spoonfulofsugar
Monday, May 22, 2017
Friday, April 7, 2017
River Crossing Challenge
This is a very interesting challenge
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/river/crossing.html
http://www.mathcats.com/explore/river/crossing.html
Monday, August 18, 2014
Saturday, August 9, 2014
Note to Dr. Thornburg Concerning Module 5 Blog
Dr.
Thornburg,
Please
note that I have responded to the following team members for Module 5 Blog
Post:
Michael
Hiett’s Blog: http://sportz75.wordpress.com/
Brandy
Hiett’s Blog: http://emergingandfuturetechnology.wordpress.com/
Shelly
Vohra’s Blog: http://techdiva29.wordpress.com/
Curtiss
Vavra’s Blog: http://cvavra.wordpress.com/
Thursday, August 7, 2014
EDUC - 8848 Module 5 Blog Post
Red Queens and Increasing Returns
I
own a copy of Philip K. Dick’s book, Total
Recall on my Kindle and rented Arnold Schwarzenegger's
Total Recall (1990) film from Red Box a few years ago. I have also watched Schwarzenegger’s
version multiple times on cable TV. Interestingly, Dick (2012) stated that the
Total Recall story was
originally published under the title “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale”
during 1966. I see this movie as a classic, and now that streaming videos are
currently popular, I thought the film must be available on all streaming video
services.
Movie Hunt: Rent or purchase DVD
versus viewing digitally
Therefore,
during Module 4 where students in this course were required to find a movie
based on a Philip K. Dick book, I immediately opened up Netflix and performed a
search. To my horror, Total Recall was not available! I tried my paid-for-Hulu
service and received the same results, not available. However, when I tried
Google Play, I saw that the new version of Total Recall was available. I was
tempted to purchase the new version, not only because the movie was intriguing,
but also because I would be able to immediately view it from any of my digital
devices. Moreover, I will not be using up my storage space in that the movie
would be safely stored on Google’s cloud. I ended up viewing Arnold
Schwarzenegger's Total Recall (1990) film in parts on YouTube during module 4.
Thornburg explained that Red
Queens are two technologies that
are in fierce competition with each other in order to gain an advantage over
their competition by meeting new needs and becoming better (Thornburg,
2008c). According to the Red Queens’ concept,
to gain advantage over their competitors, technological designers, must let
their innovations go at least twice as fast as their counterparts.
I agree with Thornburg (2008c) that
users are the beneficiaries of Red Queens events as seen with Netscape and
Microsoft for the web browser wars.
Users ended up receiving web browsers for free. I recall during the past
when the use of Public Switched Telephone Networks (PSTNs) were expensive.
Speaking across neighboring towns with a different area code would be very
expensive, until Voice over IP (VoIP) emerged and created a fierce battle of Red Queens between both
technologies. Currently, most of our
phone services are Internet based and allow users to call nationwide at an
inexpensive flat rate.
Example
of Red Queens
Reflecting on my own experiences
concerning the need to have videos/films delivered immediately, I would say
that video-on-demand is now a worthy opponent to DVDs which can be seen as an
example of Red Queens. One clear indication that this is an example of Red
Queens is the idea that users are now able to view many videos for free, for
example, there is a free version of Hulu which allows endless streaming. Also,
YouTube is a well known free streaming service which allows users to stream
videos both upstream and downstream. Furthermore, DVDs are now sold for very
low prices, for example, at my local supermarket movies, DVDs are being sold
for as low as three movies for five dollars. I own hundreds of DVDs, however,
most of them can be found on my streaming services such as my Netflix and Hulu
accounts. In fact, video-on-demand/streaming service owners are most likely
gaining advantage over DVDs suppliers.
Users are seeking immediacy and
convenience. Personally speaking, most of the times whenever I need to view a
video, I need to view it immediately and not to wait for it to come in the mail
or to trek to a store to rent or purchase it. Moreover, I like the idea of not
having to store my movies on a physical shelf; I prefer to have them stored on
a streaming service cloud where I can have access to all my items anytime,
anyplace and on any device.
In Light of the Four Criteria of McLuhan’s
Tetrad
In order to effectively evaluate the
battle of the Red Queens – DVDs and video-on-demand, I will make an assessment
using the four criteria of McLuhan’s tetrad. Based on my own experience (as
well as the experience of the people around me and online),
video-on-demand/streaming services seems to be an emerging innovation which
brought about Red Queens battle with DVD technologies. Some of these streaming
services are slightly different from each other, for example, Hulu, Netflix and
Amazon Prime; however they work together as clusters to obsolete DVD
technologies.
Interestingly, DVDs had replaced
VHSs in the past and now it seems to be in the process of being replaced by
cloud-based video-on-demand/streaming services. Similarly,
video-on-demand/streaming services might be replaced by holographic video
streaming in the future. The usefulness of video-on-demand/streaming services
is helping their designers to gain advantage over their competitors. The main
usefulness of video-on-demand is that it improves speed of access to
video/movies. This is very important,
especially in education, where learners today are used to having access to all
forms of information immediately. See Figure 1 for an image of the four
criteria of McLuhan’s tetrad in relationship to DVDs and video-on-demand
competing as Red Queens in the video/movie industry.
Figure 1
Emerging Technology Tetrad: video-on-demand
Enhances: video-on-demand
improves speed of access to videos/movies.
|
Reverses: holographic video
streaming might replace video-on-demand in the future.
|
Retrieve/Rekindles: Video-on-demand
brings back spontaneous story telling of the past.
|
Obsoletes: video-on-demand might
lead to the abandonment of DVDs.
|
References
Dick, P. K. (2012). Total Recall
(Kindle Locations 12-13). Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Kindle Edition.
Thornburg,
D. (2008c). Red Queens,
butterflies, and strange attractors: Imperfect lenses into emergent
technologies. Lake Barrington, IL:
Thornburg Center for Space Exploration.
Sunday, July 27, 2014
Note to Dr. Thornburg Concerning Module 4 Blog
Dr. Thornburg,
Please note that I have responded
to the following team members for Module 4 Blog Post:
Michael Hiett’s Blog: http://sportz75.wordpress.com/
Brandy Hiett’s Blog: http://emergingandfuturetechnology.wordpress.com/
I have
also responded to peers on my own blog : http://ena-spoonfulofsugar.blogspot.com/
Thursday, July 24, 2014
EDUC - 8848 Module 4 Blog Post
The
Disruptive Power of Second Life
Second Life – A Disruptive Technology
Six useful forces that drive emerging technologies on a
path of change are: evolutionary technologies, rhymes of history, disruptive
technologies, science fiction, increasing returns, and Red Queens (Laureate
Education, 2009). Disruptive technologies, as one of these forces of change,
have become almost common language within the educational field. However, the
term disruptive innovation was coined by Clayton Christensen, which describes a
process by which a product or service start out at the bottom of a market and
then relentlessly moves up and displace established competitors (Clayton
Christensen, 2014). Dr. Christensen
explained in his media segment that disruptive innovation transforms a product
that was so historically expensive and complicated that only a few people with
a large amount of money and skill had access to it. A disruptive innovation
makes the technology much more affordable and accessible that a larger
population than before has access to it.
Second Life can be seen as an emerging disruptive technology that disrupts
expensive virtual world technologies and will most likely move up to the top of
the virtual communication market.
Technology or Innovation that Second Life Displaces
Second Life might have emerged from social networking
sites, and their accompanying social trends such as group chats and multiplayer
gaming. As an emerging technology, second
life not only disrupts virtual meeting technologies such as telepresence, but
also online discussion boards. Businesses from various industries are now
capitalizing on second life innovations, using them to eliminate travel cost
because they are able to connect live and direct via avatars within second life
environments.
Also, I think that cloud computing has opened the door for
the expansion of second life particularly where processing power is concerned.
This is because processing can now be carried out by numerous servers on server
farms. In other words, anyone connected to the internet these days can enter
second life environments with almost any type of device (computer, tablet,
smart phones or smart TVs).
Another emerging Technology Possibly during the Next 10 Years
In terms of possible future impact, I would say that second
life technology will most likely bring about both negative and positive impacts
to society. For example, maybe in the
future, online education will run live in second life environments. Maybe
face-to-face learning might dwindle because of the richness of second life in
the future, especially if second life evolves to the extent where the entire
environment becomes holographic and include digital senses technology such as
smell and touch. One negative
consequence to having an enhanced version of second life is that people might
spend too much time in their “second life” and not in the real world. Persons
with obsessive personalities may become addicted to the technology and end up
losing their sense of how to communicate in the real world.
References
Christensen,
C. (2002). The innovation
economy: How technology is transforming existing industries and creating new
ones [Video]. Retrieved from http://video.mit.edu/watch/the-innovation-economy-how-technology-is-transforming-existing-industries-and-creating-new-ones-9844/.
Clayton
Christensen. (2014).Disruptive Innovation. Retrieved from
http://www.claytonchristensen.com/key-concepts/#sthash.3nG7JD7E.dpuf.
Laureate
Education, Inc. (2009). Emerging
and future technology: Six forces that drive emerging technologies. Baltimore, MD: Author.
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