The Effects Of ICT On Our Lives

ICT effects our lives in many ways, anf for those who have a computer with the internet, which in the UK is a majority then you have many more avenues to go down in life.
The majority of people argue that ICT has a positive impact on our lives because it opens doors and windows into our potential as business men, entreupeners etc. This is because there are thousands of posibilities with Web 2.0, the idea of collaberating with fellow business men and sharing ideas to work to your advatage. As well as every day task, shopping can be done at home instead of making the trip down to the supermarket for example. Howeveer, a minority feel that the internet can be a negative thing. For example, if you take a look at the concept of the T.V it takes you away from friends and family and takes you out of reality, sure the same as using the computer, it breaks up social groups. Despite that idea, this can be easily countered with the fact that web 2.0 creats social groups through collaberation etc.

These are most of the considerable factors that the internet change.


Working styles
Communication - IM, E-mail, Myspace
Education - VLE
Entertainment and leisure
Banking and shopping - Online services
Decision making
Employment opportunities - C.V archives
Crime, and crime prevention
Civil rights
Legislation

Online Services

Communications – Chat Rooms, Video Conference

Education – (VLE) – Virtual Learning Environment, Educational Websites

Real Time Information – Information that is updated on a regular bases

Commerce – Buying stuff online

Government – Grants, Online Voting

Business – Networks, Video Conferencing, Collaborative Working

Entertainment – Multi-User Games

Download Services – Music, Film, Software Upgrades

Archiving – Long Term Storage

==========================================================

Communications;
some examples of communications: Blue tooth, Chat Rooms, Video Conference, Mobile Phones, Blogging, Myspace, Facebook, MSN.
Internet Communication is a way of "virtually" communicating with someone else or a group of people through applications or other devices, the main aim of this is to share, chat and collaborate.

==========================================================

Education;
some examples of Internet education: Video Conferencing, Educational Websites.
Internet Education is a form of educating students via video conferencing etc. It is mainly aimed at students and schools that have the technology to do so, the ones "that can".

==========================================================

Real Time Information;
some examples of real time information: traffic information, weather information, sports websites, shop websites, "spontaneously changing information".
Real Time Information is information that isn't set in stone, it changes daily to match, for example the weather changes, therefore the information changes.

==========================================================

Commerce:
some examples of commerce: holiday websites, retailer outlets.
Commerce is a branch of production which deals with the exchange of goods and services from producer to final consumer. It comprises the trading of something of economic value such as goods, services, information or money between two or more entities. Commerce functions as the central mechanism which drives capitalism and certain other economic systems.

==========================================================

Government:
some examples of government: electronic voting, bill paying, taxes, finances.
also known as e-gov, digital government, online government or in a certain context transformational government) refers to government’s use of information technology to exchange information and services with citizens, businesses, and other arms of government. e-Government may be applied by the legislature, judiciary, or administration, in order to improve internal efficiency, the delivery of public services, or processes of democratic governance.

===========================================================

Business:
some examples of business: E-Shops, E-procurement, E-Malls, E-Auctions, Virtual Communities, Collaboration Platforms, Third-Party Market places, Value-Chain Integrators, Value-Chain Service Providers, Information Brokerage.
E-Business is said to be alot like E-Commerce, however, E-Business refers to more strategic focus with an emphasis on the functions that occur using electronic cababilites, E-Commerce is a subset of an overall E-Business strategy.

============================================================

Entertainment:
some examples of entertainment online. games, presentations, tutorials, music clips, video clips, google videos, youtube etc.
Entertainment on the internet is a way of viewing, listening and using multimedia through different mediams.

============================================================

Download Servics:
downloading services enable people to take software from websites and use it on their computers, such as music software or even games.

============================================================

Archiving:
archiving is a safe way of strong all you rinformation on the internet, this is so it can be accessed all around the world from any computer for more convinience.

The Long Tail

The first time the expression "The Long Tail" was phrased was in October 2004 by Chris Anderson in Wired Magazine to describe certain business and economic models such as eBay. Businesses with distribution power can sell a greater volume of otherwise hard to find items at small volumes than of popular items at large volumes.

• When storage and distribution costs are high only the most popular products can be sold
• Where inventory storage and distribution costs are insignificant, it because economically viable to sell unpopular products.

The Long Tail does have cultural and political impacts. Where the cost of inventory storage and distribution is high, only the most popular products are sold. However, where the Long Tail works, the minority are catered for to, and individuals are offered greater choice.

The Digital Divide . Progress

The Progression of The Digital Divide:



"The digital divide is not just about hardware, after all, but encompasses everything from language and education barriers to Internet connectivity. While certainly a laudable effort, it will be interesting to see if Pure Digital will be willing and able to provide the kind of support to truly make the company’s effort effective. It’s one thing to send video cameras to the developing world, it’s another thing entirely to get that footage back to audiences where it can make an impact. "

- Jackson West



====================================================================

The Digital Divide Between Male and Female:

In terms of the Digital Divide within a gender context, there is a considerable gap between the two genders. Clearly it can be said that a male society dominate cyberspace. However there is a defined place for females, and this seems to be a small space in which females are bombarded with sexual discrimination, abuse and pornography

=====================================================================

Most news reports and other t.v programmes refer to the internet to recieve extra information on a latest theme or franchize, howwever, this is a bad stereotypical view to follow as not everyone has the internet. For example the BBC News may broadcast a live news report and advice people to refer to their website to find out more, this is wrong and unfair. Knowing that there is a civil digital divide in the U.K, (the South generally having more internet access then the North) which means that not everyone has the priveledges that others do, this forces people to miss out.

One Laptop Per Child

Specification

XO-1

Manufacturer Quanta Computers
Type Subnotebook
Connectivity 802.11b/g /s wireless LAN3 USB 2.0 portsMMC/SD card slot
Media 1 GB flash memory
Operating system Fedora-based (Linux)
Input KeyboardTouchpadMicrophoneCamera
Camera built-in video camera (640×480; 30 FPS)
Power NiMH or LiFePO4 battery removable pack
CPU AMD Geode LX700@0.8W + 5536
Memory 256 MB DRAM
Display dual-mode 19.1 cm/7.5" diagonal TFT LCD 1200×900


One Laptop per Child Foundation:
"Most of the nearly two–billion children in the developing world are inadequately educated, or receive no education at all. One in three does not complete the fifth grade.The individual and societal consequences of this chronic global crisis are profound. Children are consigned to poverty and isolation—just like their parents—never knowing what the light of learning could mean in their lives. At the same time, their governments struggle to compete in a rapidly evolving, global information economy, hobbled by a vast and increasingly urban underclass that cannot support itself, much less contribute to the commonweal, because it lacks the tools to do so."

- http://laptop.org/vision/mission/

The One Laptop Per Child foundation is a U.S based (non-profit) charity which aims to give the 3rd world countries a chance in life by introducing computers and internet to their lives. This works by someone buying 2 XO-1 Laptops for $100, however you only receive one and the other goes to a third world country. They believe that any countries most precious natural resource is it's children, and therefore by giving them the chance to collaborate through the internet provides the idea of "learning learning".

Current Participating Countries:

1. Argentina
2. Brazil
3. Cambodia
   
4. Costa Rica
5. Dominican Republic
6. Egypt
   
7. Greece
8. Libya
9. Nigeria
10. Pakistan
11. Peru
12. Rwanda
13. Tunisia
14. USA
15. Uruguay
    
    All the countries above have committed the project one way our another, however their promises are not binding.
    

OLPC is funded by a number of sponsor organizations, including AMD, Brightstar Corporation, eBay, Google, Marvell, News Corporation, SES, Nortel Networks, Red Hat, and most recently Intel. Each company has donated two million dollars.
The organization is chaired by Nicholas Negroponte and its CTO is Mary Lou Jepsen. Other principals of the company include former MIT Media Lab director Walter Bender, who is President of OLPC Software and Content, and Jim Gettys, Vice-President of Software Engineering.

Information From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XO-1_(laptop)

Here are some issues that co-inside with the Digital Divide:
-Gender Issues
-Disability
-Role of Language
-cultural inequality regarding the content available on the World Wide Web
-the role of educators in reducing the digital divide in the classroom

However, there is a large group of companies that rely hugely on the world wide web. For example, Australia use long distance learning via the Internet due to having such a low population in comparison to the rather large size of the country.
My Counter Argument:
Despite the Internet being regarded nationally as a positive luxury any country would like to have, it isn't always the step forward. Generally the more technologically advance countries are rich, and are stereotyped as being "lackadaisical", for example; The USA are huge culprits of this kind of behaviour, and Germany, these two countries are rated the as the two biggest countries with the highest cholesterol ratings, now however this doesn't seem important but if you take into account how much they rely on the web for their living, virtually they may never need to walk out their own door again, thus this could lead to no exercise, social clubs or even general socialising. Whereas if you take into the perspective of countries that don't have the luxury of using the Internet, for example; Nigeria have to work for their food and living, they don't have the luxury of lazing around doing nothing or even playing a game, they have to work to the extreme to just about put their food on their table, this is because the only real major income available in Nigeria is chemical engineering, which is in short terms, oil.

The Digital Divide

Definition:
The term ‘Digital Divide’ refers to the gap between people with access to a computer (preferably with Internet) and the people who are lesson fortunate. The Digital Divide is mainly split up into three different categories, these are:

• socioeconomic (rich/poor)



• racial (white/minority)



• geographical (urban/rural)

However, the term ‘global digital divide’ refers to the difference between countries on what access they have to digital and information technology. This divide takes into account wealth, ethnicity and area of those involved in the divide.

Here is a map of the types of people who use the Internet (%)



The Digital Divide In E-Democracy
In theory the concept of E-democracy is still in early development, despite this, in practice things such as blogs and wiki are helping further the way democracy develops. However, the negative side to E-Democracy if applied to a liberal democracy is the capacity to participate in an "e-government". By this i mean that some more computer generalised countries have more chance of participating whereas the poorer countries would be under-represented and others would be over-represented in a situation where online voting etc is concerned. Thus, this corrupts the idea of the equality principles of democracy.


Civil Digital Divide In The U.K Alone




As you can see from the map above the South of Britian have modern computers with a broadband connection.

Picture and information Refernces:
http://gguillotin.chez-alice.fr
http://www.ellythompson.co.uk
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_divide#Digital_divide_in_the_context_of_e-democracy

Multimedia

Multimedia is media that uses a variety of information content and information proccessing. The main aspects that are incorporated with multimedia are:

• text


• audio
  
• graphics


• animation


• video


• interactivity (hyperlinks)
  

Multimedia is categorized into two different types, linear and non-linear. Linear is where for example a presentation follows intself in a line and has a fixed pathway. Whereas, non-linear is where the prsentation has no real pathway and some of the slides are conected through hyperlinks, therefore it includes interactivity.

Multimedia presentations can be live or recorded. A recorded presentation may allow interactivity via a navigation system. A live multimedia presentation may allow interactivity via interaction with the presenter or performer.

Multimedia finds its application in various areas including, but not limited to, advertisements, art, education, entertainment, engineering, medicine, mathematics, business, scientific research and spatial temporal applications.

Multimedia can only be used properly with a broadband connection.
Despite nothing physiclly changes via wire connections. Boradband has a different function which has more space to stream more information through at one time, whereas dial up connection has a smaller band for information to pass through because only small chunks of information can come through at once.