Week 4 is well underway as I’m sure you all no by now and there’s plenty to do so I will just jump right in.

I’ll begin with Wednesdays lecture because there was quite a lot covered in it that I didn’t really know anything about so I’ll use this as a chance to hammer it into my brain. The topic was Old Communications Technologies so naturally we began at the oldest form of communications: rock art. Or you can call them cave drawings or whatever term you want use, these are the first ways that we began to communicate via images, letterings and symbols. As this developed through time, dance, music and more elaborate symbols were used in tribes. Keep in mind that they weren’t communicating to remind that ‘we need milk’, these practises were deeply rooted in faith and religion and represented mythological beliefs. From here we went on to look at the development of the alphabet through hieroglyphics and the Ugarit culture.

Fast forward to the 15th centaury where the development of the printing press is introduced via the first form of newspaper, the Gutenberg Press, which first printed passages from the bible. Through time communications developed to more familiar forms such and the telegraph, radio, telephone and television.

Also touched on was the topic of semiotics, which I vaguely remember being interested in high school English and Media. As a refresher I read through the ‘semiotics for beginners’ link that was provided on the lecture notes and I think after a bit more investigation it might prove to be the topic or theme of my essay. Theres no basic definition for the term semiotics, it is known as the study of signs and had a lot to do with representation.
The reading for this week, and the last couple of weeks has been the Walter Benjamin, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction paper. I followed the advice and read it quickly and didn’t understand the bulk of it, then went back into it with some more depth and I have to say I haven’t really wrapped my head around it. Still, the discussion we had in the lecture about Benjamin’s’ work and life did shed some light on it. While on the subject of Benjamin we discussed some other major theorists and their ideas including the Frankfurt School, Habermas, and Louis Althusser who were all from different times.
The tute task this week was to answer 10 posted questions without using Wikipedia or Google search engine. So, assuming I could still use other search engines I went to the faithful butler at Ask.com. Here are the questions and answers as well as the links I found through Ask.com.
1.Who was the creator of the infamous "lovebug" computer virus?
-Onel de Guzman, 24, a computer school student
http://archives.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/06/29/philippines.lovebug.02/index.html
2. Who invented the paper clip?
-William D. Middlebrook, he was not first to have the idea however he was first to patent the paper clip and created the macheine that made the paperclips.
http://www.ideafinder.com/history/inventions/paperclip.htm
3. How did the Ebola virus get its name?
- virus gets its name from a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where it was first recognized.
http://www.ccds.charlotte.nc.us/History/Africa/04/burton/burton.htm
4. What country had the largest recorded earthquake?
-1960 Chile
http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0763403.html
5. In computer memory/storage terms, how many kilobytes in a terabyte?
- 1 terabyte = 1 073 741 824 kilobytes
www.t1shopper.com/tools/calculate/ - 43k
6. Who is the creator of email?
Commercial Email. In 1988, Vinton Cerf arranged for the connection of MCI Mail to the NSFNET through the Corporation for the National Research Initiative (CNRI) for "experimental use", providing the first sanctioned commercial use of the Internet. Shortly thereafter, in 1989, the Compuserve mail system also connected to the NSFNET, through the Ohio State University network.
www.livinginternet.com/e/ei.htm
7. What is the storm worm, and how many computers are infected by it?
A computer visus that began attacking windows computers in jan 2007, usually with the attatchment names ‘230 dead as storm batters europe’. It effected thousands of computers.
http://www.snopes.com/computer/virus/valentine.asp
8. If you wanted to contact the prime minister of australia directly, what is the most efficient way?
To contact the Prime Minister it must be done through the Australian Government website.
http://www.australia.gov.au/
9. Which Brisbane-based punk band is Stephen Stockwell (Head of the School of Arts) a member of?
Black Assassins.
No Source, heard him say it in the lecture yesterday, but it can also be found at http://www.griffith.edu.au/school/art/staff/stockwell.htm.
10. What does the term "Web 2.0" mean in your own words?
Web 2.0 is a term used to refer to a movement concerning the next generation of the internet that created a more user-based internet.
http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

Using Ask.com was generally pretty similar to using Google although I do find the recommended pages to often be way off, I still feel like anything on the internet from independent sources, half of those answers could be made up and I would never really know. I suppose the best way to get around that would be to double check with reliable databases such as informit.com and factiva.com.

Thanks!