Blog #1

Blog 2: The PC and the Internet as a Communication Technology by Alexandra Alvarez The communication technology that I find most important and interesting to discuss is the PC. According to class lecture the PC itself does not have much to do with interpersonal communication between humans. However, when many computers are networked together, they can help convey communication between others and help us network with one another from different parts of the world. According to the book, a computer has 4 fundamental components - input, output, processing, and storage. The main pieces are the central processing unit (CPU), power circuits, memory, storage, input, and output. The CPU is a binary system of ones and zeroes and is considered to be the brain of the computer. The text says, early processors use to take entire rooms to accommodate a single computer because they were built with bulky vacuum tubes. But, in 1947 scientists invented “point-contact” transistors th...

In my opinion, the vitascope was one of the most revolutionary technologies ever created. According to the class notes and discussion, it allowed film to be projected on a screen so that multiple people could view a film at once. Before the vitascope, movie goers used several coin fed kinetoscopes to view films through a peephole in the machine. According to the book, when the vitascope was introduced to the public in 1896 by Thomas Edison, larger audiences could then view larger films simultaneously. As a result of the vitascope being able to show longer movies, more creativity was allowed by film producers. The creation of the vitascope began the moviegoer culture that we know today.