Thursday, January 19, 2017

CONNECTIONS AND COMBINATIONS AT HURRICANE SPEED!!!

Digital Media and Convergence
Connections and Combinations at Hurricane Speed!!!
BY EULAS KIRTDOLL SR

Hurricanes consist of winds, water, temperature, air pressures and directions, and other factors, that, when they connect and combine in an enabling way, produce the most powerful of storms on earth.  Similarly, digital media communication today consists of hardware, soft ware, wireless towers, satellites and a host of other factors, that, when they connect and combine in an enabling way, produce the most powerful storm of convergent communication networks ever seen to this time.  As a result we live in a time of hyper communication. 

Mr. Tom Wheeler is the current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  Mr. Wheeler mentions in one of our reading for the class this week

 [“Net Effects: The Past, Present & Future Impact of Our Networks" by Tom Wheeler (Dec. 2013)
http://transition.fcc.gov/net-effects-2013/NET_EFFECTS_The-Past-Present-and-Future-Impact-of-Our-Networks.pdf ]

his belief that communication networks themselves don’t have the power.  Instead it is the connections enabled by the communication networks that carry the power.  Here is a link to a brief biography of Wheeler:  https://www.fcc.gov/about/leadership/tom-wheeler

Commissioner Wheeler’s interest and understanding of history is clearly revealed in some of his writings:

Chairman Wheeler wrote Take Command: Leadership Lessons of the Civil War (Doubleday, 2000) and Mr. Lincoln's T-Mails: The Untold Story of How Abraham Lincoln Used the Telegraph to Win the Civil War (HarperCollins, 2006).

 SOME OF THE EARLIEST SURVIVING COMMUNICATION IS CAVE PAINTING
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_painting

Cueva de las Manos (Spanish for Cave of the Hands) in the Santa Cruz province in Argentina


By Mariano - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=265811

This week our readings focus on the convergence of digital media.  Wheeler’s writing gives us a glimpse of the past, present, and potential future of communication networks.  We need to put the current digital media conditions in historical context, in order to make sense of the present and to think about the future.    Newspapers, television, and magazines are all adopting online and mobile presences, converging once divergent media into the digital online and increasingly mobile format.  This convergence reminds me of the great power unleashed when connections are made by the many parts (networks) that comprise a hurricane.


"Few things in nature can compare to the destructive force of a hurricane. Called the greatest storm on Earth, a hurricane is capable of annihilating coastal areas with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour or higher, intense areas of rainfall, and a storm surge. In fact, during its life cycle a hurricane can expend as much energy as 10,000 nuclear bombs!"  (Source: http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Hurricanes/ )


Hurricane Isabel (2003) as seen from orbit during Expedition 7 of the International Space Station. The eye, eyewall, and surrounding rainbands, characteristics of tropical cyclones in the narrow sense, are clearly visible in this view from space.
(SOURCE:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone )
By Image courtesy of Mike Trenchard, Earth Sciences & Image Analysis Laboratory , Johnson Space Center. - http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/view.php?id=12140, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=625449


The parts that connect in a hurricane are the wind, water, air and water temperature, pressure, land, type of land, and other factors that influence all of the preceding, may of which are manmade, such as climate change.  The power in these connects is unleashed when the connections combine in a conducive way.  Just as the hurricane’s power is realized when the connections are made between the parts, so communication networks are enabled and their power unleashed by the connections between the networks. 

In fact, in a hurricane, it is the connection and combination of the energy sources in a hurricane that produces the new level of power unleashed in a storm.  Similarly, communication technology networks each have energy stored that is unleashed in connection and combination, taking the energy in directions of heightened power, and causing that power to be spread in a spatially multidirectional way.


 The combine harvester, or simply combine, is a machine that harvests grain crops. The name derives from its combining three separate operations comprising harvesting—reaping, threshing, and winnowing—into a single process. Among the crops harvested with a combine are wheat, oats, rye, barley, corn (maize), sorghum, soybeans, flax (linseed), sunflowers, and canola. The waste straw left behind on the field is the remaining dried stems and leaves of the crop with limited nutrients which is either chopped and spread on the field or baled for feed and bedding for livestock.

Combine harvesters are one of the most economically important labour saving inventions, significantly reducing the fraction of the population that must be engaged in agriculture
(Source:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combine_harvester)


 

By Virtual Steve - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1695653


By Kowloonese - Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13269698

DIGITAL MEDIA IS A CONNECTION AND COMBINATION OF FORM AND FUNCTION FOR COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION JUST AS THE COMBINE CONNECTED AND COMBINED SEVERAL FUNCTIONS INTO ONE FOR AGRICULTURE. 

FOR DIGITAL MEDIA - PRINT, AUDIO AND VIDEO ARE CONNECTED AND COMBINED INTO ONE DEVICE.  FOR THE COMBINE, REAPING, THRESHING AND WINNOWING WERE CONNECTED AND COMBINED INTO ONE DEVICE.

A person using a smartphone to take a digital photograph.
By Mueller / MSC, CC BY 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=30975746

The connections are made one by one, but they also are layered upon one another, and combined with other networks, creating hybrids that, like biological hybrids, have different characteristics than the original, creating new and revolutionary possibilities.


One way that we can prepare for an unknown future is to make computer simulated projections.  Researchers are doing this with hurricanes using data on past and present hurricanes:

Here is a link to a scientific journal paper titled  “An Analysis of the Effect of Global Warming on the Intensity of Atlantic Hurricanes Using a GCM with Statistical Refinement”  The paper was written by Ming Zhao
University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colorado, and NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey and Isaac M. Held
NOAA/Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory, Princeton, New Jersey and published online December 1, 2010:  http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/2010JCLI3837.1


The paper explains how, using past and present data, simulation models can be constructed that will allow scientists to predict the effect of global warming as far in the future as the end of the 21st century.  

One way to answer the concern posed by Wheeler about the unknown future of communication networks would be to do computer simulated projections, using known data, and extrapolating that data into the future using projections of the future, such as various demographics (population, economics, and social trends), perhaps including data on global warming.

One of the connections required for modern communication technology is electricity.  Here is a link to a PBS Newshour transcript of a story about the future of fusion.  Fusion carries the promise of providing cheap electricity while leaving a minimal environmental footprint:
 
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/alluring-elusive-fusion-energy-possible-lifetime/

Researchers, peering into the future of communications technology, will look at the future of energy, like fusion.  Fusion and other innovations of the future will allow the communications revolution to continue to advance and accelerate into the future.  Fusion, as an energy source, may well be useful in a computer simulated projection into the future of communication technology.



 By analyzing past and present networks and making projections into the future, perhaps we can glean information about what to expect from the past and current convergence of media communication and related technology.  Dare we look as far as the end of the 21st century?  Perhaps we should, with the speed and fury of a hurricane.

Here are the links to the class readings for the week:

The Future of News--How the BBC is thinking about its future

The Web is Dead. Long Live the Internet (Wired Magazine)
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/
TV and the Web (This is a TED Talk video)
http://www.ted.com/talks/peter_hirshberg_on_tv_and_the_web.html

How the Internet will (one day) transform government (this is a TED Talk video)
http://www.ted.com/talks/clay_shirky_how_the_internet_will_one_day_transform_government.html 





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