The First Chapter

Not only does the title regard chapter one in the book, but a new chapter in my life. This is the first semester of college that I am taking online courses and that I am back in my hometown, not Binghamton. I look forward to making discoveries with each new page in the course, and in my life.

 This module's Course Cast provided some interesting facts and speculations. According to the Course Cast, Intel predicts that there will be a rise in digital billboards. I doubt this, however, time will tell. They also predict that Moore's Law, which states that approximately every 2 years, the number of transistors on a chip will double. It is good that they believe this, since one of Intel's finders created this law. The Course Cast also provided some international news regarding current events. Putin ordered all Russian government computers use Linux by 2015. Trojan has been affecting Androids in China. Skype was reported to have a bug, but was updated at the end of December. And despite the rise of the Ipad, Kindle still is holding it's own, and its still Amazon's top seller. Speaking of the Ipad, the Course Cast also reported that a privacy law suit has been filed against Apple. The thing I found most interesting that the Course Cast reported was that Canada was the number one internet user. I expected either China or the United States to be at the top, but neither made the top 3.

The week's discussion was about which of Course Cast's predictions for the technology advances in 2011 would be most successful and why. There was a variety of different opinions on what would be the most successful and there didn't seem to be any one thing that most people agreed would be most popular. I didn't really learn anything notable from the discussion, other than that my classmates seem to have interesting and diverse opinions.

In the reading, I learned that there is a difference between the Web and the Internet. Previously, I used the terms interchangeably. Now I know better. I also learned some terms that I had heard before but didn't formally know what they meant or knew what something was but didn't know the official name for it. Here are a few examples:

Circuit Switching- a technology that allows users to communicate privately on a dedicated circuit through a continuous stream

Packet Switching- a technology that disassembles data in smaller portions, sends each portion of data separately across cables, and reassembles the data on the intended source

Backbone- "the main long-distance lines and the hard-ware that connects computers to the Internet" (Shelly, 15).

Hypertext- system of hyperlinks that permits a viewer to click on a selected word which leads them to another spot in the same file

Microblogging- allows subscribers to read brief texts sent by authors throughout the day or week