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INTRODUCTION:PARADOX OF A BOOK
Negroponte starts off by giving us an idea of what the whole book is about. Firts he discusses the shift of traditional means of worldtrade due to fast evolving technology. Whre electronic data that move at the speed of light called bits, are replacing physical transfer of goods. Information now can be aquired instantly, inexpensive aand universally accessible.
Negroponte also discusses in brief what the future has in store for us. That division will be generational and not a matter of enomomics or cultural differences. He describes some changes in the way we might communicate through low orbeting satellites and that everyone is interconnected. He also predicts that due to technological change, physical space will be irrelevant and time will play a diffrent role.
He also justifies his reasons for choosing to write a book as the medium in which to communicate his message. He tells us three reasons why he talks about being digital but choses not to electronically communicate his message.
First, his target audience such as executives, politicians, parents and all those who need this information most do not have enough digital media in their hands. Second, HIs monthly column for the Weired Magazine has generated a lot of interest in readers who are drawn to digital life-styles. Finally, he feels that multi-media leaves very little to the imagination. He wants his reader to feel and understand the importance of what being digital means to one's life.
CHAPTER ONE: THE DNA INFORMATION
This chapter basically talks about the "bit". A bit is the smallest atomic element in the DNA of information that has no color, size, or weight, and travels at the speed of light. The chapter focused on basic differences of atoms and bits and the advantages of converting an atom digital information. Some of the advantages of bits are information that it holds can be easily transferred and received, it never goes out of print and bits are genarally priceless. He also points out two fundamental results when media is digital. Bits commingle effortlessly and possibility to transpose the quality of a medium to another
CHAPTER TWO: DEBUNKING BANDWIDTH
Negroponte speaks of how bits can travel and are transferred. He discusses issues on bandwidth - measures how many bits can travel through a given channel. The use of wired and wireless technology where transmission different cables, airwaves and fiber. Another issue that he posses is the value of the bit. How one can charge persons who are using the bits.
CHAPTER THREE: BITCASTING
He speaks of the problems of high definition television and the solution of applying technology to address those problems. The basic difference between tv and computers are fast becoming narrower. Negroponte predicts that ones television is digital, people watching tv can manipulate tv programs to suit their needs and preferences.
CHAPTER FOUR: THE BIT POLICE
Basically, Negroponte talks about the Federal Communications Commision (FCC) and its role to regulate paths for information and entertainment flow into homes through satellites, cables, telephone, package media and etc. Now due to digital technology, their main concern is policing this wireless communication spectrum to ensure that it is used fairly and competitively. Issues regarding cross-ownership laws and copy writes are discessed.
CHAPTER FIVE:COMMINGLED BITS
This chapter discusses the birth of multi-media and how this new medium has not reach or served yet its ultimate purpose. Multimedia is described as intrinsically interactive media, made possible by the digital ligua fanca of bits. The ability of bits to converge and create variation in the translation of information that creats multi-media. He also discusses hypermedia and that the result of the interaction and interconnection of digital information creates multi-media.
CHAPTER SIX:THE BIT BUSINESS
The chapter discusses the valuation of bits and how this affects companies and communication. He discussed the valuation of the bit is determined by its ability to be used repeatedly. The transporting of bits is measured through time, distance and number. Media companies are said to add most of their value to information content through distribution and movement of bits. Being digital accorging to Negroponte will change the nature of mass media from a process of pushing bits at people to one of allowing people to pull them.
CHAPTER SEVEN:WHERE PEOPLE AND BITS MEET
The chapter discusses about the various interfaces that were created and designed to allow computers to know us, learn about our needs and understand verbal and non-verbal languages and share same meaning. The idea is to create an interface that is more human than it is a computer. The challenge is to make computers recognize human expression to make it easier for us to use it. Negroponte believes that the future human computer-interface will be rooted in delegation, not venacular of direct manipulation. He says that "agent-based interface" will emerge as the dominant means by computer and people to talk with one another.
CHAPTER EIGHT:GRAPHICAL PERSONA
Graphical designs and the affects of digitalization on images are the focus of this chapter. The key concept was to understand a person's graphical intent. Negroponte says that expressions of humans about their graphical ideas are more important than the machines ability to deliver them into a diffrent kind.When graphics are converted to digital images, the images become bits in pixels. This is where the problems regarding jaggies, resolution, print quality, memory and etc come in. The chapter also disscusses the development of various computer graphics, animation and video games.
CHAPTER NINE:20/20 VR
Basically this chapter narrates the deveopement of Virtual Reality and Holograms which are more advance digital images. Digital technology is developing images that seem realistic, tangible and present. VR allows one to experience situations with one's own body. This is possible through image quality (3 dimensional) and respons time (sensitivity to movement). Problems faced by VR are aliased graphics, jaggies, image lag, frequency response,etc. Holograms on the other hand is a collection of all possible views of a scene into a single plane of light modulating patterns.
In a nutshell, this chapter focuses on how digital technology can produce "realism", a trickery of the eyes or senses. Negroponte says we tend to judge our experiences as a sensory whole, not by parts. By adding sensory effects to an image it make it look and feel real.
CHAPTER TEN:LOOKING AND FEELING
Computers are slowly being designed to suite the needs of people. They are being designed in such a manner that it shoul recognize human presence and acknowledge it. There is move to improve human computer-interface. Technology is increasingly becoming more sensitive, tactile and vison ready. The tactile propertise of a computer have been almost exclusively been thought as you touching it and not vise versa.
CHAPTER ELEVEN:CAN WE TALK ABOUT THIS?
Computers remain more or less deaf and mute. This chapter tackles the problem faced by speech recognition in computers. There are three dimensions involved in speech recognition: vocabulary size, degree of speacker independence and word connectedness. It is possible for computers to produces speech, by way of replaying recorded sound or by synthesizing sounds from letters, syllables and phonemes. According to Negroponte, the voice will primarily be a channel of communication between the person and the interface agents.
CHAPTER TWELVE:LESS IS MORE
According to this chapter, as the future approaches, interface agentry will be common. Decentralization will also occur, in the sense that, every communication and decision need not go back to a central authority for permission. Interface agentry will become decentralized in the same way as information and organization; it is like an army commander sending a scout ahead or a sheriff sending out a posse, you will dispatch agents to collect information on your behalf. The process multiples as agents will dispatch agents, but it all started at the interface where you delegated your desires.
Interface agentry, a person who has the ability to model you, is the way Internet will function. It will only give you what you want and look for what you desire and give the information to you. It is important to see the interface agent approach as very different from the current rage about the Internet. Interfaces will vary from person to person because of differences in needs and wants.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN:THE POST INFORMATION AGE
This chapter discusses that when the world become digital through the new technologies, demographics he to be redefined, because addresses for example is determined not where I'm located. Today in the post information age, every information is personalized. It is about who I really am. Digital living will include less and less dependence upon being in a specific place at a specific time and the transmission of place itself will start to become possible.On demand information will dominate digital life. We will as explicitly an implicitly for what we want, when we want it. Tomorrow's media will be more of a pulling, where information is gathered like in the library, you check what you want. This is so because of digital living.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN:PRIME TIME IS MY TIME
Tomorrows' technology will be based on its user's personality - what he want and/or need. The technology of the future will be more personalized, giving you only the things you want and need. Because of such change, the delivery path can be decided in terms of which is best suited for the technology you choose. By doing so, distance between individuals will be less and less in the digital world. For example in the Internet, due to time differences in the world, farther countries are somewhat in real time as yours when you are both chatting in a room. This is so, because the Internet is a network of networks which is less about information and more about community. The Internet's demographics will be more and more like the demographics of the world. What is important is that what you want wand the way to get it is on what technology you choose.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:GOOD CONNECTIONS
Although being digital is not good enough because you only produce copies of the original ones, it provides a wide range of advantages. One of the advantages is the "unlimited information you can store, send or read". This is true in CDs and email. Faxes produce only image copies while email produces executable copies. Another advantage is that economically, digitized copies are more practical, because you can send a certain message in a minute or two to unlimited recipients, unlike fax. Emails, because of its mobility and accessibility are part of today's lifestyle, and it is more practical than fax. But being digital also has it's problems, mostly abuse of it's features, that even unwanted information gets to you. That's why certain rules has been established to minimize this problems.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN:HARD FUN
The study of Sevmour Papert was put in focus, where children were learning the use of computers through application in a LEGO logo class. He proposed that we think about computers in education literally and metaphorically as if creating a country called, say Mathland, where a child will learn math in the same way she learns languages.
Papert proposed in his symposium "Teaching Children Thinking" that using computers as engines those children would teach and thus learn by teaching. He states that a significant part of learning comes from teaching. Learning before was limited to audiovisual devices and distance learning through TV, which amplifies the activity of teachers and increases passivity of children. Computer learning radically changes this balance. Computers stimulate children and serves as a highly interactive medium for teaching and learning.
It is said in the chapter that the internet give people the opportunity to get street-smart since it offers new knowledge and meaning that one has to search and decipher. The Internet is a web of human knowledge and assistance.
Talks of the uneducated person as being a product of modern society. Primitive men learned through other means to convey their knowledge from generation to generation in a supportive and tightly knit social fabric. This completely different from society today where the digital revolution is not driven by national and ethic forces. The ethos and appeal of being digital is as universal as rock music. People are drown to it since leaning the language of computers as easy as playing. Many learn through computer games, which become more and more advance and give out more information. More information means more learning.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:DIGITAL FABLES AND FOIBLES
Sites the problem that there is no intercommunication among appliances or machines. It is essential that machines have the ability to communicate in order to serve people better and more efficiently. Digitalization is slowly changing this by allowing machines to coordinate their functions trough handshake protocols - technical term for how two machines establish communication, deciding upon variables to be used in their conversations.
As the years progress people are starting to wear more and more computing and communication equipment on their bodies. The issue though is that our ability to miniaturize will quickly surpass out ability to power these small devices. Power is an area of technology that has not progressed much and is a problem since we need power to sustain this way of life.
There is no unity among machines; there is a lack of electronic communication, which is very primitive and peculiar since it is vital that they communicated to work more efficiently. The future of appliances is likely to be stripped-down or puffed-up to PC. This allows the appliances to be more friendly, usable and self-explicating.
Talks about the lack of personalities of computers. It suggest that computer should interact with people in a richer manner, more than just clicking, flashing and beeping. The persona of the machine makes it fun, relaxing, usable, friendly and "less mechanical". More people will be enticed to interact with computer when there is persona.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:THE NEW E-XPRESSIONIST
The digital issue focus here is that in the past much emphasis is placed in developing only the left side of the brain and the right side is neglected. More importance was given to academics than the arts. Seymour Papert say that due to technology today, we are veering away from a hard line mode of teaching that catered primarily to compulsive serialist children. Now a teaching is more porous and draws no clear lines between science and art. Also digitalization creates a wider middle ground between work and play due to this common denominator. Hackers are now considered the forerunners of the new expressionist.
Computer serve as a vehicle to create, enhance and distribute artistic expressions or art. We are moving to an era where expression can be more participatory and alive through the aid of computer technology. The internet for example is considered to be the largest gallery of expressions where artist and practically anyone can show their art, thoughts, and even manipulate and change other peoples works to make it their own. Being digital allows the process, not just the product to be conveyed.
It believes that computers would dramatically alter and affect the quality of life through ubiquity, not just science, but every aspect of life. Now it is a reality. We have gone beyond multi-media into something closer to real life-style than just an intellectual manifesto. People are living in a digital world where people interact, transact in a surreal environment in the Internet.
EPILOGUE:AN AGE OF OPTIMISM
There is a dark side in technology and the gift of science. With technological advances come consequences. In being digital consequences such as intellectual property abuse and invasion of privacy is inevitable. Digital vandalism, software piracy and data thievery is now including in the list of new crimes brought about by new technological advances. There is now a radical transformation of the nature of our job markets where there is a shift from manual labor to highly skilled intellectual force. This is due to the fact that being digital means working less with atom and more with bits. Many have lost, are losing and will lose their jobs because of this. Another issue at had is that bits are edible in a sense, and therefore cannot stop hunger. Computer to are no moral, they cannot resolve complex problems like the rights to life or death. But despite all these negative aspects in being digital, one must be optimistic about it since the digital age cannot be denied or stooped. Digitalization possesses four qualities that will result in ultimate triumph - decentralizing, globalizing, harmonizing, and empowering. The author is optimistic in the fact that thebeing digital is present now and that it is in the hands of the youth.