CIS 2-1

I.         Web review:

            A.        Why do newspapers have online editions?

            B.        Favorite sites: check em out

II.        Last week: reprise

            A.        Industrial Revolution, Moore’s Law, implications

                        1.         PC’s great flexibility, configurability related to its lack of user friendliness.

                                    a.         Future of IC appliances?

                        2.         Distributive Revolution made possible

                        3.         Disruptive Innovation

                        4.         Third is collapse in cost of bandwidth.

                        5.         Sociological Matrix of Info-Communications: The ways that the PC and the Internet involve a new matrix of interactions between society and technology, in which institutions (both private and public) and their ideas are inscribed in particular technological artifacts (machines, networks, software, etc.), which are in turn appropriated by user communities (of all kinds) in ways unanticipated by the institutions that created them, which reflects back on future decisions by these institutions.

III.       Death of Distance: Introduction

            A.        Attitudes toward technological change: celebration and suspicion.

                        1.         Cairncross: celebratory, mostly.

                        2.         Try to strike a balanced pose.

            B.        What is the D of D?: Distance will no longer determine the cost of communicating electronically.

            C.        Many implications of this transformation.

IV.      Potential changes; always “unintended consequences.” Countervailing tendencies.

            A.        Death of Distance

            B.        Fate of location

            C.        Improved connections

                        1.         Future of the Internet “in its present form”

                        2.         Switched

                        3.         Interactive

                        4.         Broadband

            D.        Increased mobility

            E.        More customized networks: portal sites “My Yahoo,”

            F.        Deluge of information: problems created by “information overload.”

                        1.         Issues of authorities

            G.        Increased Value of Brand

            H.        More minnows, more giants

            I.         More competition

            J.         Increased value of niches

            K.        Communities of practice: virtual communities based on commonalities that transcend location.

            L.        Loose-knit corporation

            M.       Openness as a strategy — will this continue?

            N.        Manufacturers as service providers — only way to differentiate

            O.        Inversion of home and office — why is Silicon Valley so crowded?

            P.        Proliferations of ideas

            Q.        Decline of national authority — countervailing trends? May undermine openness.

            R.        Loss of privacy

            S.        Global premium for skills — tends to increase inequality, makes education more important. Local semi-skilled, unskilled devalued. Skilled labor’s value enhanced.

            T.        Rise of English

            U.        Communities of culture. Niche + community of practice

            V.        A New Trust?

            W.       People as the ultimate scarce resource: yes and no

            X.        Global peace???

V.        New Economy — Globalization

            A.        Information-based. Knowledge and information have become the basis of productivity. Based on the possibility of real-time feedback. Classic problems put forward as to why expansion of networks had not increased productivity:

                        1.         Made possible by tech changes in communication & transportation

                        2.         Has led to spread of open society 

            B.        Globalization

                        1.         We already had a world system, world trade. New is that core activities of the world economy now are capable of being organized and functioning on a world scale in real time.

                        2.         Core production system is organized globally. This is new. Key issue is not trade, but internationalization of production.

                        3.         Consumption

                        4.         Culture

                        5.         Good or bad thing?

VI.      Wednesday: read Negroponte: discussion of digitization. DIGITAL CONVERGENCE