Technology Writings: Throwing Google at the Book

I believe that google is definitely not the first to come up with the idea of providing digital books on the web, but who is more suitable to act on such an ambitious vision than the seach engine dominator, google? The article provides interesting arguements from both sides of the debate over google's rightfulness in conducting the digital book project.

In my opinion, google cannot argue that it is trying to benefit from the authors in a way that can potentially affect book sales; however, if the publishers and authors keep retaining a firm stance against digitizing book, they are more likely to be the eventual loser rather than google or even average tech-literate people, who are already pretty happy with the notorious P2P file sharing. This is to say that the book industry should peacefully sit down with google and devise a mutually benificial plan to migrate the industry from paper-and-ink to bits-and-bytes before illeagal file sharing gets hold of the market.

The book industry should simply realize that this media transition of books is inevitable. There might be some foreseeable lose to authors and publishers, but they should try to make the best out of the situation when it is still a creditable company like google that is taking the lead.

a. Technology Writings: Why the Web Is Like a Rain Forest by Steven Johnson

Web 2.0 provides unlimited possibilities to web applications. It revolutionaized the way information is being delivered. Anyone can now easily obtain and broadcast information effectively on the web.

When I first heard of Web2.0, I was in ITP404 intermediate web development class of USC. By that time, my understanding of this concept was limited to some new technologies related to it, such as AJAX and SOAP, based on which we actually did projects. It was more like another programming class to me. But this article givesd me a more rounded understanding of Web2.0. it talks about the impact of blog searching and tag-based interest communities, which really stretch my thoughts beyond plain web scripting.

the ARPANET (From Wikipedia)

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) developed by ARPA of the United States Department of Defense was the world's first operational packet switching network, and the progenitor of the global Internet.
Packet switching, now the dominant basis for both data and voice communication worldwide, was a new and important concept in data communications. Previously, data communications was based on the idea of circuit switching, as in the old typical telephone circuit, where a dedicated circuit is tied up for the duration of the call and communication is only possible with the single party on the other end of the circuit.
With packet switching, a system could use one communication link to communicate with more than one machine by assembling data into packets. Not only could the link be shared (much as a single mail person can be used to post letters to different destinations), but each packet could be routed independently of other packets. This was a major advance.

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