This post is a potpourri of info related to what we've been discussing recently:
Bruno Latour's web site:
http://www.bruno-latour.fr/
This includes presentations, articles, etc...both in French and English for all of you bilingualists out there...
Resources page of the Society for Social Studies of Science
http://www.4sonline.org/resources.htm
Journals, movies, and course syllabi on topics in technology, society, science, etc...
TED!!!
http://www.ted.com/
Technology, Entertainment, Design conference web site with loads of videos on various topics ranging from, you guessed it, technology to entertainment to design.
21 Biggest Technology Flops
http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=printArticleBasic&articleId=9012345
Lists such as this are always entertaining, and do allow us to think about why a technology is considered "failed" or "dead".
Top 30 Failed Technology Predictions
http://listverse.com/history/top-30-failed-technology-predictions/
Predictions from the past...
Wired Gadget Blog
http://blog.wired.com/gadgets/
Blog that discusses new gadgets. Enough said.
More PRT excitement!
http://blog.wired.com/cars/2008/10/personal-pod--1.html
Aramis' death wasn't in vain...
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2 comments:
I read the technology flops article and thought of an interesting addition: the Zip drive. When I first started YSU in 2001, every computer in every computer lab had Zip drives--and some of them were still around in 2006, when I graduated. The Zip drive wasn't exactly ahead of its time--it was even somewhat necessary with the increase of file sizes making the 1.44" floppy disc useless. But after their brief period of necessity, Zip drives soon found themselves outclassed by CD burners and other forms of media storage that were once prohibitively expensive.
Now, even the CD has given way to the flash drive, which I think my students believe is some sort of computer magic. And, with the prevalence of Flash drives, we’ve seen USB slots on computers become much more accessible; the computers at YSU had their USB ports on the back of every computer, so it was necessary to annoy everyone by climbing behind said computer whenever you wanted to use a flash drive. They later installed USB extension cords so people would no longer have to go through this hassle whenever they needed to store/retrieve information.
My point behind all this is that I’m somewhat fascination by technologies that, in retrospect, seem to exist as a temporary solution before a real solution can become more cost effective. But, as we’ve read, the idea of the Zip drive was not inherently flawed, or doomed to fail from the beginning—even though they did break a hell of a lot.
I have a zip disk, and am not exactly sure what's one it, nor do I have any way of accessing the files. Thus is life.
My new macbook doesn't have a firewire port. I had to transfer all my files from my firewire drive to a new usb hard drive.
It's interesting to see the temporality of such technologies. They seem to be changing so quickly; perhaps we no longer "need" or "want" a static archival technology? I guess I'm thinking of the book or file cabinet, but maybe that's just me assuming those technologies are static archival media.
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