Session 1 Review

The first session of the class gave me an overview of what it is about ofcourse and also what I can expect from it as well as myself. Our tutor, Prof. A. Lee Gilbert did not come across as a usual NTU tutor who produces facts and expects us to produce them out every class and in the exams. In fact it refreshing to see how much he wants to inculcate active participation in class and constant learning process throughout the semester. Anyway my intial thoughts before the class was that I had made a big mistake and that I would drop it straight away. Reading the introduction to the course made me feel like I would be lost and finding myself devoting too much time to a subject I was not sure how much I would enjoy. The first seminar itself made me feel glad I am still taking it as I really believe I will learn so much from this course (from basic HTML, Flash, podcast, Wiki, and many more new technologies in our world). Besides learning all the various things I am a person who is constantly reading about new technologies and am totally fascinated by how advanced our world is getting. To be able to study about them and how they affect various behaviours is something new and I am eagerly looking forward to it.

Below I will further reflect upon different terms that came up in the first class that caught my intention and really got me thinking.

Wiki
Prof. Gilbert informed us that our text book was infact going to be online in the form of a wiki. I have been using the net a lot to learn concepts and various things for many courses but it is the first time I get to actually use a wiki as a text. The only other wiki I am aware of is Wikipedia, that too without really knowing what a wiki is.

A wiki is infact a website that allows different visitors to add, edit and remove content easily. It is always being updated and has so many minds adding information to it. It is a unique way to gather information and I feel will be one of the highlights of the course to be able to have a text book that each and every student can edit and add information too. The concept seems so simple but yet it can be so powerful. It makes so much more sense to have many heads formulating a page of knowledge rather than relying on scholars, teachers and journalists to educate us on matters. They say two heads are better than one and the idea of wiki really brings on a whole new meaning to that phrase. (Wikipedia)

Web 2.0
Never before have I encountered the phrase web2.0. I wonder if there are more terms like this. So after spending some time searching on google I realise I have been using Web2.0 for quite some time and again totally unknowingly! Web 2.0 is a phrase that was termed by O'Riley Media in 2004. It refers to a second generation of interactive internet based services. The keyword here is interactive and I suddenly realise our very own Wiki is infact a form of Web2.0. Infact this very blog, podcasts, RSS feeds are all forms of Web2.0. They are accessible by all the public and again emphasise on interaction and allow people to publish what every they want. Polpular web 2.0 applications and forms are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, podcasts various weblogs.

Disruptive Technologies
Slowly Prof. Gilbert introduced us to the term of disruptive technologies. This concept was introduced by a person named Clayton Christensen. A little websearch on the name gave me various links about his life and achievements. "He is an outstandinly brilliant man!" was my reaction upon reading about him, his educational achievements and his enterpreneural skills. He is alos the author of many successful business books and was the one who introduced this concept of disruptive technologies. (ITconversations)

The concept took a considerable amount of time in discussion in our class. A disruptive technology is one that is exactly how it sounds: it is disruptive to particular industries. The class came up with so many examples that we all are so aware of and yet we find it so hard to think of it in this way. The most common example ofcourse being downloading of music and how it has affected the music industry. It has decreased the power and profits of huge record labels and give power to ones responsible for the industry in the first place: the musicians. Other examples would be eBay and Amazon and how they changed retail industries. The figures of Jeff Bezo's Amazon is simply staggering and makes you really think about all sorts of possibilities available in our world! In the end it is a different concept and being such a pro-technology person I find it a little hard to place a negative word like disruptive ahead of it!

VoIP
Voice over internet protocol is something that has gained a lot of momentum of late in the western world. It is a new technology that allows the breaking of voice into a digital signal to be carried over the internet and allow for cheaper and newer form of communication. Infact the last I heard was that Singtel is in its testing stage of launching VoIP in Singapore and hopefully it will soon be introduced! One of the most commonly used VoIP services is Skype. It is coming into the market in a big way and we are even beginning to see Skype enabled wifi phones available in the market. All this can only be beneficial for one group of people: the consumer!

Straying a little away from VoIP but still within the form of telecommunication was a discussion on a new mobile phone being launced, the iPhone. Personally, I have been looking forward to the launch of this product for quite a while and have been following up on various rumours about it. And its finally here! What is so special about this product? Well its not the most technologically advanced phone but has certain new technologies (multi-touch, mac osx, wifi, etc) and above all just oozes class in its design! Trust Apple to make an ordinary device seem like the most desirable, with just a simple design and some fabulous marketing! They surely did it with the ipod and i can see them doing it with iphone now.

At the end of the day, I had a lot of fun in this introductory class that has really made me give up my intentions of dropping it. I really do look forward to the podcast session. I really am hooked on to them and spend a considerable amount of time downloading new podcasts and syncing them to my ipod to listen to during the day! I look forward to all future classes and infact am beginning to enjoy blogging about it. Its a new thing for me and I am not surprised why so many people do it. Its addictive, not just to type but to read as well. No wonder TIME magazine's person of the year is infact "you" , the public who have shouted out their opinion! Until my next blog I leave you to ponder a quote I came across:

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistiguishable from magic."
- Arthur C. Clarke