ICS0006 Rashad Gafarli Blog

  The 2004 Information Society Report to the Parliament of Finland by Pekka Himanen, was definitely an interesting read. It brought up a variety of interesting observations which I believe were very accurate and lined up very well with what happened, and is is currently happening in modern times.  His review touches on topics relating to the global trends they predicted and delves deeper into the way information and work societies functioned and the differences between them in their respective countries. Touching on the papers discussion of global trends, it is very evident that his focus on how the population continues to age and more workers move onto a pension state, the problem of being able to maintain the welfare ratio in a sustainable manner arises, and was a concern that is still evidently present today. The problem of keeping employees working to an older age becomes unrealistic with the majority not willing to work longer and going into early pension. A...

With the evolution of technology and the progress from of simple single player games to massive multiplayer online games, as well  the capability of modern software and hardware, the way that people are able to consume and create media within the confines of a single individual game are plentiful and varied. Simple online games at the time usually limited player interaction within the confines of games primitive mechanics. Having a username and being able to simply participate was a form interaction. Later on not considering MUDs which were entirely based around the concept of having a long lasting story or adventure being typed and narrated by the players involved, other games slowly introduced chat-boxes and voice-chats which opened up even further forms of communication. As games developed and developers learnt more about the social nuances that made people play games, such as MMO's with their guilds, and interactive drop of items rates which made users interact with another to ...

Pick two technologies/practices/phenomena from the earlier history of the Internet (before the Web, or pre-1991 period) - one which has become obsolete and been replaced by more modern things, and another which survives to this day. Describe them in a blog post. An interesting event that occurred in earlier history was the "Videotape format war", a period of time where videotape formats were competing fiercely. To begin with the U-matic was an analogue video cassette format introduced by Sony in 1971, it was the very first video cassette format, and all video tape formats prior to this had been open reel. However, it was expensive and not really meant for commercial use. The first commercial videotape was the Philips N1500 VCR format in 1972, followed by Sony's Betamax in 1975, quickly trialing was the VHS format from JVC which I remember my family was more partial to due to it's availability and compatibility with the devices we had. Historical statistics seem to ...