Week 1 Lecture

I've never really been a fan of web 2.0, mostly due to the hype behind it being somewhat misinformed. It's more of a buzz word to me as PHP and MySql have existed for quite a long time and allowed for dynamic websites such as discussion forums or simple new sites. While its true that 10 years ago the internet was mostly .html pages that were edited very rarely simply due to the nature of .html and filled with an over abundance of horrible designs (oh god, animated gif's come to mind).

The lecture brought up the idea of Web 2.0, a quick definition would be basically a more accessible internet. Plus it looks far better, a good example of web 2.0 would be this very website. The ease of accessibility and a more stream lined look has benefited the internet in allowing the non-tech savvy the ability to voice their own opinion (no matter how horrible it may be, sadly) which large benefit to the 'information' age that people claim we live in.

But the lecture wasn't only about the internet (although it did take a large part) but about new and old communications in general and how they've changed over the years, the second lecture featured this predominately . It included the philosophy of communications: the idea that there is a "speaker", a "message" and a listener and the more modern version which is: a speaker, a transmitter, the message, which is degraded by noise which is received by the receiver and heard by the listener.

It was an interesting lecture and I particularly enjoyed the segment involving the video "Cocaine Jesus" (which is featured in a previous post)