Week 2 Readings

Computer Hardware

This article was a good read and I appreciate it because, while I use a computer for 90% of my job and a lot outside of work (sports forums, torrents, setting my home wireless network, etc) I never really learned the "nuts and bolts". The easy to understand definitions of RAM, etc. were useful. However, there were too many abbreviations that weren't spelled out in the article - PCI, PCI-E, AGP. I know these have something to do with slots on the motherboard but if someone could elaborate on this, I'd appreciate it! :)

Moore's Law

In all honesty, a lot of this article went over my head so I do not have a whole lot to say about it. The discussion of the future and how Moore's Law applies was interesting. Thankfully the video did a good job in explaining Moore's Law without a lot of technical speak. The discussion of the difference hardware and software improvement was interesting. It is understandable why software lags as far as programming goes but will this always be the case?

www.computerhistory.org

I learned so much reading this site. Most interesting was the Internet history and finding out the origin of things like ASCII, routers, networks, etc. The multitude of high quality images on the site are great, especially the one of the high speed printer from 1975! Browsing some of the articles in Core was interesting, including 'Rescued Treasures'. Reading about all of the exhibits at the museum and then sitting back and thinking about it, it's quite amazing how much has happened with computer technology in the past 50 years.

Week 1 Readings

2004 Information Format Trends

This report was an interesting read. Here are my thoughts:

• Page 3, 5th para. When reading this, I instantly thought of blogs. While I know there are some legitimate blogs out there, the majority seem to be just people posting their opinions. What could become detrimental is people (young people) using blogs as a source for research purposes instead of more reliable ones.
• Page 7, 3rd para. I was suprised that 61% of people surveyed for the Blogads report found blogs to be more honest. There don't appear to be any editorial rules regarding bloggers, so I'm surprised that people assume so much honesty.
• The list of new vocabulary was very helpful. There were 6 words/concepts I had never heard of before.

Lynch C, Information literacy and IT literacy...

• Page 4, 3rd para. and Page 5, 1st full para. While it is true that understanding of information technology skills is very important in every sector of society, I do not think such specialized knowledge can be had by everyone. This is why information specialists will become increasingly important in every field. The skills listed on Page 5 - indexing techniques, organizational systems, etc. -may be unreasonable for everyone to know and that's why information specialists with these skills will be so important in medicine, engineering, etc.

Vaughan J, Lied Library @ four years...

• This article was very detailed in explaining how the Lied Library was developed and how it was able to become a first class high-tech research library. While it went into great detail explaining what new computer programs were used, what program upgrades were done, etc., the lack of discussion of the human element was noticeable in the article. Did the library staff have to be trained in the new programs? One would think they would be expected to be well-versed in the new systems to be able to help students. A companion article covering the same time period that discusses the creation of this library (and everything it entailed) through the eyes of a librarian would be interesting.
  

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Week 1 Muddiest Point

Admittedly, my muddiest point from the lecture was the blog feed. I've never really read blogs nor subscribe to RSS feeds (I'm assuming RSS feeds and the blog feed link that we're posting are one in the same) and I wasn't really sure what they are. I haven't done any research on my own yet to get to the bottom of this but I plan to. If anyone wants to help, I'd be grateful!