spend a lot of money or take a lot of time learning how to use it. With the Kodak camera, Journalists were also able get photos about what they were writing about, to make their articles more realistic and credible.

The "fairness doctrine"

Established in 1949, this policy created by the Federal Communications Commission made broadcast stations present both sides of controversial issues of public importance. The ideal concept of the policy was to require broadcasters devote some of their airtime to discuss current issues while also revealing opposing view points to those issues.

HAL

From the 2001 film 'A Space Odyssey', HAL is a representative of AI acting in human ways. In 2001, HAL maintained a very human-like persona and, when threatened with disconnection, acted in a manner to ensure survival by killing the rest of the crew. This is meant to show how the line between human and machine was thinning as the concept of artificial intelligence was becoming more popular.

Fahrenheit 451, as it relates to the history of media

Guy Montag is the main character in Fahrenheit 451. He is a fireman and his job is to burn books instead of putting fires out. This book is set in a dystopian society that believes that books and original thoughts are dangerous. We follow Guy's journey through this book and see him begin to lust for life and wonder about what is so dangerous about books. He quickly forms unusually strong attachments with anyone who seems receptive to true friendship, such as Professor Faber. His biggest regret in life is not having a better relationship with his wife, Mildred, who is happy to live in ignorance. Montag realizes that censorship is wrong and that books can have such a positive impact on people's lives. He joins a nationwide network of book lovers who have memorized many great works of literature and philosophy. They hope that they may be of some help to mankind in the aftermath of the war that has just been declared. Montag's role is to memorize the Book of Ecclesiastes. Montag and his new friends move on to search for survivors and rebuild civilization. This relates to our course because we also discuss censorship and we discuss how media has been censored and when it should be censored. Censorship is dangerous because it can infringe upon our first amendment right and the FCC is in charge of overseeing media and establishing rules that networks have to follow.

Thomas Edison

In his 84 years, Thomas Edison acquired a record number of 1,093 patents (singly or jointly) and was the driving force behind such innovations as the phonograph, the incandescent light bulb and one of the earliest motion picture cameras. He also created the world's first industrial research laboratory.

The shift to "talking" motion pictures, in relation to the production of films and to changes in movie houses and audiences (Starr and Butsch both will be helpful on this one)

In silent movies, people chanted together to create anticipation. In talking movies, people had to be silent. Dress up to go to movie. Formal/social event. nickelodeon's (where working class kids went). Movie houses (middle class families went) According to Butsch, sound films being produced provided an incentive for business owners to open up movie houses, or theatres. Before these movie houses were built, movies were typically shown in storefronts. These neighborhood exhibitions gradually were upgraded to theatres. They believed that by doing so, they would attract clientele of a higher class. A few "luxury houses" were built to serve the highest classes.

James Frederick Willetts (the 'pirate king')

James Frederick Willetts was the "pirate king". He ran the biggest organization when it came to pirated sheet music. Publishers became angry and tried to police the pirated music. When publishers captured Willets, he made a case that publishers were bad for business and pirates were helping the lower class. This court case raised a lot of issues we still have today about copyright laws and anti-piracy laws

Koomey's Law

Koomey's law describes a long-term trend in the history of computing hardware. The number of computations per joule of energy dissipated has been doubling approximately every 1.57 years. This trend has been remarkably stable since the 1950s (R2 of over 98%) and has actually been somewhat faster than Moore's law.

Moore's Law

Moore's Law is a computing term which originated around 1970; the simplified version of this law states that processor speeds, or overall processing power for computers will double every two years.

RCA

Radio corporation of America. There is a potential in creating a nation wide radio communication. The government sees the development of radio as very important potentially for military use and enormous potential for commercial enterprise. The government decides to pull patents for the radio. RCA is created as a patent pool, everyone who has a radio patent is forced to patent though the RCA. It is similar to many other communications where the US chooses to do something with private companies who have a special legal status. First head is David Sarnoff. Becomes a big business very rapidly. TV is also a product of RCA.

XeroxPARC

Short for Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, Xerox PARC is a research center in Palo Alto, California, USA that began operations in 1970 and continues research and development today. Xerox PARC and its researchers developed numerous technologies that are widely used today. For example, the GUI, Ethernet, and laser printing are just a few examples of some developments.

The internet protocol (IP)

The Internet Protocol (IP) is the method or protocol by which data is sent from one computer to another on the Internet. Each computer (known as a host) on the Internet has at least one IP address that uniquely identifies it from all other computers on the Internet.

The military revolution associated with gunpowder weapons, in relation to "the creation of the public"

The expensiveness of gunpowder war led to needing more money. More borrowing allowed non-nobles to have more of a say in government. First instance of credit. Public determined what the king was worth

Digital social media (and their uses and implications, as discussed in lecture)

The last 15 years, especially the last 5, have seen an explosion of digital social media. These media have grown in usage at an astonishing rate both in the "developed" nations And across the globe. The speed, scope, and enthusiasm with which they have been adopted has created new social opportunities for their users but has left traditional political, social, and cultural authorities (including parents as well as politicians) in the position of outsiders reacting to a world they don't really live in. Digital Social Media have begun to make the spatial and temporal bounds of social relationships and social events much more fluid.

The telephone as an instrument of "sociability" (as discussed by Fischer

This reading refers to the phenomenon of the telephone, mainly relating to its initial purpose. The telephone was originally invented/intended for business purposes. The business world had a great need for immediate communication, and updates. The telephone would have allowed businesses to communicate more efficiently, and effectively in real-time. However, shortly after its introduction, it became extremely popular with women; mainly housewives. The transition from being a business tool, to a social tool is a significant aspect of the telephone's history.

"Exchange Alley," as discussed in A Conspiracy of Paper

Written by David Liss and published in 2001. After Parliament passed a law forbidding stock-jobbing within the Royal Exchange, jobbers moved to Exchange Alley, taking up residence in coffee houses. The real business of Exchange Alley took place in a few tiny and insignificant streets. A Conspiracy of Paper depicts the early days of the London Stock Exchange in the coffee houses of Exchange Alley. This relates to our lecture about money and how over the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both power and wealth became increasingly public and negotiable.

The four "technological back-stories" related to the transformation of the computer into an interactive multi-medium. (Be able to name each one and provide a sentence or two about each; be sure to link them to the transformation of the computer.)

1. The Invention: the computer becomes a Digital machine (Begins mid-1940s, shift largely complete by mid-60s) 2. The First Reinvention: the computer becomes an Interactive communication machine: (Begins mid-60s, accelerates during 80s, shift largely complete by mid-90s) 3. Second Reinvention: The computer becomes a Multi-Medium or a Universal Medium: (Begins in mid-1980s, shift largely complete by mid-2000s ) 4. Third Reinvention: The computer becomes part of a Global, Mobile Multi-Medium: (Begins mid-90s, accelerates after 2007 and the iPhone, still continuing now)

The painting by Vermeer of Woman in Blue Reading a Letter (shown in class)

1662-65. Private sphere Women could now read (now shared same experience as men) Women were social through letters Husband out at sea (map)

Nellie Bly

A journalist in the late 19th century, Bly was known for her undercover work posing as mental patient to reveal the horrid living conditions of a infamous mental institution located on Blackwell Island, New York. Her contributions are deemed important because she was able to give the public a true perspective of place that was previously thought to be forbidden and unknown.

ARPA(a.k.a.DARPA)

ARPANET was the network that became the basis for the Internet. The ARPANET was based on a concept first published in 1967 and was developed under the direction of the U.S. Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA). In 1969, the idea became a modest reality with the interconnection of four university computers. The main purpose was to communicate with and share computer resources among mainly scientific users at the connected institutions. ARPANET took advantage of the new idea of sending information in small units called packets that could be routed on different paths and reconstructed at their destination. The development of the TCP/IP protocols in the 1970s made it possible to expand the size of the network, which now had become a network of networks, in an orderly way. This relates to our course in a broader sense because the internet is the biggest factor in how media has grown over the last decade. With the invention of the internet, it became possible to talk to people across the globe in seconds on different web sites whenever you want. The internet gave people access to information at the click of a mouse and media has adapted to the electronic revolution.

Koberger Bible

Anton Koberger printed the ninth German Bible in 1493. Koberger used the woodcuts made for the Bible printed in Cologne by Bartholomaeus of Unckel in 1478‒79, which he himself had helped to finance. The first woodcut, preceding the book of Genesis, depicts the creation of Eve in Paradise and almost fills an entire page. Koberger allowed for painted initials to be supplied by a rubricator or illuminator. Like other copies of this edition, the one shown here was richly illuminated with tempera colors and punched-gold grounds as well as more than 70 initial letters with tempera, gold or silver, and acanthus-leaf decorations to mark the beginning of each biblical book and the apostolic letters

The telegraph, in relation to changes in business, economics, news and politics

By transmitting information quickly over long distances, the telegraph facilitated the growth in the railroads, consolidated financial and commodity markets, and reduced information costs within and between firms. By using the telegraph, station managers knew exactly what trains were on the tracks under their supervision. The telegraph made centralization possible. Centralization of the market created much more liquidity for stockholders. As the number of potential traders increased, so too did the ability to find a buyer or seller of a financial instrument. This increase in liquidity may have led to an increase in the total amount invested in the market, therefore leading to higher levels of investment and economic growth. The news becomes immediate. When you're reading something in a newspaper before the telegraph, it is written by a correspondent. After the telegraph, it is a reporter who writes the articles. Reporting on events in real time. You can report on the weather. Before the telegraph, you couldn't write about the weather but with the telegraph, you can track storms and guess weather. The creation of the wire services. The wire services are created almost immediately after the telegraph. You have an everyday regular connection with the news of the nation.

Claude Shannon

Claude Elwood Shannon is considered as the founding father of electronic communications age. He is an American mathematical engineer, whose work on technical and engineering problems within the communications industry, laying the groundwork for both the computer industry and telecommunications. After Shannon noticed the similarity between Boolean algebra and the telephone switching circuits, he applied Boolean algebra to electrical systems at the Massachusetts Institute of technology (MIT) in 1940. Later he joined the staff of Bell Telephone Laboratories in 1942. While working at Bell Laboratories, he formulated a theory explaining the communication of information and worked on the problem of most efficiently transmitting information. The mathematical theory of communication was the climax of Shannon's mathematical and engineering investigations. The concept of entropy was an important feature of Shannon's theory, which he demonstrated to be equivalent to a shortage in the information content (a degree of uncertainty) in a message.

"constitutive choices" (the term as used by Starr; be sure to give an example of something he calls such a constitutive choice)

Constitutive choices are choices needed to be made for the future of an institution.He breaks them down into three categories: First general legal and normative rules, Second the specific design of communications media, structure of networks, and organization of industries and Third, institutions related to the creation of the intangible and human capital-that is, education, research, and innovation. Examples he uses is the creation of the first amendment (freedom of speech) or the creation of the telegraph forcing America to strengthen and affirm their constitutive foundations while also representing America's choice for future technological advancements. New sets of social and political arrangements have to be created with them. Those initial choices have long lasting effects. The origins of modern media are political.

Globalization, in relation to digital media

Digital social media had a large impact on culture around the globe and enabled globalization. Digital social medias extend face-to-face relationships, enable placeless relationships, enable new hybrid media forms, and make the spatial bounds of social relationships and social events much more fluid. Globalization involves the creation and interconnection of global networks in which there are multinational flows of people, capital, goods and services, and information. Social media connects people on a global network that has a substantial amount of people participate from around the world and on these social networks, services, information and goods are sold and shared. Globalization was enabled by digital social media because without social media, people could not connect from around the globe on a spaceless platform and build relationships that allowed for information and services to be posted and sold. Even though social media enabled globalization, it have not determined globalizations shape or meaning. Digital social medias make this era of globalization different from earlier periods of increasing global connection because the level of interconnection that is possible with social media is far greater than any kind of interconnection possible without technology.

Alan Turing

In 1936, Turing delivered a paper in which he presented the notion of a universal machine (later called the "Universal Turing Machine," and then the "Turing machine") capable of computing anything that is computable: The central concept of the modern computer was based on Turing's paper. When he worked at Bletchley Park, the GCCS wartime station, he made five major advances in the field of cryptanalysis, including specifying the bombe, an electromechanical device used to help decipher German Enigma encrypted signals.

J.C.R. Licklider

In 1963, while J.C.R. Licklider was serving as director at the U.S. Department of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), it was his persuasive and detailed description of the challenges to establishing a time-sharing network of computers that ultimately led to the creation of the ARPAnet. His 1968 paper called "The Computer as a Communication Device" illustrated his vision of network applications and predicted the use of computer networks for communications. Until then, computers had generally been thought of as mathematical devices for speeding up computations.

Robert "Bob" Taylor

In 1970, Bob Taylor founded the Computer Science Laboratory (CSL) of the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center. Through the 1970s, CSL researchers became known worldwide for a number of important innovations necessary to the creation of the Internet. CSL invented and built Ethernet, the laser printer, and the PUP protocol. PUP was introduced seven years in advance of the implementation of the Internet protocol. Within Xerox, all of these technologies enabled the construction of the first internet. CSL also designed and built the Alto, the first networked personal computer. It was the first to support a graphical user interface, complete with mouse and a word processor and which was the antecedent of Microsoft Word. The Alto also contained an early page description language, antecedent of Adobe's Postscript. Bob Taylor was an inventor way ahead of his time. He saw the need for an interconnected computing system and he paved the way for modern day computer sciences.

Neuromancer, as it relates to the history of media

In 1984, an author named William Gibson published a small science fiction novel called Neuromancer. His book told the tale of "console cowboy" Henry Case, a freelance hacker who takes a job from a mysterious benefactor and becomes entangled in a cyberspace conspiracy that will forever change the digital landscape. Neuromancer relates to the history of media because it contains themes of freedom, transformation, and the fear of technology overpassing humanity. Gibson wrote this novel in the 1980s, and the content produced in the 1980s contained themes about technology. The decade popularized the home computer, the VCR, and the video arcade. This novel reflects the fear of how technology would affect humanity and how humanity would affect technology. It deals with the idea that new technologies could fundamentally alter what it means to be human.

Time-sharing

In computing, time-sharing is the sharing of a computing resource among many users by means of multiprogramming and multi-tasking at the same time. Its introduction in the 1960s and emergence as the prominent model of computing in the 1970s represented a major technological shift in the history of computing. By allowing a large number of users to interact concurrently with a single computer, time-sharing dramatically lowered the cost of providing computing capability, made it possible for individuals and organizations to use a computer without owning one, and promoted the interactive use of computers and the development of new interactive applications.

Blade Runner (the film)

In the futuristic year of 2019, Los Angeles has become a dark and depressing metropolis, filled with urban decay. Rick Deckard, an ex-cop, is a "Blade Runner". Blade runners are people assigned to assassinate "replicants". The replicants are androids that look like real human beings. When four replicants commit a bloody mutiny on the Off World colony, Deckard is called out of retirement to track down the androids. As he tracks the replicants, eliminating them one by one, he soon comes across another replicant, Rachel, who evokes human emotion, despite the fact that she's a replicant herself. As Deckard closes in on the leader of the replicant group, his true hatred toward artificial intelligence makes him question his own identity in this future world, including what's human and what's not human.

The convergence of the "three traditions" in the initial creation of the digital computer

In the late 1930s and early 1940s, mathematicians and engineers began to see ways to connect the mental tools of the logicians with the physical tools of number-crunchers and the concepts and devices of communications engineering. Two of the key areas of this convergence were in the fields of cryptography and gunnery control, where both electronic devices and logical tools were used to speed calculations. An important result of this convergence was a set of new concepts that brought together communications and calculation and logical operations: information; the program; the universal machine; and the possibility of using real-world circuitry to make idealized, virtual machines real. The end result was the modern computer in both concept (EDVAC) and reality (EDSAC): an electronic, digital machine capable of storing programs and thus of being a universal machine (or close to it).

Gutenberg Bible

Its a printed bible but it looks like an illuminated manuscript. The Gutenberg Bible was the first major book printed using mass-produced movable type in Europe. It was written, and published by Johannes Gutenberg in Mainz, Germany in the 1450's. With the printing of his new bible, Gutenberg virtually started the second re-invention of print. In the years after the printing of the Gutenberg bible, print shops began to open and spread all over Europe. By 1500, more than 1000 print shops had opened up in 230 towns (meaning, most towns had more than one). He wanted to make (print) books that were familiar to people. The image of gutenberg's bible really accentuates the hand drawn art on its pages. Being an illuminated manuscript, the text appears rather artsy. Illuminated manuscripts, while beautiful to look at, were large, expensive books whose purpose was more for decoration. Nobles and members of the most elite classes had illuminated manuscripts, but hardly ever read them. They were more of a symbol of status.

John von Neumann

John Von Neumann pioneered game theory and, along with Alan Turing and Claude Shannon, was one of the conceptual inventors of the stored-program digital computer. Von Neumann asserted that the mathematics developed for the physical sciences, which describes the workings of a disinterested nature, was a poor model for economics. They observed that economics is much like a game, wherein players anticipate each other's moves, and therefore requires a new kind of mathematics, which they called game theory.

Joseph Pulitzer

Joseph Pulitzer was a newspaper publisher of the St. Louis Post Dispatch and the New York World. Pulitzer introduced the techniques of yellow journalism to the newspapers he acquired in the 1880s. In his newspapers, Pulitzer combined exposés of political corruption and crusading investigative reporting with publicity stunts, blatant self-advertising, and sensationalistic journalism. In an effort to further attract a mass readership, he also introduced such innovations as comics, sports coverage, women's fashion coverage, and illustrations into his newspapers, thus making them vehicles of entertainment as well as of information.

Mark Zuckerberg and The Social Network

Mark Zuckerberg is an undergraduate student in Harvard University. On a fall night in 2003, his girlfriend broke up with him, so he decided to blog his angry feelings about his girlfriend. He asked his roommate Eduardo Saverin for help, and then, in a fury of blogging and programming, what began in his dorm room soon became a global social network and a revolution in communication. In one night, the network that he created collapsed the Harvard server. The Winklewoss brothers, a couple of athletic rowers at the campus, knew about the network and offered Zuckerberg the possibility to start a business together. But Zuckerberg's secretive and solitary methods made him set up a network on his own, which meant the beginning of Facebook.

Martin Luther's vernacular Bible

Martin Luther's vernacular Bible was created in the 16th century. His Bible was important because it translated the Latin Bible into German. This made the Bible more accessible to the public. Instead of the church interpreting the Bible, the common people could interpret it however they would like. This led to a revolution in not only print and translations of Bibles, but it also allowed for the public to become more educated and literate.

Metropolis (the film)

Metropolis is a 1927 German expressionist epic science-fiction drama film directed by Fritz Lang. The silent film is regarded as a pioneering work of the science-fiction genre in movies, being among the first feature-length movies of the genre. This influential German science-fiction film presents a highly stylized futuristic city where a beautiful and cultured utopia exists above a bleak underworld populated by mistreated workers. When the privileged youth Freder (Gustav Fröhlich) discovers the grim scene under the city, he becomes intent on helping the workers. He befriends the rebellious teacher Maria (Brigitte Helm), but this puts him at odds with his authoritative father, leading to greater conflict.

The history of the mobile phone, as an example of the social reinvention of technologies

Mobile phones are transportable and omnipresent. The key aspect of mobile phones is that they are digital and therefore interconnectable which allows the content that each user produces and uses to be shared at the touch of a finger. In the 2000's, mobile phones become mobile and fully interconnected, increasingly with broadband or wireless connection. Between the late 1940's and the present, technologies were invented several times. These reinventions rapidly transformed the computer/mobile phone from being a big, fast calculator into a digital, interactive, universal media machine, making it the heart of a new interactive multi-medium. The mobile phone was part of a larger social reinvention of technologies, media and ideas

The history of the mobile phone, as an example of "digital convergence"

Mobile phones are transportable and omnipresent. The key aspect of mobile phones is that they are digital and therefore interconnectable which allows the content that each user produces and uses to be shared at the touch of a finger. In the 2000's, mobile phones become mobile and fully interconnected, increasingly with broadband or wireless connection. This relates to digital convergence because between the late 1940's and the present, calculating machines were invented several times. These reinventions rapidly transformed the computer/mobile phone from being a big, fast calculator into a digital, interactive, universal media machine, making it the heart of a new interactive multi-medium. The mobile phone was part of a larger digital convergence of information, people and ideas. Mobile phones are a digitally converged frontier providing unique opportunities to engage physically dispersed communities and to produce original cultural content.

Piracy and its relation to the print revolution

Printing posed serious problems of politics and authority for the generations following Gutenberg. It was in the process of grappling with those problems that they came up with the notion of piracy. At their heart was the question of how to conform the new enterprise to their existing societies. For, following Gutenberg's first trials in Mainz in the mid-fifteenth century, printing had spread rapidly to the major European cities. It was a rapidly expanding and potentially revolutionary activity, and it would eventually inaugurate a transformation in practices of authorship, communication, and reading. The entire second volume of Don Quixote amounts to a sharp satire on the nature of print a century and a half after Gutenberg. There was no copyright system when this book was first published. The first book was very popular. A draft version of the second volume was taken and published as a pirate copy. When Serventes finds out, he changes the second volume and he rewrites it differently. He makes fun of pirated works in his authentic second version. It is an example of a world where there are no copyright laws and how to tell the real from the fake.

Quiz Show, as it relates to the history of media

Quiz show is about the true story of Charles Van Doren. Van Doren was an instructor at Columbia University who captivated the nation with his 1956 victory over Herb Stempel in NBC's primetime trivia contest Twenty-One. He turned his fame into a job as a cultural correspondent at the network's Today show. But the truth was that the whole competition was scripted and that both Van Doren and Stempel were in on it. Once the truth broke, congressional hearings were held and Van Doren lost his Ivy League teaching position and his job on theToday show. In the first decade after World War II, television became the dominant medium in American popular culture. Charles Van Doren is an example of the standard that the American people hold for television personalities and the authenticity of media itself.

The stored program

Storage of instructions in computer memory to enable it to perform a variety of tasks in sequence or intermittently. The idea was introduced in the late 1940s by John von Neumann, who proposed that a program be electronically stored in binary-number format in a memory device so that instructions could be modified by the computer as determined by intermediate computational results. Other engineers, notably John W. Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, contributed to this idea, which enabled digital computers to become much more flexible and powerful.

Geneva Bible

The Geneva was first created in 1560 in Geneva, Switzerland. The Geneva Bible is one of the most historically significant translations of the Bible into English, preceding the King James Version by 51 years. It was the primary Bible of 16th-century English Protestantism. The Geneva was eventually recreated with marginal notes to help interpret it in 1599. The Geneva bibles were direct translations from old Greek testaments.

King James Bible

The King James Bible was created in England in 1611. The purpose of the King James version was to ensure King James' authority was not challenged because the previous Geneva bible questioned the authority of the Catholic Church and any ruling monarchy. The King James Bible took out all of the marginal notes which the Geneva previously used. The King James bible was compiled of different english translations. It should also be noted that after the creation of the King James Bible, reading of any other bible (particularly the Geneva) would not be tolerated by the King.

The Motion Picture Production Code

The Motion Picture Production code (1930-1968) was a set of self-imposed guidelines that the producers of the Hollywood Studio system enacted. These guidelines ensured the morality of the films and censored what could be see on the screen. Because the producers were the ones who had the money for the films, this code became "law" for the studios. Filmmakers and screenwriters had to abide by this moral code in order to create a film. Later on, more production companies started to emerge, and with these new companies came more lenient guidelines, until the code eventually ended in 1968.

The vision of interactive computing and its role in the history of PC and the Internet

The PC and the Internet are both products of the attempt to make the computer into something with which ordinary people can interact and through which they can communicate

A South Seas Trading Company stock certificate (image shown in class)

The South Sea Company was a British joint-stock company founded in 1711, created as a public-private partnership to consolidate and reduce the cost of national debt. The company was also granted a monopoly to trade with South America, hence its name. This is a certificate that is a representation of value, but has no intrinsic value itself.

The Stamp Act of 1765

The Stamp Act was passed by the British Parliament on March 22, 1765. The new tax was imposed on all American colonists and required them to pay a tax on every piece of printed paper they used. Ship's papers, legal documents, licenses, newspapers, other publications, and even playing cards were taxed.

Copyright and its history, especially in relation to the advent of the novel

The Statute of Anne (short title Copyright Act 1709) was the first copyright law in the Kingdom of Great Britain enacted in 1709 and entering into force on April 10, 1710. It is generally considered to be the first fully-fledged copyright law. "The Author of any Book or Books already Printed, who hath not Transferred to any other the Copy or Copies of such Book or Books, Share or Shares thereof, or the Bookseller or Booksellers, Printer or Printers, or other Person or Persons, who hath or have Purchased or Acquired the Copy or Copies of any Book or Books, in order to Print or Reprint the same, shall have the sole Right and Liberty of Printing such Book and Books for the Term of One and twenty Years"

The image of Police Lieutenant John Pike (of UC Davis pepper spray fame) and its re-use, as in the images shown in class, as it relates to social media

The UC Davis pepper-spray incident occurred on November 18, 2011, during an Occupy movement demonstration at the University of California, Davis. After asking the protesters to leave several times, university police pepper sprayed a group of demonstrators as they were seated on a paved path in the campus quad. The video of UC Davis police officer Lt. John Pike pepper-spraying demonstrators spread around the world as a viral video and the photograph became an internet meme. After the incident, large protests against the use of pepper spray occurred on campus. UC Davis Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi apologized to the students, saying that the police had acted against her orders for there to be no arrests and no use of force. A public debate about the militarization of the police and the appropriate use of pepper spray on peaceful protesters took place in the media, with questions raised about the freedom of speech and the right to peaceably assemble guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

The WELL

The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL, is one of the oldest virtual communities in continuous operation. The WELL began as a dial-up bulletin board system (BBS) influenced by EIES, became one of the original dial-up ISPs in the early 1990s when commercial traffic was first allowed, and changed into its current form as the Internet and web technology evolved. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. The discussion and topics on The WELL range from deeply serious to trivial, depending on the nature and interests of the participants.

Cable TV and the changes it brought to American media

The advent of cable tv began to change the media landscape on a large scale in the 1980s, raising many of the same issues that the Internet later would raise. In particular, because it was subscription based, cable enabled viewers to see a much wider range of options than in the days of the "big three" networks. The result was a new kind of mass medium, one that is highly segmented by interests and tastes, but not by location, something we again see with the Internet. The fact that cable is a subscription service also meant that some of the justifications for "fairness" and "decency" regulation of TV appeared to the FCC to no longer apply.

The AT&T Breakup of 1984 and its implications for cable, wireless, and internet as well as phone between humans and machines

The breakup of the Bell System was mandated on January 8, 1982, by an agreed consent decree providing that AT&T Corporation would relinquish control of the Bell Operating Companies that had provided local telephone service in the United States and Canada up until that point. This effectively took the monopoly that was the Bell System and split it into entirely separate companies that would continue to provide telephone service. AT&T had almost total control over communication technology in the country, which led to the antitrust case, United States v. AT&T. The breakup led to a surge of competition in the long distance telecommunications market by companies such as Sprint and MCI. One consequence of the breakup was that local residential service rates, which were formerly subsidized by long distance revenues, began to rise faster than the rate of inflation. Another consequence of the divestiture was in how both national broadcast television (i.e., ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS) and radio networks (NPR, Mutual, ABC Radio) distributed their programming to their local affiliated stations. Prior to the breakup, the broadcast networks relied on AT&T Long Lines' infrastructure of terrestrial microwave relay, coaxial cable, and, for radio, broadcast-quality leased line networks to deliver their programming to local stations. However, by the mid-1970s, the then-new technology of satellite distribution offered by other companies like RCA Astro Electronics and Western Union with their respective Satcom 1 and Westar 1 satellites started to give the Bell System competition in the broadcast distribution field, with the satellites providing higher video & audio quality, as well as much lower transmission costs.

The consolidation of the tv/media industry over the past 30 years

The cable and digital eras, paradoxically, have brought many, many more channels (and thus many new choices for viewers, who are increasingly segmented by tastes and interests), but also have seen the consolidation of vast media empires and have seen entertainment and profit become less and less restrained by an ethic of public service.

The "big three" TV networks and their role in the early history of television Cable TV and the changes it brought to American media

The growth of cable TV alarmed the main broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) which had almost totally controlled American TV audiences from the time television was first introduced in the 1940s. The three major networks urged the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to impose rules and restrictions on cable operators. The FCC issued its first official guidelines regarding cable television in a 1965 document titled "First Cable Television Report and Order." The following year, the agency issued its "Second Cable Television Report and Order." Taken together, these two sets of regulations successfully limited cable TV systems to small, local markets that were not being served by the major broadcast networks. The regulations included "must carry" rules, which required cable operators to carry local broadcast signals, and "nonduplication" rules, which prohibited cable operators from bringing in programs from distant stations that were already available through local stations. The FCC commissioners believed that these rules were necessary in order to allow the broadcast networks to maintain their control over national TV audiences.

The difference between analog and digital media

The key difference between analog and digital technologies has to do with how they represent things. All digitization is fundamentally based on numerical measurement, while analog devices do not represent things numerically. Analog media is linear and digital media is non-linear. Digital media can be played back whereas analog media can not be played back from any point. Examples of analog media are VCR's, tape players and record players.

The key differences between media that inscribe symbols on surfaces and electrical media

The key difference between media that inscribe symbols on surfaces and electrical media is that one is tangible and the other is intangible. Electronic media removes the message from the messenger. You cannot save all electronic media the way that you can save a book. Electrical media is different than media that inscribe symbols on surfaces in three ways: No physical object is transported when an electrical message is sent whereas actual physical objects upon which the symbols had been inscribed had to be transported. Electrical messages are evanescent--they are fleeting patterns in electrical fields and are difficult to store whereas symbols on surfaces are relatively durable. While electrical messages are non-material, a large, expensive physical infrastructure is necessary to input, transmit, and decode them. While books require print shops and literacy, telegrams and telephone calls require Western Union or AT&T or similar large networks.

Films portraying 'the networked/social machine' and how they present the differences (if any) between humans and machines

The notion of advanced robots with human-like intelligence has been around for decades. Films depicting "individualized machines" such as the matrix or the terminator is an interesting theme. In the Terminator series, the Skynet decides that all humans are a threat to its existence. It takes efforts to wipe out all humans, starting with nukes, and mopping up with hunter-killer units and terminator androids to pick them off one-by-one, including sending terminators back in time to assassinate the leaders of the human resistance, inadvertently providing the technology that was used to create Skynet in the first place. In these films, "individualized machines" become a threat to human civilization and decide to control or destroy humans. This reflects a fear that humans have regarding technology becoming self aware, or artificially intelligent, to the point where technology and humans can no longer exist together. This relates to our class because when we discussed digital convergence, we discussed how between the late 1940's and the present, calculating machines were reinvented several times. These reinventions transformed the computer into a digital, interactive, universal media machine and that is where the depiction of "individualized machines" destroying humanity began.

Radio as a new part of the "public sphere" (especially as regards regulation and censorship)

The regulation of program content in the early years of radio has most often been framed in the context of First Amendment rights and freedom of speech. This however removes from view one of the most potent and pervasive forms of censorship exercised on early American radio - the regulatory attempt to banish personal and private matters from the air as almost by definition not in the public interest. Charged with defining the public nature of broadcasting, in order to license stations whose programs served the public interest, the Federal Radio Commission (1927-1934) urgently needed to define what was public and what was private in broadcast communications. Establishing radio's public sphere required identifying, and then outlawing, private uses of the new medium.

The history of video games, as it relates to the storylines of "digital convergence" and the transformation of the computer into an interactive multi-medium

Video gaming involves connecting a console to a network over the Internet for services. Through this connection, it provides users the ability to play games with other users online, in addition to other online services. These networks feature cross platform capabilities which allows users to use a single account. Internet connectivity has transformed everything about how people play games with each other online. Many of the traditional spaces where people came together to play games have steadily dwindled, like the arcade. The connected gaming that this generation of consoles pioneered has allowed gamers to create new spaces online to play with each other in a digital world.. This relates to digital convergence because between the late 1940's and the present, calculating machines were invented several times. These reinventions rapidly transformed the computer/mobile phone from being a big, fast calculator into a digital, interactive, universal media machine, making it the heart of a new interactive multi-medium.