CCIT LECTURES

Lecture 1:
Themes: technology and power are co-constituted, media expertise => power, context
surrounding a technology matters
Always 2 main questions in this course:
o 1) Why is it happening now?
o 2) What are the broader consequences for economics, politics, and society?
o E.g. radio series at certain time of day: helped bond people, also affected when ads
were placed; when tvs first came out, people all gathered to the home of the person
who had a tv since it was new, there were few, had to share

Technology defines characteristics of our capacities; individuals and their social relations are
linked to forms of communication
o E.g. people dont know how to read/write in handwriting now since schools teach
keyboarding/typing
o People have difficulties for deep reading (reading a book; long text) since people used
to shorter things (such as the things on the internet)
o We text more than call now, so when we get a call its shocking
o Technologies afford (provide opportunities and constraints of interaction) to us

Clicktivism = activation by clicking of a button (e.g. retweet, like-ing Kony 2012)

Talking drums of west Africa: used to record, preserve, share histories and culture; to
communicate messages across distances; during special occasions to tell stories; to bring
people together and to settle disputes among members
o Redundancy: repeating the same message over and over again (e.g. who message is
addressed to)
o Trade off: redundancy ensures person got message, but wastes sound waves on
repetition when it could have been conveying the actual message; or for Kony 2012: we
used 20 mins to watch video

Oral culture without writing, print, or electronic media is biased towards senses such as seeing,
hearing, knowing (e.g. if main communication is drumming, auditory sense enhanced, other
oens reduced)

All communication media/technologies are extension of what is innate; modern technology is

only the latest form of ancient human technology that include speech, gesture, drama, social
ritual

Communication seeks variety; so new media is favoured over accustomed orders

After 2000BCE; scribes were employed by central administration, literacy seen as steppingstone to prosperity and social rank
o used to have to be elite to have luxury to read instead of work in industrial factory;
social/economic affects: those working made things that those reading dont make (e.g.
products of manual labour)
o first published text was the bible

Key dates:
o 2900 BCE: Egypt, 1st standardized written language
o 1455 CE Germany, printing press

Used for mass production

o 1821 England, electric telegraph and microphone

o 1835: USA, Morse Code
o 1876: USA(Canada), Bell patent for an apparatus for transmistting vocal or other
sounds telegraphically
o 1899: Denmark, magnetic storage medium
o 1879: England, first motion picture
o 1902: France, Marconi first transmits transatlantic radio signal
o 1944:USA, Mark 1 Computer
o 1962: US/UK/FRANCE, Telstar communication satellite in space (transatlantic signal);
due to cold war; wanted to spy on enemies
o 1969: USA, ARPANET
o 1971: USA, intel patent single chip microprocessor
o 1979: Japan, NTT 1st mobile phone network
o 1980: US, sony walkman
o 1993: Finland, 1st person to text message
o 1994: www, 1995: classmates.com, 1998: google

Definitions:
o Medium: object in the middle

o Symbols: context-dependent encapsulated knowledge (e.g. emoticons, heart, brand

names, logos, colours); used to further understanding
o Technological determinism: theory that presumes that a societys technology drives the
development of its social structure and cultural values

Idea that tech causes things (however may be other factors involved)

E.g. people say twitter+facebook caused revolution, or causes divorce or us to

become antisocial; but everyone has agency and free will

E.g. rise of napster -> decline of music -> decline of self creation -> decline of
economy

o However; guns dont kill people, people kill people

o Co-constitution: theory that purports that things (e.g. technologies and people) compose
each other (co-creation) (e.g. we change technology and are changed by it; we
transform tech to act on our behalf to make them act how we want)

E.g. listeners receive clearer sounds from a CD and increasingly demand higher
quality sound systems

E.g. people see others making videos on youtube, then make their own, then
others watch their videos and make videos, etc

o Ubiquity: existing or being everywhere at the same time

o Redundancy: exceeding what is necessary/normal; e.g. ad repetition
o ? Ontology: way we decide how what works
o Standardized: allowed to be transferred to other areas (e.g. diff languages being
translated)

New technology advances accelerating due to globalization, businesses (competition, online

shopping); causes postal service to decrease

Lecture 2
Themes: technology design requires knowledge about the human machine, communication is
not equal to speech, technology is rooted in culture

In reading: New media artifacts, activities, arrangement

We talk so much (e.g. facebook updates about useless things); this is because other creatures
may stop interacting with a social creature if it doesnt disclose info; animals do this with smells
and movement, humans do this with language

Contemporary audio technologies: e.g. podcasts, THX, home theaters, napster

Dates:
o 1873: James Clerk Maxwells (Scotland) treatise on electricity and magnetism (used
by radios)
o 1989: Fraunhofer received a German patent for mp3
o 1998: two uni students (Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev) ported AMP to windows
and created winamp for free

Winamp: allowed broadcasting on the internet

Govt had ownership of most radios in past because had to control/manage the
use of the spectrum/air used for sound waves

Air is for everyone but managed by govt, similar to water

Consequences: controls what media goes in or out, causes social ranking

and hierarchy; bias of what is heart by public

Internet is not as controlled as the air, internet radio harder to control

o 1999: Shawn Fanning created Napster; used for sharing music, messed up copyright
laws

Headphones:
o Transverse waves: wave length: distance between two crests/troughs

Due to movement of water

Amplitude: height of wave from the midpoint line

Direction of travel: forward

o Longitudinal waves: due to movement of air molecules

wavelength: distance between two areas of compression/rarefaction

direction of travel: forward

o Noise cancelling headphones: speaker in the headphone creates sound waves that
cancel out with the sound waves caused by external sources; because crest+trough =
silence

Created two sets of sounds, the music, and the sounds to cancel external sounds

o Headphones use two technologies:

Electrostatic

Dynamic:

supra-aural; headphones lay on ears

circumaural; headphones go around ears

in-ear; earbuds

Decibel (dB) is a measure of sound intensity, it is measured on a logarithmic scale, a sound

measuring 30 dB is 10x louder than a sound measuring 20 dB

Shazam: fingerprints a catalog of music (finds highest frequency in song), stores it in

database; user supplies a 10s sample of audio they hear; shazam uploads the sample to their
service and finds the matching song; song info given if a match is found

Signal: a gesture, action, or sound that is used to convey information or instructions

Frequency: # cycles per unit time

Noise: unwanted, unpredictable electrical or electromagnetic energy that degrades the quality
of signals and data

Surround sound:
o Monoaural: all sound recorded onto one audio track or channel (single spiraled groove
in a record, or single magnetic track on tape), typically played on 1 speaker
o Binaural: two-channel sound, standard format for home stereorecievers, television, fm
radio broadcasts; the simples two-channel recordings are produced with two
microphones set up at a live event (e.g. concert) to take the place of a humans two
ears; when the two channels are played on separate speakers, the experience of being
present at the event is recreated
o Multi-channel: almost all movie surround soundtracks are created in a mixing studio.
Sound editors and mixers take a number of diff audio recordings (e.g. dialogue on the
movie set, sound effects in dubbing studio, computer, or musical score), and decide
which audio channel or channels to put them on

Channel: separate path through which signal(s) can flow

Human brain:
o Musical activity involves nearly every region of the brain, and neural subsystem. Diff
aspects of music are handled by neural regions

o Brain uses functional separation for music processing and employs a system of feature
detectors to analyse specific aspects of the musical signal such as pitch, tempo, timbre,
etc
o Brain is a massively parallel device with distributed operations. Some regions perform
component operations and others coordinate synthesis of this information
o Some sounds are frightening due to evolutionary predisposition
o Sensory perception is the creation of experience: a representation and construct
o We interact with technologies through our senses; senses can distort world around us
o Most of the time info we receive at sensory receptors is incomplete or ambiguous; our
brain fills information in: reason for optical illusions

Unconscious interference: even after told (e.g. told how an optical illusion works), your brain
will still process the same way

Artificial reverberation: cues about echo to calculate distance (echolocation)

Timing information: special effects (use of delay)

Ability to make sense of music depends on experience and neural structures that can learn
and modify themselves

Our brains learn type of grammar that is specific to the music of our culture

Non verbal communication can not be separated from verbal communication, since both give
context and understanding

Nonverbal: effective communication by means other than words (e.g. body language)
o Types of coding: iconic (e.g. pic of child jumping; can be misinterpreted), intristic (demo
of someone jumping)

Verbal communication: arbitrary coding (jump)

Communicative environment: influence of non-human factors on human transactions (e.g.

furniture, interior decorating, lighting, colours, temperature, etc.); e.g. dark room means sleep

Functions of non verbal communication:

o Expressing emotion, conveying interpersonal attitudes, presenting ones personality to
others, accompanying speech for purposes of managing turn taking, feedback,
attention, etc

Web 2.0: allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as
creaters (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to sits
where users are limited to passive viewing of content created for them

Lecture 3
Themes: UID principles, computers need to understand human behaviour & language

Computers need to understand a users implicit and explicit meaning

GUI: graphic user interface

Industries leading to development of contemporary audio technology: movie (people go for

social experience), recording (some prefer live, analogous recording over studio, digital
recording), call/contact center solutions, club DJ & performance
o E.g. the reactable table

Tactile technology: less literacy required to use, even illiterate can use it; new modalities that
go beyond text

Audio/computing industries are offering new ways for interaction between computing
environments and users. Technological advances have changed the depth and quality of
information that can be conveyed

Some feel HCI should provide discrete mapping between gestural control by a musician and
the expressive output of that instrument

When gestural mapping is transparent, a high degree of intimacy results, allowing a musician
to embody his or her instrument, whether if be acoustic or electronic

HCI (human computer interaction) is the study of how people interact with computers and to
what extent computers are or are not developed for successful interaction with human beings
o Used to make computer use more intuitive and obvious, will make a good relationship,
similar to how people explore the world naturally

User interface design aims to enhance the visual, usability, and technological qualities of an
interface. It adds to the satisfaction of the person using a product or a service

E.g. there was an ineffective UID that caused vote counts for elections to be skewed; ballot
design caused people to vote for wrong person; UID has large impacts

6 main qualities of a successful user interface:

o Usefulness: are the users needs satisfied by the interface functionality?
o Learnability: how easy is it for the user to fulfill basic tasks when using system for first
time
o Efficiency: after user knows the interface, how fast are they able to accomplish given
tasks

o Ease of memorization: when user returns to interface after a while, how easily do they
find the various functions again?
o Reliability: is the interface conceived in such a way that the user makes as few mistakes
as possible?

E.g. t9 predictive text: tries minimizing mistakes

o User friendliness: does the user like using the interface?

Interactive voice response (IVR) systems: costs, intelligent routing, customer experience; e.g.
if companys helpline is ineffective, can annoy customer

Natural language systems: applications in which the caller can speak more than a restricted
set of command words or menu choices, and the system will respond appropriately
o Goal: to anticipate what a caller is likely to say at a given point in the dialogue
o Tone of speaker, accents, clarity, background noise affects this

Steps to build a NL application:

o Collect user data (let people try it, look at something similar), develop annotation guide,
design call flow, develop application, test application, fine-tune post deployment

4 principles of UID for audio systems

o Know who your user is: profiling, research

Virtually impossible to anticipate all the variants callers may use for even a
simple task, language is infinitely flexible

o Recruit help in spotting inevitable defects in design user testing

Develop a conceptual design blueprint of the chosen application and validate it

with target users

Wizard of oz simulation: e.g. there is a call agent on phone with client, but there
is someone telling the agent what to say

o Develop a relationship between system and user - anthropomorphism

The science ensures good speech recognition, the art ensures compelling,
engaging conversations with the caller; analyze human-human dialogues

Personality of system is the character of the speech application: defined by

voice, audio, prompt wording, prosody; callers will develop perceptions of
systems personality even it explicit character not provided; some create a visual
image of the person they hear; businesses may consider developing fictional
biographies and face to go along with persona

o Develop mechanism to detect and correct errors confirmations

Errors or misunderstandings will occur in system conversations, just as they do in

human conversations

Design prompts to be polite, never blame caller for saying something that isnt in
the grammar. Part of design process should be devoted to uncovering all
possible error scenarios so a proactive strategy can take place

Lecture 4
3 core themes: media and technology actively transform content visual media is powerful,
visual artists try to dramatize an idea or feelings into a physical manifestation, visual media
have politics (are political)

Writing differentiates humans from other species

The origins of writing: Andrew Robinson (reading)

o Writing is among the greatest inventions in human history; perhaps the greatest

Symbols: something that stands for or suggests something else by reason of relationship,
association, convention, or accidental resemblance; especially: a visible sign of something
invisible

Process of encoding: transformation of speech (oral) and thought into symbols

Type of symbol produced: signals for which meaning will be attributed (encoded e.g. nonverbal
communication) or the perceivers code for interpreting (decoding) the signal

Conveying ideas or inner states through abstractions (encoding signals may be encoded in
different ways); Ekman & Friesen (1969) coding continuum (intrinsic> iconic > arbitrary)
proximity to a referent

Purpose of writing: urge for immortality (writing exists forever), predict the future (you cant
predict if you dont document the past to look for trends), identity or property marker,
accounting, expression (writing about feeling), teaching, ceremonial purposes (e.g. weddings,
batmitzfah), self-reflection

Writing always good? sometimes used for political gain, elitist, or propaganda

o E.g. puts agreements, laws, commandments on record; made growth possible;

commandments of kings could go far and survive his death
o People assume that if its written, its true; e.g. trusting everything on internet

French Cave Paintings: cave of chauvet-pont-dar; 30000 BCE (discovered 1994); similar to
graffiti today
o Cave refers to a building or piece of infrastructure, a gathering place
o Cave paintings are protected, while graffiti is illegal due to property ownership; context
matters

Grafitti is the name for images or lettering scratched, scrawled, painted or marked in any
manner on property; any type of public marking that may appear in the forms of simple written
words to elaborate wall paintings

Transfer from picture to text- phonetic symbols

Rebus principle: radical idea that pictographic symbol could be used for its phonetic value
o E.g. pic of bee + pic of leaf = believe; or gr8 c u l8er

Print and the reification of text: Elizabeth Eisenstein

o In the late 15th century the reproduction of written materials began to move from
copyists desk to the printers workshop (from manual copying to using technology)

Ancient scribes: males, powerful; modern stenographers/secretaries: women, poorly paid

What is said usually =/= what was written when it was dictared; things are added or left out
when there is transfer from oral -> written

It is one thing to show how standardization was a consequence of printing. It is another to

decide how laws, languages, or mental constructs were affected by more uniform texts

Why does something only acquire meaning or credibility when it is written? Can we convey
inner states and ideas using images? E.g. visual story telling, visual narratives, visual literacy

Visual literacy and rhetoric:

o Visual literacy is a universal grammar: preverbal, sophisticared, intuitive, and cognitively
challenging
o Is it the ability to decode and synthesize meaning presented in a visual or graphic form
o It is a key element to communication to create, use and evaluate images

Verbal literacy is the mastery of knowing and manipulating the basic components and genres
of written language: the letters, words, spellings, grammar, syntax

Visual literacy is the mastery of knowing and manipulating the basic components and genres
of visual text: structures (foreground), elements (line), genre (collage, photo)

Types of visual information: maps, diagrams, tables or charts, graphs, timelines, tree
diagrams, cutaways, and cross sections, flow charts, web diagrams, venn diagrams

Camel commercial:
o 1980: seductive mysterious woman with cigarette
o 1996: cartoon camels in convertible with cigarettes and sunglasses
o 2008: picture of nature, waterfall, etc
o 2011: person dying of lung cancer this is what lung cancer looks like

Visual rhetoric is a form of communication that uses images to create meaning or construct an
argumentthe way the images work on their own and collaborate with written text to create an
argument designed to move a specific audience
o Visual rhetoric: used to communicate, can make you act a certain way

When expert designers and artists are at work, it is difficult to separate the form from the
content
o E.g. graphic novels, film, comics, animation, graffiti art, conventional art, websites, icon
designers

E.g. when reading passage to yourself, hearing someone else read it, or see it in a video (like
a trailer); the context of the text is different each time

Meaning is lost or changed or gained when moving between these types of genres of visual
media (text, film, comics, animation); understanding of context changed when medium
changed

Sensory perception is the creation of experience: a representation and a construct

Reitification of text: we value reading and writing compared to oral

Lecture 5:
3 core themes: ubiquitous computer everyware, surveillance and sousveillance, internet of
things

3D 3 dimensions length, width, and depth

How the brain processes visual information

o We must have a good understanding of how people perceive images to achieve this
effect
o With digital 3D, animators fool your eyes and brain into thinking theyre looking into a 3D
space rather than a 2D screen
o Steps:

Wireframe: object drawn using lines only (..like a wire frame)

Wireframe (aliasing): adds dimension by giving object more shape

Hand surface: adds a surface to the object; covers the wire

Lighting: adds shadows to surroundings and object

Binocular vision: each eye sees a different image, and the brain combines them into a single,
unified picture. The brain uses the slight difference in angle between the two images, known as
parallax for depth perception

Analog 3D: colour filtering; images include two color layors in a single strip of film shown from
one projector; one layer is predominately red, and the other is predominately green or blue.
Need to wear 3D glasses with one red lens and one blue or green lens to force one eye to see
red part of the image and the other eye to see the blue or green part. Because of the
differences between the two, your brain perceives them as one image with three dimensions.

Digital 3D polarization. Polarized lenses allow only light waves that are aligned in the right
direction to pass through. In a pair of digital 3D glasses, each lens is polarized differently. The
screen is specially designed to maintain the correct polarization when the light from the
projectors bounces off of it.

3D animations and applications: Toy Story 3, Google Body

Live Maps:
o Google maps vs bing streetside
o Google maps: can not go to someones house/lawn, never sees people
o Bing streetside: has people (faces and car license plate blurred), less privacy = issue
o All of Canada except Quebec says pic of you in public without consent is not illegal
o Are not even live since most of the pics are from past, not that instant

Technologies behind mapping applications e.g. Google earth (avi bar-zeev)

o Data: the photographic maps available on satellite and aircraft images sources include
TeleAtlas and Earthsat, both of which compile photographs and maps into digital form
for commercial applications

o Cashing: a technology based on the memory subsystem of your computer. The main
purpose of a cache is to accelerate your computer while keeping the price of the
computer low. Caching allows you to do your computer tasks more rapidly
o Rendering: the process of generating an image from a model (or models in what
collectively be called a scene files), by means of computer programs (no 3D rendering)

E.g. rendering a curve on street; makes a generic curve but not the exact value

o Universal texture: an algorithm to determine which sections of the larger virtual texture
needs to be rendered at any given time and pages only those from system memory to
your graphics cards dedicated texture memory.

You own your youtube video but in the terms of service you grant youtube a non-exclusive,
worldwide, perpetual license to freely sub-license, re-distribute, re-publish, monetize, and
wahetevr they may want to do with your video

Youtube consequences:
o Social: has turned video sharing into one of the most impt parts of internet culture
o Economic: marketing firms try to go viral as a strategy
o Legal: a self-regulating system of view reports of breeches in terms of agreement.
Copyright

Surveillance: a close watch kept over something or someone

Technology ubiquity gives notion of surveillance

Panopticon: Jeremy Bentham

o The concept of the design is to allow an observer to observe (opticon) all (pan-) inmates
of an institution without them being able to tell whether or not they are being watched.
Power.

Surveillance is not always negative; depends on who is doing the watching (David Phillips)

Sousveillance: professor Steve Man (vigilant watching undersight)

o A taxicab passenger photographs the driver or keeps tabs on their behaviour
o 1-800 number: am I driving ok on a truck so citizens can report the behaviour of the
driver to the trucking company
o Student evaluations of a professor (forms handed out to students by professor, but
collected by a class rep. and anonymized by department)
o Citizens keeping watch on govt and police forces

o Shoppers keeping tabs on shop keepers (e.g. reporting misleading ads, unsafe fire
exits, etc)

Ubiquitous computer everyware (Greenfield)

The third age of computing: a post-desktop model of human-computer interaction in which

information processing has been thoroughly integrated into everyday objects and activities

Internet of things (IOT):a global network infrastructure, linking physical and virtual objects
through the exploitation of data capture and communication capabilities. This infrastructure
includes existing and evolving internet and network developments. It will offer specific object
identification, sensor and connection capability as the basis for the development of
independent cooperative services and applications. There will be characterized by a high
degree of autonomous data capture, event transfer, network connectivity and interoperability.

Green cities, communication technologies: Sejong, Korea

o If an elder falls, the floor will sense it and call 911, surveillance 24/7

Lecture 6
2 core themes: Contemporary communication technologies disrupt traditional business
models, contemporary communication technologies disrupt traditional legal definitions

Paywall: subscription (must make payments) to access info on website

Picture superiority effect

o One of the most pervasive findings in cognitive psychology is that pictures are more
memorable than their verbal counterparts. Studies have shown that after 30 seconds,
pictures are more easily recalled or recognized than words.

Firefox was most efficient in memory use after start up, with opera 2 nd, and safari + IE last

Symbols, pictograms, and icons are widely used components of user interfaces in ICT
applications and services, e.g. for navigation, status indication, and function invocation

Pictograms: are images that represent a word: they are symbolic representations of an object
or an idea

ISO 7001 public information symbols symbols that are used universally (e.g. female
washroom sign)

Icons: a graphic on a visual display terminal that represents both functions (actions) and
objects on the computer system. Icons may represent a file, folder, application or device on a
computer operating system

Well designed icons/symbols can have the following advantages over written commands and
labels:
o More distinctive, efficient for denoting special/spatial attributes, easier to recognize and
remember over long period of time, easier and faster to learn when the size of the
symbol set is small (e.g. Chinese = bigger set, harder to learn), language independent

Icons are time sensitive, culturally relevant, and poorly designed. Icons are highly problematic
o E.g. enter button on most keypads uses a return arrow which is a left over from the
old style typewriters where this icon indicated carraige return
o E.g. icon of bomb in red circle with strike: means no hazardous objects in Japan;
cultural drag

5 guidelines for icon design:

o 1. Simplicity:

Apple human interface guidelines (2008) recommend using one easily

recognized object, because the basic shape or silhouette of an icon can help
users to quickly identify it. Ziegler and Fahnrich (1988) also state that graphic
symbols should be constructed with as few graphical components as possible
usually not more than 2-3 components.

o 2. Test icon size with relevant user group:

According to the ETSI standard 201 379 (1998), no general recommendation can
be given on the minimum acceptable size of an icon, this is because what is
acceptable depends on a number of parameters:

The user

Viewing distance between user and interface

Complexity of the symbol

Display qualities of the medium including: resolution, contract, focus, glare

Viewing conditions including environmental factors such as poor

illumination

Physiological and psychological factors such as fatigue and workload

o 3. Shape (limited by manufacturing considerations)

According to the ETSI standard 201 379 (1998), on some equipment, particularly
small machines, special manufacturing considerations or lack of space preclude
the use of graphical symbols of the exact recommended shape in such cases,
the design of the graphical symbols use may be modified provided that their

pattern differs as little as practicable and still conveys clearly the intended
meaning
o 4. Colour

An investigation by Fenell (2006) into personal preference for the colour contrast
of icons revealed a preference for the following colour contrast option: black
icons on a white button, with a black surround

The Apple Human Interface guidelines (2008) recommend using colour

judiciously to help the icon tell its story. Colour should not be added just to
make the icon more colourful, smooth gradients typically work better than sharp
delineations of colour. Optimally 2-4 colours should be used.

o 5. Position

The position of labels with text or icons is crucial for an unfamiliar user with
impaired vision. All too often labels are positioned in a way that they are
obscured from the users view when controls are being operated. Both left
handed use and right handed controls should also be considered.

IEEE Spectrum Technology Winner 2011: chooses about new non-commercialized

technologies anre write about it in a paper; the winner was a form of augmentary reality (e.g.
Google Project Glass)

Theories of visual perception

o Johannes Kepler and the retinal image (1604) discovered that retinal images are
upside down and 2D
o Perceptual hypotheses (1940s) constructivises such as Hermann Von Helmholtz
external world cannot be directly perceived because of the poverty of the information in
the retinal images, we interpret the sensory data on the basis of stored knowledge
acquired through learning
o The ecological approach to perception (1950s) James Gibson information available
in the visual environment to an active observer provides information to the viewer
o The Gestalt School (1930s-present) perception through neutral isomorphism (e.g.
what we see reflect isomorphic patterns in the brain)
o The computational approach (1970s) vision seen as the process of forming a
description of what is in a scene from the retinal images

Digitization of text:
o Any process by which information is captured in digital form, whether as an image, as
textual data, as a sound file, or any other format

o We do it due to portability, easy distribution, compatibility with common devices,

compressibility, easy to share and modify, accessibility (helps with visually impaired too)

Page image: a digital image of a page of text, captured by a scanner or digital camera, and
expressed as a set of pixels in a format such as JPEG or TIFF

OCR: optical character recognition, a process by which software reads a page image and
translates it into a text file by recognizing the shapes of the letters with various levels of
accuraty that are difficult to predict. OCR generated text tends to be described as either
uncorrected (or raw) or as corrected

Encoding, markup: in this context, the process of adding information to a digital text by
including markup (usually SGML or XML) which explicitly identifies structural and other
features of the text. The term mark up refers to the added information. In a broader sense,
encoding may refer to any kind of added information or algorithmic transformation which, when
applied to a data file, enables it to perform some special function

Metadata: strictly speaking, any data that is about other data; in this context, more specifically,
the term usually refers to information describing a data file or document (for instance,
publication information, revision history, data format, rights status); info about info (e.g.
genre/track listing on CD)

SGML: standard generalized markup language; an international standard (ISO 8879) since
1986, is a metalanguage which can be used to define mark up languages

XML: extensible mark up language; a subset of SGML which was published as a W3C
recommendation in 1998

Recaptcha: the words you enter in sites such as tinypic to verify you are not a human; also to
help digitize text

E-books: e-ink (eletrophoretic ink) is a specific proprietary type of electronic paper

manufactured by E ink corporation, founded in 1997 based on research started at the MIT
media lab
o E-ink similar to magnetic toys, when you flip e-books, magnetic capsules inside the
device flip to reveal text using their colour/shade (..like watches that display numbers
and flip)
o After 10 years of ebook production, amazon launches kindle and ebook sales take off.
Fortune estimates 2010 ebook market was >$500 mill USH in US alone
o iPad, kobo, and others join in to explode readership
o next versions are multifunction, communication devices with video messages from the
author, and other behind the scenes productions
o book industry goes down, copyright issues as well

o Consequences; social, political, economical:

Books on tape, phones, now ebooks

traditional tradebook publishers are now scaredthe world of print books and
brick and mortar bookstores the whole distribution system is on the cusp of
changing fundamentally.

Power shifts to the online retailer/device maker new business models develop

Instead of making more books accessible and attractive, publishers are

attempting to prop up the print book business by upping the price of ebooks

Seniors that dont use internet have less access to news

In physical newspapers you look at all of the news sections; if online you only
look at the sections youre interested in

Online papers are ecofriendly

Comparing digital search engines:

o Internet companies, libraries, and archives are digitizing literary information and
providing access through internet search engines
o Project Gutenberg, university of pennsylvanias online books page, internet public
library, open content alliance
o Google controversery? 1. Digitized the entire collections of selected libraries (including
copyrighted material) and 2) requiring copyright holders to opt out

Canadian copyright law: automatic protects creative endeavors by ensuring that the creator
has the sole right to authorize their publication, performance, or reproduction (section 3(1)).
Copyright applies to all original:
o Literary or textual works: books, pamphlets, poems, computer programs
o Dramatic works: films, videos, plays, screenplays and scripts
o Musical works: compositions consisting of both words and music, or music only (lyrics
without music are considered literary works)
o Artistic works: paintings, drawings, maps, photographs, and sculptures
o Architectural works
o Performers performances (section 15)
o Broadcast communication signals (section 21)
o Song recordings such as records, cassettes, and CDs (section 18)

o streaming broadcast programming over the internet

Copyright protects intellectual property rather than physical property: the text of a novel or a
song, rather than the actual book or paper its printed on

Copyright entitlement legally ends at a certain point: generally, it endures for the lifetimes of
the creaters, the remainder of the calendar year in which the creator dies, and for 50 years
after the end of that calendar year

Fair dealing provisions: copyright act does allow individuals or organizations to use original
works without such use being considered infringement; criticism and review, news reporting,
and private study or research (section 29). The act also exempts certain categories of users,
such as a non-profit educational institution (section 29.4)

Creative commons licenses provide a standard way for authors to declare their works some
rights reserved (instead of all rights). If source youre quoting has a creative commons
license of public domain dedication (public domain: not under copyright anymore), you may
have extra rights to use the content

Digital book search engines arguable transcend an individual copyright holders interest by the
public benefit derived from such search engines

Google Books was sued

o Authors guild versus Google. Sept 20, 2005 & McGraw hill versus Google. Oct 19,2005
o 2008 - a settlement is reached between the publishing industry and google after 2
years negotiation. Google agrees to compensate authors and publishers in exchange
for the right to make millions of books available to the public
o March 2011: federal judge rejects settlement
o $125 mill to right holders of books they had scanned to cover the plaintiffs court costs
and to create a Book Rights Registry

Do you read the newspaper? Why or why not? What are the consequences of the death of
newspapers?

Lecture 7
Core themes: communication practices differ around the world, media affordances can
encourage new practices (e.g. textese), contemporary communications can challenge the
social order (e.g. texting in class is acceptable)

In News this week: school cell phone ban spawns niche storage market: charged $1-2 to
safe keep your phone while you are in school

o Why is it banned now? Because the phone is very popular now, is viral so needs to
be ban, also prevents stealing of phones; phones also are multifunction now, could
lead to cheating

Always on approach: e.g. Blackberries; consumers are always on phone now (since
phones are mobile); lead to term crackberry which compares the addiction of the drug to
addiction to phone
o Consequences: makes us more social (we text/communicate more); but surveillance
occurs

Text messages or short message service (SMS) is a mechanism of delivery of short

messages over the mobile networks. It is a store and forward way of transmitting messages
to and from mobiles.

The message (text only) from the sending mobile is stored in a central short message
center (SMS) which then forwards it to the destination mobile. This means that in the care
that the recipient is not available, the message is stored and can be sent later.

Where did it begin?

o Paging Japanese teenagers numeric phonetics

Used in businesses first; in 1993 it was noticed there was a peak use at
10PM (businesses werent working at that time!), turned out to be teenage
girls since pagers allowed receiving of messages

Broke the norm to use technology for a specific task, it was used for useless
chatter

In 2 years text messaging increased 450%. Why?

o Asia: early 1990s; Europe: mid 1990s

o North America: 2004-5; why so late? Because 1. High prices of text messaging in
North America compared to other places. 2. Incompatibility of text messaging and
phone plans. 3. Established landline

Teens adapt to technology faster than elderly people because:

o Exposed to more technology than parents did
o Were adapted to change, We rely on technology
o There is an expectation that we should know how to use computers now (e.g. similar
to how before we were expected to know how to write, literacy was valued)
o Technology gives liberation from parents (they let you go out more)
o Phones allow last minute arrangements

Types of mobile:
o Smartphone: category of mobile phones that enable users to read email, take
photos, and browse the internet
o Mobile vs portable distinction blurred
o Other mobiles include tablets, kindles, PDA (personal digital assistants
disappeared fast since phones colonized category)
o mp3s, watches, camera used less due to phone multifunctionality;
expensive/fashion/status watches left untouched, still doing well

Dominant & persistent social narrative that texting is negatively affecting literacy in young
people

How texting works:

o MS = mobile subscriber; SMSC = short message service center (which saves
message for a while then forwards it to recipient) possible since phones are like
computers, they have a memory and display

Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate, compute, and
use printed and written materials associated with varying contexts

Is texting correlated to falling literacy?

o Texting craze by Visco; says people are like zombies, body is there but mind
onphone
o False Alarm by Dourin; says texting is writing; literacy is maintained

Textese: a written vocabulary that has emerged from texting practice

o Is text lingo, but not exclusive to texting since we use it on computer too
o We use it since its faster, shorter (can fit more in one text), and give sus privacy
from parents or others that dont know lingo
o Initialism (e.g. LOL)
o Letter/number homophones (e.g. gr8)
o Contractions or shortenings (e.g. cuz)
o Emoticons (e.g. :D)
o Deletion of unnecessary words, vowels, punctuation, capitalization, etc

Beneficial communicative functions of text

o Hybrid register: formal and informal language allowing a variation in tone within the
context of a given message
o Navigating social relationships in the experimentation of identities

Memory theories:
o Retroactive interference: information presented at a later time may interfere with
information presented at an earlier time spelling words lost!
o Decay: learned information that is not accessed may be less accessible over time
o Low road/high road exposure to textese would transfer abbreviations unconsciously
to task requiring similar processes (e.g. informal writing; but make a conscious
decision to use standard English for formal contexts)
o Situated learning using textese could transfer to more general writing because it is
learned and used then transferred unintentionally

Standard English: sometimes differs from country to country (e.g. color vs colour)
o Used to minimize uncertainty, confusion, misunderstanding
o However can cause group exclusion

Text messaging and textese have different relationships with literacy

More conscious decisions (high-road) among more educated students

Those with poorer literacy correlated to lower-road tendencies failure to code switch

Etiquette
o Mobile phone use brings pressure to bear on well-established social conventions

o E.g. how to act when engaged with others in shared spaces

o Alerts and choices
o What to do versus what we ought to do?
o Moral rules and social order
o E.g. not acceptable to text and drive, is acceptable to text friend in the same room

Social and cultural impact

o Mobile technology has been linked (if only by popular media) to antisocial trends

Mobs

Sexual communication

Vehicle for bad manners, cheating, escaping school, etc

Health Concerns
o There is little proven link to direct health impacts and mobile devices
o There is minimum risk
o Living near cell phone towards is a concern but there is no proven direct health
linkage
o Why is it difficult to find how harm may be occurring with mobile phones? Since most
of them are correlational studies; different factors may play a part

Environmental concerns
o Aesthetic aspects of the environment towers
o Disruption to migrating bird population
o CN tower is used as a transmission line, the lights are not as bright during spring/fall
to prevent disruption of bird migration
o Environmental impact due to the manufacturing and disposal of the devices

Surveillance
o Mobile phone is implicated in declines in freedom
o Cell phones used as mobile tracking devices by government, parents, partners,
employers

Emergencies: cell towers help pinpoint a phones location for police, ambulance, or fire
personnel

Woman and mobile phones: in India, mobile phones have been symbolic of a new
independence
o Many women move to husbands place, phones allow communication at home; many
phones are also given as wedding gifts

Mobile phones are used for rural health, maintain ties; also as fashion accessory

General purpose technology

o In the past 5 years, mobile phones have moved into the camera and video recorder
market
o This is because the phone is always with the consumer, and the phone is integrated
into the consumers life
o Twin capabilities: being always present and being a link to the social use of the
technology

Lecture 8
Themes:

News of the week: Nokia patents haptic tattoos: application of tattoos with ferrormagnetic
inks that will vibrate based on commands from your phone

Augmented reality was mainly sight, however haptic provides us with touch as well

Surround haptics or tactile brush

o Tactile technology that creates high-resolution, continuous, moving tactile
sensations anywhere on the body.
o Haptics are feedback mechanisms that communicate information via the skin and
dermis

Create an environment that immerses the user in a world of tactile stimulation

Extensive repertoire of touches and sensations, ranging from a bug crawling on the skin to
drops of rain pouring on the body to the stroke of a sword, acceleration and free fall, Israr
told technewsdaily that the technology is scalable and can be used to replicate a variety of
free-world sensory experiences

Surround haptics enabled video game players who were seated in a gaming chair equipped
with vibrating actuators to feel road imperfections, sense skidding, braking and acceleration

and experience ripples of sensation when cars crashed into each other or landed after
being lofted into the air

Priority knowledge = knowledge we already have

Gesture Play: Bragdon; gameification (turning learning how to use device into a game)
o They wanted to introduce simple, game like elements to make gesture learning fun
and enjoyable

Gestural commands physically chunk command and operands into a single

action

Bimanual interaction enables higher input bandwidth

Stroke-based gestures can be easier to learn and recall than keyboard based
ones

Different commands can often be intermingled implicitly when gestures also

specify command parameters (e.g. selection lassos and erasure scribbles
while drawing)

Gesture can also be committed to physical muscle memory which can help
users focus on their task

Designing direct touch tabletops; there are benefits and challenges

Compared with traditional displays, interactive tables have 3 benefits

o Table is both the display and the direct input device inputs hand gestures and
intuitive manipulations, reduces cognitive load
o Horizontal tabletop surface provides opportunities for building collocated
collaborative environments
o Large surface area positively influences working styles and group dynamics

Usability challenges:
o Tabletop content orientation sharing common perspectives; e.g. switching/flipping
screen (landscape view vs portrait); two people can use it
o Occlusion and read visual obscuring information beneath hand
o Gestural interaction infinite input (take in infinite touches or accidental ones)
o Legacy application support mouse emulation
o Group interaction techniques multiple users accessing conventional single user
toolbars

o Walk up and walk away usage interface to user specific material (e.g. walking up
to touch screen on wall, touching it then walking away; screen must time out etc)

Haptics and tactile learning

o Touch is different from other senses in that it consists of a closed loop and a
bidirectional channel of both sensing and acting
o Touch provides information about spatial and physical properties of the environment
such as texture, mass, direction, distance, shape, size, etc

New technologies from the area of virtual reality (VR) now allow computer users to use
their sense of touch to feel virtual objects

An artifacts surface properties can be modeled so that someone using a haptic device
could feel it as a solid, three-dimensional object with different textures, hardness, or
softness

These haptic devices could have a large impact on museums. For example: making very
fragile objects available to scholars, allowing visitors who live far from museums to feel
objects at a distance, letting visually impaired and blind people feel exhibits that are
normally behind glass, and allowing museums to show off a range of artifacts that are in
storage due to lack of space

Digital citizen is a person that participates in society using a certain amount of information
technology (IT). To be a digital citizen, a person must have the skill and knowledge to
interact with private and government organizations through digital tools such as computers
or mobile phones, along with access to these devices

Microchip implants = the apocalypse?

o Law in Virginia would make it illegal to implant an identification or tracking device
into a persons body without their written consent. As the use of implanted
microchips become more common (people use them to track pets and could
possible use them for purposes such as securing ones medical history), law makers
are starting to address concerns
o However also has side effects such as constant surveillance and control

Communication involves themes such as control, power, fear, and choice

Lecture 9
Core theme: Tangible computing reduces the idea of a separation between virtual and
physical; designing for tablets using personas; role touch technologies can play in supporting
communication for persons with sensory and communication disorders; communicative
function communication is not only what we do, but what and how we convey info

Getting in Touch Dourish (2001)

o Style of interaction concerns not simply the set of physical devices, but also the
ways in which the computer fits into our environments and our lives
o Ubiquitous computing and virtual reality distinctions

Tangible computing: design trends

o Interacting with the virtual is translated into interacting with the physical
o Boundary between the virtual and physical world
o Design principles of tangible computing

Physicality: technology is the world

Integration: of computation and the artifact

Communication: what is important is not simply what the do but what they
convey and how they convey it

Art can start an encounter with another, and it can destabilize our our terms of reference
governing that encounter. To this extent it may enhance the possibilities that we will
emerge from that encounter with changed beliefs and attitudes.; Art = form of
communication

Visual Storytelling Club: 2 hours once a week to create art projects and visual
communication; uses photography, photoshop, traditional drawing materials, etc
o Used iPads as well as physical art materials and paper to draw; when using iPad
people were closer to iPad then the distance between the person and the paper if
drawing in real life; drawings with iPads also drawn more quickly; however they did
not sign their name like they did for physical hard copy paper drawings

Increased awareness of communication disorders has encouraged more focus on the

development of AAC technologies
o Studies that investigate the potential for assistive technologies for communication
mostly focus on computer-assisted instruction and voice output communication aids
(VOCAs)
o VOCAs have been more successful with children with more severe forms of
communication disorders. While some are very simple and can be programmed with
single words, others are more sophisticated and include graphic symbols or pictures,
which are activated using a finger, hand, optical pointer, headstick, etc

o The use of video modeling delivered via a handheld device (iPod) and a system of
least prompts were were used to improve transitional behaviours for students with
ASD in the general classroom setting

But design models and principles for creating AAC solutions are very minimal
o Particularly ones that focus on lower functioning children with communicative
disorders
o Data from 48 experiments suggest that children prefer computer programs with
higher interaction requirements and those that use sound, animation, and voice
features
o A web-based survey designed for involving children with and without disabilities in
the design of assistive technology devices with the primary school environment
(however only 21/257 participants had 1+ disability)

The present study seeks to narrow this gap

o Can we provide better tools for AAC developers?
o Longitudinal study conducted from Feb 2010 June 2011
o Examined the use of AAC software on iPod and iPad devices by children with
communicative disorders including but not limited to autism

The participants are: 70 children; 4-13 y.o., with a special needs from an elementary school
o 12 teachers collected data for 36/70 students over 2 phases
o Participants had a range of exceptionality (disabilities); mostly autism
o 72% were non-verbal

Variables of interest:
o Attention Span

Measured using application Count to 100 by Midnight Soft

Half of the students (younger and/or with lower developmental abilities)

Student instructed to follow the counting on the program; the counting in 1s

of program corresponded to the time the child was engaged in the activity

Conducted 3-4 times a week for 3 months

o Receptive Identification of 2D objects

ABA Basic by KV Adaptive LLC

Half of students (older and/or with higher developmental abilities)

Student told to select image corresponding to word teacher said, or asked to

identify a picture

Conducted 3-4 times a week for 3 months

o Communication skills and abilities

Measured using the Communication Matrix

Communication Matrix pinpoints how an individual communicates and

provides a framework for determining logical communication goals; used for
professionals and parents to document communication skill sof children with
disabilities

Developed by Dr. Rowland of Oregon Health and Science University

All of the students

Showed what skills were not used, emerging or mastered in periodic table like
visual

Is appropriate for this study since it accommodates any type of

communicative behaviour such as augmentative and alternative forms of
communication (AAC) or pre-symbolic behaviour

Data analysis entailed:

o Creating a visual rep. of the data

On paper then on computer

Organized on two axes, level of communication skills mastered and emerging

o Forming groups of individuals with similar communication skills; data appeared in

clusters

The 7 unique groups are used to develop a set of design personas

o Personas: a user archetype used to guide decisions about product features,
synthesized from interviews with real people, then capture 1-2 page decriptions with
behaviour patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional
personal details to bring persona to life
o notion was created by Alan Cooper in his 1999 book The Inmates are Running the
Asylum
o Why are we using personas?

They describe the skill profiles and characteristics of children with

communication disorders

The proposed AAC personas can be used by AAC software developers and
designers more generally to create more effective software for children
affected by communication disorders

o AAC personas should undergo testing and refinement through their use and
adaptation by AAC software developers

Theory of Media Entropy

o Entropy: used to describe thermodynamics; is a measure of uncertainty and
disorder; or unpredictability. Less information = more uncertainty
o Can increase predictability of the iPad/tablet more consistently offered, multimodal
information via voice affect texture, icon sizes, etc be effectively decreasing the
cognitive load for autistic children who use them?
o Is media entropy a part of the reason for the success of these devices in classrooms
of children with sensory disorders?

Other findings: exploring roles that handheld touch technologies can play for children with
communicative disorders
o Hand held techonologies can play a communicative role:

Results show improvement in communication skills

Gains in communication made

And a social mediating role:

Intro of iPod touch to classroom = social interaction

Engagement level for students with ASD exhibited when using

applications with haptic feedback

o Non verbal student using ABA toys and spontaneously said a word and started using
it daily

Lecture 10:
Communication: the individual and the network; concepts: networked individualism,
multiplexity, digital divide, digital diversity; ICT4D: opportunities and conflicts

What is communication? Traditional definitions:

o Requires a sender, message, and intended recipient, although receiver need not be
present or aware of the senders intent to communicate at the time of
communication; thus communication can occur across vast distances in time and
space
o Communication is the activity of conveying meaningful information

Who decides what is meaningful? E.g. sup,dude or :D may not seem

meaningful but if it makes someone happy then it is, so who defines
meaningful?

o Social systems are systems of communication: Luhmann (1992) - communication

occurs only when a difference of utterance and information is understood

In understanding communication grasps a distinction between the information value of its

content and the reasons for which the content was uttered
o Information versus expressive behaviour
o Communication as social

What is technology?
o Application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, esp. in industry: computer
technology, recycling technologies
o Machinery and equipment developed from such scientific knowledge
o Can be used to refer to a way of doing something or a means of organization
o Comes from greek word technologia, which is a combination of techne meaning
craft, and logia meaning saying

Social media
o Communication technology in an interconnected world

McEwen and Wellman

o Personal community research invokes a certain understanding of community
instead of regarding communities as bound up with organized institutions such as
family, neighbourhood, work, or voluntary organizations, personal community
research treats communities as the network of personal relationships that a given
individual belongs to and/or manages
o Mosque =/= personal community since it is not formed by you, it is an institution

With the increasing use of communication technologies in relationships some have

questioned whether online relationships are authentic; that is, how do they measure up to
the gold standard of face-to-face interaction, which is the real thing?

o The word real makes it sound more authentic than virtual

Some view the internet as a realm separate form the concreteness and realness of the
physical world, but research shows that the internet is perceived to be integrated with
personal communities and is rarely viewed as a separate second life in itself

ICTs increasingly provide fertile ground for sociality. Virtual places and constructed via
instant messaging, texting, wikis, blogs, social networking software (e.g. facebook),
MMORPGs and other social media like twitter

They offer unstructured environments for hanging out and the content of social life
enacted virtually mirror that of the offline world

For Wellman, these technological shifts instantiate a broader shift from group-oriented
relationships to networked individualistic ones. Work community and domesticity have
moved from hierarchically arranged densely knit, bounded groups (little boxes) to social
networks

Networked individual represents a person-to-person social organization vs. a place-based

structure

When a relationship with someone who takes on multiple roles in diff social arenas of your
life the relationship is multiplexed

Communicative intensity across multiplexed media drives us to share more of ourselves to

overlapping audiences

One of the complications of the networked society is the growing difficulty in intentionally
keeping people in separate roles. A significant part of the problem is that the networked
individual is publicly accessible from many different media routes, is searchable via
browsers, and often does not know how to delicately navigate requests from persons in
their lives who wish to extend the relationship by virtue of be part of another media group

By applying the term virtual to a relationship type we introduce some bias about the
substantiveness of the connection. Virtual speaks to someone or something that exists in
essence or effect though not in actual fact. The term conjures up a feeling that there is
something imaginary about the connection, that it is a more significant form of relation, and
is somewhat artificial
o online or offline are better terms

Internet allows identity for experimenting

ICTs for Development (ICT 4D) Information And Communication Technologies For
Development (of countries) is a general term referring to the application of information and
communication technologies (ICTs) within the fields of socioeconomic development,
international development and human rights

Found that Toronto doesnt has as many FB users as thought compared to remote areas;
tis is because more remote areas = more need for FB for interconnection

The basic hypothesis behind the approach is that more and better information and
communication furthers the development of a society (be this to improve income,
education, health, security, or any other aspect of human development)

Developed countries has more internet users and a greater rate on increasing internet
users compared to developing countries

Justice: giving to each what he/she is due; not having internet access is a prob due to
human rights

Social justice: encompasses economic justice. Social justice is the virtue which guides us in
creating those organized human interactions we call institutions. In turn, social institutions,
when justly organized, provide us with access to what is good for the person, both
individually and in our associations with others. Social justice also imposes on each of us a
personal responsibility to work with others to design and continually perfect our institutions
as tools for personal and social development (center for economic and social justice)

Barriers to implementing ICTS4D:

o Lack of infrastructure: no electrical power, no running water, bad roads, etc
o Lack of health services: diseases like HIV, TB, malaria
o Lack of employment: no jobs in marginalized rural areas
o Hunger: hungry users have problems concentrating
o Illiteracy: text user interfaces do not work well, innocatived human computer
interfaces are required
o Lack of means to maintain the project: some projects may be left to deteriorate in
time because maintenance is sporadic and if a component breaks it is costly to
obtain skilled people and parts to make a repair
o Lack of means to maintain the project due to short term grants
o Lack of support from local government
o Social contexts: potential users living in rural marginalized areas often cannot easily
see the point of ICTs because of social context and also the impediments of hunger,
disease, and illiteracy
o Possibility of encouraging brain drain
o Corruption is one of the factors that hampers the implementation of ICT projects in
rural areas

o Training and seminars must be conducted according to a suitable time for farmers to
make sure that their daily routine is not affected
o Many applications are not user friendly
o Projects are sometimes not being needs-driven and not relevant to local context

Mobile technology is fundamentally transforming the world in which we live in

How the transformation of literacy is effecting broad social change

Educational implications of literacy in a hyper texted world

Digital divide: is an information access capability gulf that separates those who are
connected to the internet and those who are not
o There was a protest against closing libraries due to free internet access

Digital diversity: any form of communication that expresses and explores the differences
and similarities within and between various cultures, populations, people, and communities,
regarding their understanding, tolerance, usage, respect of, and accessibility through digital
or technological multimedia. The differences may be influenced by numerous factors that
include, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, sexuality, gender, age, interests, and
education
o M-pesa Kenya; banking via SMS
o Village phone ladies Bangladesh; used one cell phone as payphone in village

Tutorial

First RPG games: MUDs (multi user dungeon/domain/dimension) AND MOOs (text based
virtual reality system where multiple users can be online at same time and modify how server
behaves to everyone, used in MUDS)

Usability Heuristics:
o Visibility of system status; match between system and real world; user control and
freedom; consistency and standards; error prevention; recognition rather than recall;
flexibility and efficiency of use; aesthetic and minimalist design; helps users recognize,
diagnose, and recover from errors; help and documentation

Lecture 11
Guest Lecture

Avatar: virtual representative of one self (represents real life identity and traits)

Character: has own independent identity; new identity created with chosen traits

Toon: vehicle for interacting with in a game (no meaningful identity, arbitrary traits)

MMORPG: massively multiplayer online role play game

o Persistent worlds/characters: things continue to happen when you go offline

Why did MMO(RPG)s happen? New servers could handle multiple log ins and massive
amounts of people when the old servers couldnt; technology caught up and advanced

Avatar vs game design: game design tied to character creation

o Diff characteristics, profession, in-game role, social circles (factions or guilds),
different role sets
o Players identity can be influenced by how game is designed to be played

Avatar vs Community
o Community perceives you based on avatar
o GIRL = guy in real life
o Extreme prevalence of white character archetypes
o You can choose own name, create alts, ignore or log off

Avatars are rare in MMORPGs; People want to experience a different identity of their
creation with out it being weird (e.g. using diff gender)

Worst thing about online games are other players due to anonymity

Core themes: challenging the notion that one thing = one identity; anchoring principles of real
world identity, anchoring principles of real-world identity (such as gender, race, or other
physical and psychological properties) are something we can transcend online

For some players, the avatar becomes a purposeful projection or idealization of their own
identity, while for others, the avatar is an experiment with new identities

There are also those for whom the avatar is merely a pawn the means for an end. These
differences actually fall along personality differences

Most people behave very similarly on MMORPG and real life; females do it more than
males

Those that are older tend to act more similarly to real life than younger people

Introverted players tend to create characters that are projections or idealizations of

themselves, while extroverted players tend to experiment with new identities through their

characters. Of Course, differences in avatar importance are also influenced by differences

in motivation

Players driven by achievement focus more on the power and effectiveness of their avatars
equipment, while players driven by socialization or immersion focus on avatars
appearance

The difference in emphasis on character customization between asian and western

MMORPGs is also quite striking. Asian MMORPGs typically have pre-defined character
appearances while western MMORPGs give the user the ability to customize many
physical features

While at first it appears as if western gamers care more about their appearances and
individualism compared with asian gamers, something more intriguing is happening. Full
fledged character creation systems frustrate asian gamers because they do not like the fact
that more skilled users can create avatars that are more attractive and appealing than
theirs. Instead of individualism, the underlying issue is two very different views of
egalitarianism

World of warcraft provides a clean class categorization. From survey data, there are
significant age differences among players who prefer different character classes. Players
who prefer rogues and shamans tend to be younger than players who prefer warlocks and
hunters

Female players are more likely to prefer priests, hunters, and druids, while male players are
more likely to prefer rogues, warriors, and shamans

Critiques of MMORPGs
o Some people think of MMORPGs as elaborate make-believe fantasies that are not
only pointless but perhaps of danger to teenagers who may lose hold of their real
identities
o Others point out the MMORPGs in the end are just games and not worthy of our
attention
o Some argue that virtual relationships are inherently meaningless
o These games are pointless because nothing that is achieved in these environments
has any real life meaning or value

Tutorial:

Wikipedias 5 pillars: Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia; written from neutral pov; free content
that anyone can edit, use, modify, and distribute; editors should interact in a respectful and civil
manner; wiki does not have any firm rules

Lecture 12
Core themes: contemporary communication technologies transform business models; green
it; the future is networked

A person on diff sites usually has diff idealizations and projections for each
o E.g. twitter for academic purposes, FB for personal

Age is a strong determiner/indicator of if a person online is similar or diff from real life, not
gender

Cloud computing refers to both the application delivered as services over the internet and
the hardware and system software in the data centers provide those services (page 258)
o

Virtualization application are separated from infrastructure/servers

Virtualized images are created on servers by partitioning server into sectors

Shared resources utilizing idle server space, like carpooling or using dark fibre

Utility computing where server capacity is accessed across the grid as a variably priced
shared service

Multi-tenancy

Software as a service: Prezi, webmail, Youtube

o Applications are available on demand on subscription basis. Gmail vs Microsoft
exchange

Pay as you go model: borrowed from other successful businesses (e.g. mobile
communication)

Advances in wide area networking; e.g. the ubiquity of the internet

Social, political, economical consequences?

o Outsourced IT staffing
o Capital expenditure low
o Supports new businesses with unpredictable growth
o Commodification of computing power utility like service like drinking water or
electricity

Opportunities of the cloud (providers)

o Economies of scale afforded by statistical multiplexing and bulk purchases requires

extremely large data centers
o Leverage existing investments in large datacenters and large-scale software
infrastructure and operational expertise
o Make a lot of money
o Leverage customer relationships (IBM and GBS)
o See your business as a platform for other apps (Facebook)

Amazon web services

A set of lower-level services such as an operating system or computer language interpreter

or web server offered by a cloud provider, on which developers can build custom
applications

Obstacles
o Pay-as-you-go pricing can be more expensive than buying and depreciating the
infrastructure costs over the same period

Trading off transference of risk and elasticity

o Availability of the cloud

As a cloud user 2 new points of failure introduced: the cloud itself and
network access to it (bottlenecks)

o Data lock-in APIs for cloud computing are proprietary non-standard/closed

Ease of extraction of data from one site to run on another makes users
vulnerable to price increases, provider reliability, etc

Control shifts to the provider

o Data confidentiality and auditability

Essentially a public versus private network matter

Security: encryption for storage and file transfer, firewalls, etc

o Software licensing:

Green It

Current software licenses restrict the computers on which software can run

Change in licensing structures to better fit cloud computing

o The study and practice of designing, manufacturing, using, and disposing of

computers, servers, and associated subsystems such as monitors, printers,
storage devices, and networking and communication systems efficiently and
effectively with minimal or no impact on the environment

Convergence: previously separate technologies sharing resources and evolving to perform

similar tasks