Ergonomics (one off post, Just beacuse i feel like it lol)

I Thought, as i have a study period, that ill write another blog article. I also realised id been promising a blog, for a long time on ergonomics. Ergonomics, according to wikipedia, is the application of scientific information concerning humans to the design of objects, systems and environment for human use. Get it? If you didnt, basically its when man uses machine to enhance their performance, from anything to integrated weapons, to computer chips in the brain. So why have i taken an interest in this? Well some of you may have seen the James Bond film, Die Another Day, One of my personal favourites. There is a scene towards the end of the film where the Villain picks up and puts on a glove, that enables him to shock anyone that he touches. This is one such example of what simple ergonomics is. The Mergance of man and machine. However, what im interested in is not for human demise, but for the greater good. I read somewhere, cant quite remember where though, that some scientists growing were limbs on Mice? nothing new? But with a difference, they were using robots and machinery to recreate from scratch, animal limbs. So effectivly creating life from one simple cell, from the process of cloning and grafting. Obviously there is a question of ethics here. Some believe that the hunman race wil fast become a race of enhanced beings, where babies can be effectively made to order. Fancy an athlete? the Superchip 1000 can enhance your child to make him run faster than any olympic athlete!. Mabye an advert of the future. At the moment i havent heard, apart from films and computergames any sign of chips influencing the brain, perhaps due to the completxity of it all, but no doubt this is the next step and the evolution of what ergonomics is today.
Anyway i found this all interesting, and thought id persue my interests, and writer an article, after one of my school teachers assemblies on the subject of "love to learn". Anyway, if you have taken the time to read a article of personal interest to me, and you like what you see, make sure you leave a comment, tell me your feelings. Sweet.

The Game of Life........

Hello again,
I just thought i'd write down my thoughts about some thing that interested me. Today, i was in a contemplative mood when I was on the bus today, just gazing out of the window with my MP3 in, wondering where i want to be in the future. I was just thinking of various different things i could be doing with my life in the future. Banking?....Boring, Teacher?.....Too many bratty kids, What about an stock market job?....24Hr day, No play. So what can i do with my life? Then came a revelation, i started to think about a game that i used to play, called StarWars Galaxies (with expansion pack). What a Geek, i know, but i really loved it, Why?. In this massive online world, i existed not as Average Joe from Ilford, but CARBONATOR, A ruthless Bounty Hunter from the criminal underworld of Nar Shadaa. I was thinking once again.... That person is me? i have created him? he is modeled in my Image and plays by my rules, even if he is only an online creation. But its funny how noone creates Joe Blog's, a human from London, Earth who walks around with a kebab instead of a blaster rifle.
But the crunch is? This game, for me, got addictive, beacuse i started to become someone, notorious within this galaxy. beacuse of my hunts, I had an online Bank with around 10,000,000 republic credits in (which is a heck of a lot). Similar things have been said from players of games such as the world of warcraft etc. Who start to love their online identities. People seem to become facinated by themselfs, in online gaming worlds in which they know they will never be in, but yet provide some joy i knowing they are someone. To cut a long story short i think that the market for online gaming will become popular, quickly. Now as a Media studies styden i realise that a lot of this is comercialised and about making money but regardless, It may end up more popular than anything we have ever seen before.

I am predicting a Playstation 3 for christmas, and critics have rated the online community already as one of the best features of the system. I Will investigate this further if my prediction comes true. I will speak about the online Gaming side of things which is what i have decided to focus my Blog on. I also want to post a blog about Ergonomics which will come along shortly as a kindof one off blog for anyone who's interested.

Tell me your thoughts on my articles please, comments much apreciated.....

Recent Home Study task (13 December 2007)

Coded Vision- Future/Fantasy


Hello Again,
Once again ill say sorry for not having this task up and sorry to the others of you that are fans of my blog for not having a more recent Post. However i will keep you up to date and intend (Homework task or not) to have update the Blog with a new article every ten days.
Thanks ...........Joe

My Teacher put this interesting article on the General blog a few days ago.... I have edited it down to about 300 words so if it seems some Bits are missing then thats probably why!

The Article.......

It is my honor to appear before you today to discuss the future of the World Wide Web. I would like to offer some of my experience of having designed the original foundations of the Web, what I've learned from watching it grow, and some of the exciting and challenging developments I see in the future of the Web. Though I was privileged to lead the effort that gave rise to the Web in the mid-1990s, it has long passed the point of being something designed by a single person or even a single organization. From its beginning, it is a medium that has been created and sustained by the cooperative efforts of people all over the world.
The testimony I offer here today is purely my own opinion and does not necessarily reflect the views of the World Wide Web Consortium or any of its Members. The special care we extend to the World Wide Web comes from a long tradition that democracies have of protecting their vital communications channels. (So thus the internet is a communication device?)We try as best we can to nurture and protect our information networks because they stand at the core of our economies, our democracies, and our cultural and personal lives. I am gratified that the United States and many other democracies around the world have taken up this challenge.


Joe's Thoughts = So to cut a long story short would i be wrong in saying the Internet is Alive ? To care and sustain it? To feed and nurture it? Sounds like the Internet is more than just a way of simply communicating. It sounds, to me, like it has its own intelegence and it is learning from us and our inputs into it. What interests me is how we can make movies such as the Terminator, where a computer takes over the U.S. military, I-Robot, where a computer that thinks for itself takes over a whole city and finally the daddy of them all, The Matrix, where man and machine are one. Ergonomics (The mergance of man and machine) could be the future so my next post has just found its title.

Much Love........ I Thought id Leave you with a very relevant quick vid
Its Worth Watching..........

iPhone or Bust?

Record labels are predicting that this month's launch of three new mobile phone music services will usher a return of rising sales after years of decline.
Apple's music-playing iPhone grabbed the headlines with its arrival in Britain last week. But music executives are just as excited about the new unlimited downloads service launched on Vodafone. At the same time Nokia, the world's largest maker of mobile phones, has opened a digital music store here.
Some are predicting a revolution that will see mobile downloading approaching that of highly developed markets such as Japan. Universal, is backing the MusicStation, the Vodafone service. Rob Wells, head of digital at Universal's international division, predicts the £1.99-a-week subscription service will have mass market appeal. "We are at a turning point in the UK," he says, predicting digital music sales here could offset falling CD sales within a year.
Global sales have been falling since 2000. One place where the gap has been closed is Japan. Total music sales there edged up 1% last year. Japan's success is largely attributed to the prevalence of mobile downloads. "Mobile is obviously extremely important because you have the market reach and secondly, the type of demographics that are very important to the music industry will almost certainly have music-enabled mobile phones. PricewaterhouseCoopers analysts say that new handsets are helping the mobile music market move away from mere ringtones to full song downloads. They expect the UK mobile music market to almost double from a predicted $83m this year to $156m in 2011. There are hopes handsets will improve further from a music-playing perspective thanks to the iPhone. Can something like this save the music industry? Well, MusicStation per se in the short term no. Because firstly it's only on Vodafone at the moment and secondly it's very cheap, meaning that the actual revenue for the music industry per user can only be quite small."
Makinson predicts such subscription services will also need a fixed-line service in addition to mobile to have mass appeal - something which is being planned as a premium version of MusicStation. sers want more simplicity in terms of being abile to play what they buy across various devices. That is already happening with developments such as Sony Ericsson's Walkman phones, which synchronise with computers, he says. But he remains cautious about the benefits for record labels.

Do you think the problem of "Internet Piracy" can be solved ?

Do You Believe schemes like this one will make people more keen to buy music online?

Is there any other alternative to this system??

If you have any thoughts dont hesitate to tell.

Thanks Bye xxx

Robotic Cars? What Next?????

Yehh, the title pretty much sums up this article.
For homework i recently logged on to the Beeb's technology page, and what should i see infront of me??

I decided to copy this article onto this post for you.

A driverless car called Boss has scooped a $2m prize in a Californian race for robotic vehicles.

Does this sentence remotely surprise you? That now there are cars that drive themselfs!
Boss successfully drove around an urban environment, avoiding other cars, and covering 60 miles (85km) in less than six hours, all without any human control. The modified Chevrolet Tahoe was one of six cars that crossed the finish line, from a pack of 11 robotic vehicles. The race was organised by the US military's Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, and is designed to develop unmanned vehicles that could be used in battle situations. Automotive manufacturers say the technology could eventually lead to self-driving cars. (That sounds familiar??, wasnt that how the Internet started?? The American Military Needing something to communicate or fight for them?? whoever patent's this technology could be in for some serious CASH.) (Then A senior person in General Motors sais "Imagine being able to talk on the phone, eat your breakfast, handle your emails, and leave the driving to the vehicle," he added. "That would be pretty phenomenal. It's going to a big breakthrough. It's technology that's on the way to 'having cars that don't crash'." He believes cars with that level of intelligence could be on the road by 2015. (So my friends, by 2015 you may not even need that super fast fiesta you always dreamed about as a computer may be able to do it for you. But what springs to mind for me is, if technology is designed to make our lives easier, as this surely is, then surely we are all going to be very, very, very, fat by 2020. Also isnt there a certain fun in driving? Dont you love being behind a wheel and driving? I cant wait to pass my test and drive a car beacuse thats been my dream for a very long time. and also cars that drive themselfs, Lights that turn themselfs on?? what will be actually be able to do ourselfs arnt the next generation going to become almost dependant on technology. Ergonomics is the study of technology being implanted into a human to improve various features. To me this sounds absurd and already the topic of a heated ethical debate. If i ever have children theyre probably going to think i used to live in the dark ages.
Anyway, just thought id comment on something of interest to me really. Hope you find it remotely interesting and next post to follow soon. Comment me if you have any thoughts about what i have said in any of my blogs.

New Media Technology...

Okay so here we are!, My first ever blog.

NEW MEDIA TECHNOLOGY

As you know the Title of this Post is "New Media Technology" or "N.M.T" And i guess your probably wondering, what is N.M.T?

Wikipedia Quotes, "New Media Tecnology is the marriage of mediated communications technologies with digital computers". Simple enough? right?

I dont think so, and unless your some sort of genious or my Media Studies teacher, you wont either. What do I believe New Media Technology is? Simple. It is the latest technology that is around us. Its hard to pinpoint what N.M.T is at any one point as there are constantly new technological advances to hit the shelves. We will look around only to find mobile phones with global positioning systems and easier access to the Internet than your PC at home. Gone are the days when a phone was just a phone. So i ask myself, Why is technology evolving so fast? Once again my personal take on it is that technology is evolving so quickly due to the whole reason the media is around in the first place. TO MAKE MONEY. For example, if Sony Erriccson released a phone with a new feature i.e. Colour screen, then lets face it, people will be more attracted to that rather than a less advanced phone that still has "green screen" beacuse its in our "media obsessed" human nature, to want what another person hasn't got. To be "better" and to improve their social "status" as such. Dont get me wrong im not a hater of change, but i am one to question the need for it once in a while. Its not just Phones that update constantly, look at the number of new cars about today. Each one is more "fuel efficient" and Faster than the last, yet how is it then that statistics prove that the 1967 Ford Mustang is faster than the 2007 model? What does all this new technology built onto a newer car do? how about makes it heavier, thus decrasing the speed and the fuel economy, and ladies and gents we all know what type of change that equates to, Climate change. However bad or good new technology is, lets be honest, soon the new technology around us will be able to do pretty much everything, Making most of our lives a heck of a lot easier. I believe that the Idea's in Star Trek and Star Wars are not actually that far off. I remember watching a documentary where someone was even saying they had spent their whole life dedicated to the development of a Lightsaber, for the Military to use. Good luck. Some may call that person a freak, if you asked me i'd call him a futurist. Mabye the starship Enterprise isn't such a far fetched idea and soon we will have the technological ability not just to seek out new life and new civilisation but mabye, just mabye, "go to boldy go where no man has gone before".

Why not leave me your thoughts on this blog?? comments welcome!!

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