Mantis shrimp: 'Information Technology and Society' Second Life class transcript on Harvard's virtual island, Origins of Information Technology

'Information Technology and Society' Second Life class transcript, on Harvard's virtual island



[11:06] Aphilo Aarde: Did all of you receive the notecard I sent to the "Soc and Info Tech - Aphilo on Berkman" group list here

[11:06] Ju Roussel is Online

[11:06] Aphilo Aarde: Who did not receive it - this notecard has information relevant to this course.

[11:06] Aphilo Aarde: Great

[11:07] JonathanE Cortes: brb have to re boot

[11:07] Aphilo Aarde: :)

[11:07] JonathanE Cortes is Offline

[11:07] Aphilo Aarde: Here's the course wiki again: http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/

[11:07] JonathanE Cortes is Online

[11:08] sandhya2 Patel accepted your inventory offer.

[11:08] XiuJuan Ying accepted your inventory offer.

[11:08] JonathanE Cortes accepted your inventory offer.

[11:08] Kevin Menczel is Offline

[11:08] XiuJuan Ying: ty

[11:08] JonathanE Cortes: thx

[11:08] Melchizedek Blauvelt accepted your inventory offer.

[11:08] Aphilo Aarde: yw

[11:08] Ju Roussel accepted your inventory offer.

[11:08] Aphilo Aarde: I just passed out the notecard again

[11:09] Daisyblue Hefferman is Offline

[11:09] Aphilo Aarde: We'll begin shortly - but I'd just like to bring to your attention http://webnographers.org again, as well as the course wiki - where I'm posting notes - http://socinfotech.pbworks.com

[11:10] Marian Dragovar is Online

[11:11] Aphilo Aarde: Are there any questions from the last times?

[11:12] Marian Dragovar is Offline

[11:12] Ju Roussel: [We are listening...]

[11:13] Aphilo Aarde: I'll address nanotechnology a little today

[11:13] Aphilo Aarde: So in this revolution

[11:13] Aphilo Aarde: of information technology KNOWLEDGE IS VALUE

[11:14] Aphilo Aarde: And Where is knowledge?

[11:14] Aphilo Aarde: It's sometimes in universisites and in research labs

[11:14] Aphilo Aarde: but it's particularly in 'scientists'

[11:14] Aphilo Aarde: Knowledge is generated by human minds

[11:14] Aphilo Aarde: and bodies

[11:15] Aphilo Aarde: human minds are the critical source of value

[11:15] Aphilo Aarde: in the Information TEchnology reovlution

[11:15] Aphilo Aarde: This is the founding concept of this course

[11:15] Aphilo Aarde: So, to recap a little further

[11:16] Aphilo Aarde: the founding discovery of the IT revolution is the transistor in 1947 at Bel Labs in NJ

[11:16] Aphilo Aarde: And this led to a Nobel prize for 3 people -

[11:16] Jules Mandelbrot is Online

[11:16] Aphilo Aarde: William Shockley was the leader of this team

[11:17] Aphilo Aarde: ANd he saw extraordinary possiblities for the transistor

[11:17] Aphilo Aarde: which was created by a whole network of scientists at Bell

[11:17] Aphilo Aarde: But Bell Labs couldn't take advantage of it

[11:17] Aphilo Aarde: because they were a telecommunications monolpoly

[11:18] Aphilo Aarde: and they couldn't go into another business, due to antitrust regulation in the U.S.

[11:18] Aidan Aquacade is Online

[11:18] Aphilo Aarde: Other businesses would have had to pick it up, but businesses were not interested.

[11:19] Aphilo Aarde: So Shockley treid to create his own lab, after asking RCA and Raytheon corporations - they said no, - that vacuum tubes were enough.

[11:19] Aphilo Aarde: (They were using vacuum tubes for early stereo equipment, for example.

[11:19] Aphilo Aarde: Other possibilities?

[11:19] Aphilo Aarde: Shockley didn't see many ...

[11:20] Aphilo Aarde: So he came to Palo Alto, California, because his mother was there.

[11:20] Aphilo Aarde: Shockley was depressed - He had a Nobel prize, but nothing to do!

[11:20] Aphilo Aarde: He LATER became a Stanford Professor.

[11:21] Aphilo Aarde: Beckman Labs in the Silicon VAlley area said that the TRANSISTOR sounds interesting.

[11:21] Aphilo Aarde: So Beckman Labs helped Shockley start a conductor business

[11:22] Aphilo Aarde: They could do that because a whole network of Palo Alto electronic companies was forming.

[11:22] Aphilo Aarde: And because Stanford University was supporting entreprenial companies -

[11:22] Aphilo Aarde: Stanford had an entrepreneurial attitude.

[11:22] Aphilo Aarde: But all of this was ACCIDENTAL

[11:23] Aphilo Aarde: Actors are necessary for this story

[11:23] Aphilo Aarde: (My method here is to tell the story, analyze the story, and look at the factors, including the actors).

[11:24] JenzZa Misfit is Online

[11:24] Aphilo Aarde: A man named TERMAN, who was a graduate student in the 1920s at MIT, wanted a Ph.D. in electrical engineering

[11:24] Aphilo Aarde: worked there after getting his Ph.D. got tuberculosis, and then went back to California.

[11:25] Aphilo Aarde: He decided to take a position at Stnaford, and later became Dean.

[11:25] Aphilo Aarde: He wasn't a great researcher or engineer, by many accounts, but he could identify great MINDS.

[11:25] Aphilo Aarde: In his researcher, he was experimenting on radar technology leading to electronics.

[11:26] Aphilo Aarde: There was a lot of research on radar at the time, including by Hewlett and Packard.

[11:26] Aphilo Aarde: Terman was asked why they didn't make something practical.

[11:27] JenzZa Misfit is Offline

[11:27] Aphilo Aarde: But Hewlett and Packard - young researchers at the time - didn't have any money

[11:27] Aphilo Aarde: So Terman took $700 from his own pocket and gave it to Hewlett and Packard, who started a company.

[11:27] JenzZa Misfit is Online

[11:28] Aphilo Aarde: World War II started and their radar-related and other devices became very valuable.

[11:28] sensu20 whispers: watch that third sip

[11:28] Aphilo Aarde: They sold millions of these to the Defense Department.

[11:28] Aphilo Aarde: After WWII, Hewlett Packard was a very established company.

[11:28] Aphilo Aarde: And Terman becaome a provost at Stanford.

[11:29] Aphilo Aarde: This example could be amplified - many companies in Silicon VAlley had similar beginnings.

[11:29] Kazuhiro Aridian is Online

[11:29] JenzZa Misfit is Offline

[11:29] Aphilo Aarde: Terman convinced Stanford to use assets they had at the time - LAND - to start companies.

[11:30] Ju Roussel: Do you think the same process is happening now?

[11:30] Aphilo Aarde: And in 1951, they started the Stanford Industrial Park, emerging out of Stanford University

[11:30] Aphilo Aarde: Good question - JU.

[11:31] Aphilo Aarde: Well, Stanford doesn't have nearly as much land to lease to engineers emerging, in part, out of Stanford, so we have a very different landscape ... and the culture of milieu

[11:31] Aphilo Aarde: which we'll look at in a while is less 'emergent' but I do think there's a lot of innovation still happening.

[11:32] Melchizedek Blauvelt: Right now the opposite is happening it seems, people seem to be extremely risk-averse (free content) and on the lookout for instant gratification (Twitter)

[11:32] Aphilo Aarde: I'd like to mention World University & School - http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/World_University - which I'm developing, as an example

[11:32] Aphilo Aarde: This class is the first at it - although WUaS does link the 1900 courses of MIT Open Course Ware, and the

[11:32] Ju Roussel: Yes, did you notice any more interest after I mentioned WU at Metanomics Community Forum Thursday? ;)

[11:33] Aphilo Aarde: free open courses at Berkeley and Yale, for example ... all of these might be examples of contemporary kinds of bases for innovation.

[11:33] Aphilo Aarde: Thank you, Ju!

[11:34] Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[11:34] Aphilo Aarde: I think World University & School will grow gradually ... through word of mouth, such as what you did the other day at teh Metanomics Community Forum

[11:34] Aphilo Aarde: Interesting Mel

[11:35] Aphilo Aarde: I would say that innovation around Open Source and Free Ware carries on - alongside business - and that Twitter, even, is yet another example.

[11:35] Spider Mycron is Offline

[11:35] Ju Roussel: Sorry for being disruptive - the so called 'triple helix' relationships and success of Silicon Valley does not give peace to European politicians (and researchers, as well!)

[11:36] Aphilo Aarde: of open source and free ware, as is Second Life ... but it's how people make new things with these technologies that's so fascinating - and I'll make the case that so much has been done by accident and hacking, as you'll see).

[11:36] Aphilo Aarde: Yes, Ju - Japan tried to recreate the Silicon Valley culture in the 70s and 80s - but it's not very reproducible.

[11:37] Ju Roussel: You can't 'make' them.

[11:37] Aphilo Aarde: So, back to the Stanford Industrial Park in the 1950s.

[11:38] Aphilo Aarde: Terman convinced Stanford to use assets they had at the time - LAND - to start companies. And in 1951, they started the Stanford Industrial Park, emerging out of Stanford University

[11:39] Aphilo Aarde: And there were a lot of Stanford engineers and computer scientists in these newly forming companies

[11:39] Aphilo Aarde: in the openness of California culture in the 1950s

[11:39] Jules Mandelbrot is Offline

[11:39] Aphilo Aarde: And the Stanford Industrial Park also had access to Stanford faculty and students.

[11:40] Aphilo Aarde: Any new enterprise had to be approved by Stnaford - they alone could offer long term leases to companies.

[11:40] Aphilo Aarde: So Terman was able to pick and establish the first companies to be tenants -

[11:41] Aphilo Aarde: and the first was Hewlett Packard.

[11:42] Aphilo Aarde: and the other was Varian

[11:42] Aphilo Aarde: which also made radar parts

[11:42] Aphilo Aarde: During the 1950s, under the initiative of Stanford, a cluster of innovative companies

[11:42] Aphilo Aarde: around Stanford

[11:43] Aphilo Aarde: emerged - and, remember, it's this clustering which has made industrial revolutions so far-reaching.

[11:43] Aphilo Aarde: So into this context comes Shockley.

[11:44] Profdan Netizen is Offline

[11:44] Aphilo Aarde: And the cluster of emerging companies on the West Coast, however, was not up to the level of east coast US companies.

[11:44] Profdan Netizen is Online

[11:44] Aphilo Aarde: (Like RCA and Raytheon, and a variety of companies relating to MIT, for one).

[11:45] Bon McLeod is Offline

[11:45] Aphilo Aarde: Shockley decided to go into Microelectronics, and brought with him the best MINDS from Bell Labs -

[11:45] Aphilo Aarde: The argument for this course is that MINDS are the raw material of the Information TEchnology revolution, again

[11:46] Aphilo Aarde: Eight young engineers came west from the East Coast

[11:46] Aphilo Aarde: 6 came from Bell Labs

[11:46] Aphilo Aarde: and 2 from other labs.

[11:46] Daisyblue Hefferman is Online

[11:46] Aphilo Aarde: They all wanted to work with Shockley

[11:47] Aphilo Aarde: 1 was Bob Noyce, who later became known as the Mayor of Silicon Valley, and who worked on integrated circuits at Intel

[11:47] Aphilo Aarde: Schockley's company failed

[11:47] Aphilo Aarde: He was a genius, but a horrible person.

[11:47] Aphilo Aarde: He later became a prominent professor.

[11:47] Aphilo Aarde: He tried to demonstrate the biological inferiority of women and African Americans, for example.

[11:48] Aphilo Aarde: But he was a genius - he was stubborn, actually

[11:48] Aphilo Aarde: He wanted to work on micro-circuits, but not in SILICON

[11:49] Aphilo Aarde: - we're still in the 50s, before silicon was used for chips -

[11:49] Aphilo Aarde: Shockley wanted to work in GALLISUM ARSENIDE

[11:49] Aphilo Aarde: *GALLIUM ARSENIDE

[11:50] Aphilo Aarde: Because of Shockley's wish to work with this material, the 8 engineers left Shockley Semiconductor - leaving the company an empty shell.

[11:50] Aphilo Aarde: And Shockley became a professor at Stanford.

[11:50] Aphilo Aarde: But due to the transistor, Shockley and others invented MICROELECTRONICS

[11:51] Aphilo Aarde: and migrated KNOWLEDGE to Silicon Vally.

[11:51] Aphilo Aarde: These 8 young engineers, and others, started Fairchild Semiconductors, now in the mid 1950s

[11:51] Aphilo Aarde: And each of these engineers alter split to create their own companies

[11:52] Aphilo Aarde: Fairchild led to INTEL and AMD, etc. - still the key processor manufacturers

[11:53] Aphilo Aarde: and 140 COMPANIES WERE SPUN OUT of Fairchild - ASTOUNDING, in a way

[11:53] Aphilo Aarde: In 1959, integrated circuits were invented.

[11:53] Aphilo Aarde: And the Defense Department made up 50% of th market.

[11:53] Aphilo Aarde: Research programs for Microelectronics developed.

[11:54] Aphilo Aarde: In 1957, something else happened

[11:54] Aphilo Aarde: to put all these developments in context

[11:54] Aphilo Aarde: Can anyone say what happened?

[11:55] Aphilo Aarde: Sputnik - the Russian satellite system - was launched.

[11:55] Ju Roussel: :)

[11:55] Aphilo Aarde: It was the 1st human made satellite circling the earth

[11:55] XiuJuan Ying: were the americans pleasd

[11:56] Aphilo Aarde: It also suggested that the backward Soviet system was overtaking the Americans into SPACE

[11:56] Aphilo Aarde: :)

[11:56] Aphilo Aarde: So, the Defense Department responded with money for TECHNOLOGY

[11:56] Aphilo Aarde: - that's how pleased they were

[11:57] Aphilo Aarde: And in 1959 - a race to the moon emerged

[11:57] Aphilo Aarde: "Nothing to be done there"

[11:57] Aphilo Aarde: "No Night Life"

[11:57] Aphilo Aarde: "Cannot Moonlight"

[11:57] Aphilo Aarde: Humans do interest things - don't you think :)

[11:57] XiuJuan Ying: no atmosphere

[11:58] Aphilo Aarde: After the extraordinary events of 1959, the military THEN became involved with technology

[11:58] Ju Roussel: Sputnik vs. First Man on the Moon. SL'ers were discussing where else in the Solar system there can be life.

[11:59] Aphilo Aarde: So, to recap - we have Microelectronics, Computing, and Telecommunications emerging on the one hand

[11:59] Aphilo Aarde: and Genetic Engineering, on the other hand

[12:00] Aphilo Aarde: Yes... SETI projects - Search for Extraterrestrial Life are legitimate science projects - if life emerged on earth ... genetic engineering - then it's logical that it may have emerged elsewhere

[12:01] Aphilo Aarde: but of course, life on earth emerged in very specific conditions 3.5. billion years ago, which may not be easily replicable

[12:01] Aphilo Aarde: GENETIC ENGINEERING - as another key aspect of the INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY revolution

[12:02] Aphilo Aarde: In 1953, it started - in hospitals, and with Crick and Watson decoding life~

[12:02] Aphilo Aarde: And it became TECHNOLOGY when UCSF and Stanford experimented with splicing

[12:03] Aphilo Aarde: (Remember the definition of technology for this course involves replicability, which gene splicing builds on).

[12:04] Aphilo Aarde: So Stanford, Maryland, DC, Virginia and Harvard were all major centers for gene splicing.

[12:04] Mab MacMoragh is Online

[12:04] Aphilo Aarde: Back to SILICON VALLEY

[12:04] Ju Roussel: Interestingly, Watson was always @ Cold Spring Harbor?

[12:05] Aphilo Aarde: Another key aspect to the information TEchnology reovlution were CULTURAL developments.

[12:05] Aphilo Aarde: not sure, JU - cold spring?

[12:05] Ju Roussel: CSHL - the 'Meca' of geneticists

[12:05] Ju Roussel: NY State

[12:06] Aphilo Aarde: The cultural development that was so significant on a wide scale - was the ability to innovate by THINKING NEW APPLICATIONS

[12:06] Aphilo Aarde: that weren't there before.

[12:06] Aphilo Aarde: This emerged directly from the cultures of 1960s

[12:06] Aphilo Aarde: Thinking Differently

[12:06] Aphilo Aarde: involves rebelling against the establishment

[12:07] Aphilo Aarde: Counterculture didn't want revolution; they wanted THEIR revolution.

[12:07] Aphilo Aarde: Culture inthis context was extremely important, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area

[12:08] Aphilo Aarde: where alternative forms of COMPUTING emerged, linked to the personal computer.

[12:08] Aphilo Aarde: This computer, which was originally called the microcomputer, came directly from the Homebrew Computer Club - in Sausalito (Marin county), Menlo Park (in the south SF Bay), and San Francisco itself.

[12:09] Aphilo Aarde: They were about finding codes that could work on computers.

[12:09] Aphilo Aarde: They created a world around new languages - computer languages.

[12:10] Aphilo Aarde: And countercultural scientists such as Stewart Brand, who edited and wrote the Whole Earth Catalog

[12:10] Aphilo Aarde: became public figures for counterculture

[12:10] Aphilo Aarde: And offered a 'bridge' betwen society and hippies

[12:11] Aphilo Aarde: So culture was very important - and there was a lot of thinking about what to do with it.

[12:11] Profdan Netizen is Offline

[12:11] Aphilo Aarde: This thinking had to to with

[12:11] Aphilo Aarde: 1 decentralization

[12:11] Aphilo Aarde: 2 making things small -/ micro

[12:12] Aphilo Aarde: 3 opening up source code to the public.

[12:12] JonathanE Cortes: Iv got an old coppy of that

[12:12] Zinnia Zauber is Online

[12:12] Aphilo Aarde: These ways of thinking were ENTIRELY different from the thinking of IBM and ATT, etc.

[12:12] Aphilo Aarde: of what Jonathan?

[12:13] JonathanE Cortes: whole earth

[12:13] Aphilo Aarde: So to bring things together,

[12:13] Ju Roussel: Oh ues IBM could not figure it out for next 2 decades

[12:13] Aphilo Aarde: The Whole Earth Catalog is great - and worth perusing again and again t0 this day, for the way of thinking.

[12:14] Aphilo Aarde: So to bring things together, the most extraordinary aspects of the Information TEchnology Revolution were due to

[12:14] Aphilo Aarde: 1 an entrepreneurial attitude, partly relating to Stanford

[12:15] Aphilo Aarde: 2 that technology migrated from major research centers (like Bell Labs) and that then military money 'watered' all of these innovations.

[12:16] Aphilo Aarde: 3 the cultural revolution from counterculture - leading to thinking differently, esepcially around technology

[12:16] Aphilo Aarde: ANALYTIC AND SYSTEMATIC

[12:16] Aidan Aquacade is Offline

[12:16] Aphilo Aarde: What created Silicon Valley as the site of this information revolution?

[12:16] Zinnia Zauber is Offline

[12:17] Aphilo Aarde: As background:

[12:17] Aphilo Aarde: concerning regional economies ...

[12:17] Aphilo Aarde: 1 All regional economies are based on

[12:17] Aphilo Aarde: A. raw materials

[12:17] Aphilo Aarde: B. capital (money)

[12:17] Aphilo Aarde: C. labor

[12:17] Gentle Heron is Offline

[12:18] Aphilo Aarde: What was specifc to Silicon Valley?

[12:18] Aphilo Aarde: There were specific forms of each of these.

[12:18] Christinapsu5152 Palianta is Online

[12:18] Ju Roussel: specialization/concentration of specific resources?

[12:18] Aphilo Aarde: A the raw material was knowledge and information generating capacity

[12:19] Zinnia Zauber is Online

[12:19] Aphilo Aarde: so, not exactly universities, and this knowledge came from Bell Labs, and then diffused.

[12:20] Aphilo Aarde: B Capital first came significantly from the military - but these were PULBIC monies, not private

[12:21] Aphilo Aarde: (yes - Ju - around knowledge)

[12:21] Aphilo Aarde: C labor - was hihgly skilled, technical and scientific labor

[12:21] Aphilo Aarde: with origins at Stanford and Berkeley - and with market origins, as well.

[12:22] Aphilo Aarde: It was part of these university's policies to produce more Ph.D.s in these years

[12:23] Aphilo Aarde: to catch up with Harvard and MIT.

[12:23] Aphilo Aarde: Berkeley and Stanford produced less than half the Ph.D.s that Harvard and MIT produced in the 1950s and 60s.

[12:24] Aphilo Aarde: And then Stanford decided to fund engineering, and Berkeley got money from the State (of California and the Federal Government).

[12:25] Aphilo Aarde: In the 1960sHarvard and MIT produced 4 times as many Ph.D.s - and had a deliberate government policty to support this.

[12:25] Aphilo Aarde: So the government started to support financially more Ph.D.s in California, as an Inveestment in the Technology revolution.

[12:26] Aphilo Aarde: Regarding B - CAPITAL again

[12:26] Aphilo Aarde: There was a problem here

[12:26] Aphilo Aarde: These technology businesses were RISKY

[12:26] Aphilo Aarde: They have to try something NEW

[12:27] Aphilo Aarde: They also have to be stubborn, and keep trying

[12:27] Aphilo Aarde: A startup on average fails 7 times.

[12:27] Aphilo Aarde: Venture capitalists liked to give money to failures - you'd have to conclude

[12:28] Aphilo Aarde: In the 1960s, when the technology revolution was about to explode, there was no capital available.

[12:28] Michele Mrigesh is Online

[12:28] Aphilo Aarde: So, two kinds of special capital developed.

[12:28] Aphilo Aarde: 1 Capital which was designed to be lost

[12:28] Aphilo Aarde: 2 Capital which was defined as speculative

[12:29] Aphilo Aarde: Money started to work as capital.

[12:29] Aphilo Aarde: And the one who gives the money did not ever expect a return.

[12:29] Aphilo Aarde: And who can do that?

[12:29] Aphilo Aarde: The government.

[12:29] Aphilo Aarde: But why?

[12:30] Aphilo Aarde: (International pride and competition?)

[12:30] Aphilo Aarde: Actually, because they expect a return down the line -

[12:30] Ju Roussel: Cold War

[12:30] Aphilo Aarde: that is, because the capital investment comes back ...

[12:31] Aphilo Aarde: (the cold war - sputnik above - did spur the military to invest heavily in technology , but we're talking abou capital - so different institutions, as well).

[12:32] Aphilo Aarde: It's the part of givernment that doesn't care about cost, only performance

[12:32] Aphilo Aarde: > MILITARY INVESTMENT

[12:32] Aphilo Aarde: (rarely does capital not care about cost, or risk, another way of thinking about cost).

[12:33] Marian Dragovar is Online

[12:33] Aphilo Aarde: When you have to survivie, you don't count money - and this was the concern during the cold war, for some, in the US Defense Department).

[12:33] Aphilo Aarde: What made

[12:34] Aphilo Aarde: Silicon Valley original was the unlimited funds from the military.

[12:34] Aphilo Aarde: Companies could fail.

[12:34] Aphilo Aarde: ... in this context.

[12:34] Aphilo Aarde: If, finally, you might get a CHIP,

[12:34] Aphilo Aarde: you get military superiority.

[12:35] Aphilo Aarde: And it worked out exactly that way.

[12:35] Aphilo Aarde: 20 years later, the U.S. outperformed the Soviety Union completely - in 1984.

[12:36] Aphilo Aarde: So, you have a purely military strategy in the 1970s, with all the money the military poured into informatio technology - and it paid off.

[12:36] Aphilo Aarde: 2nd Source of capital

[12:36] Aphilo Aarde: - the capital you're ready to lose, because when you win, you win really, really big.

[12:37] Aphilo Aarde: Overall, in the 1990s, venture capitalists had increased their bets by a factor of seven, counting potentially losses.

[12:37] Aphilo Aarde: The reward came a little bit later.

[12:37] Aphilo Aarde: When industry developed, people from industry became rich.

[12:38] Aphilo Aarde: Venture capital money came originally from inside industry.

[12:38] Aphilo Aarde: ... by starting to work together with other established firms.

[12:39] Aphilo Aarde: And all these special RAW MATERIALS, CAPTIAL, AND LABOR came together in one area - the SF Bay Area.

[12:39] Aphilo Aarde: And something else happens, as well.

[12:40] Aphilo Aarde: UC Berkeley Professor AnnaLee Saxenian in her book "Regional Advantage"

[12:40] Aphilo Aarde: compares Silicon Valley with the Boston rt 125 area

[12:40] Tutti Jupiter gave you villa cristine.

[12:41] Aphilo Aarde: She shows how in the 1960s adn 70s, the Boston area was far ahead in

[12:41] Aphilo Aarde: Microelectronics, computers, telecommunications, the internet

[12:41] Aphilo Aarde: leading to new networks of technology and genetic engineering.

[12:41] Aphilo Aarde: Around these technologies, there are 2 key factors

[12:42] Aphilo Aarde: 1 industry structure of specific companies which are suppliers

[12:42] Marian Dragovar is Offline

[12:42] Aphilo Aarde: Here networks of companies are developing knowledge of what they do best.

[12:43] Aphilo Aarde: Universities do the same.

[12:43] Aphilo Aarde: Complex organizations organized around networks constitute themselves again and again through history.

[12:43] Aphilo Aarde: 2 social networks also formed

[12:44] Aphilo Aarde: THe world of silicon valley was made up of individuals, building their own companies, doing their own thing

[12:44] Aphilo Aarde: People were required to sign confidentiality statements

[12:44] Aphilo Aarde: But in Silicon Valley, these were limited to 6 months only !

[12:45] Aphilo Aarde: Otherwise, you wouldn't find people to work for you!

[12:45] Aphilo Aarde: The edge shifted so quickly.

[12:45] Aphilo Aarde: Social Networks - where peopl emet after work to talk about work sprang up.

[12:45] Aphilo Aarde: The key thing was a process of excitement about work

[12:46] Aphilo Aarde: among engineers, students

[12:46] Aphilo Aarde: that then network and lead to people creating their own companies

[12:46] Aphilo Aarde: This created a milieu of permeability - where nothing was stable

[12:47] Aphilo Aarde: And this is the missing link for understanding CULTURE in Silicon Valley when there was so much creativity - and which Saxenian documented.

[12:47] Aphilo Aarde: This leads to synergy where 2+2 = 5, not 4

[12:47] Aphilo Aarde: Why?

[12:48] Aphilo Aarde: Putting things together whose added value is more that things as separate entities, due to INTERACTION

[12:48] Michele Mrigesh is Offline

[12:48] Aphilo Aarde: and the added value du to elementes in the process.

[12:49] Aphilo Aarde: The FACT that Silicon Valley culture

[12:49] Aphilo Aarde: people and companies could talk to one another generated a MILIEU OF INNOVATION

[12:50] Aphilo Aarde: equaling a cluster set of research centers, companies, venture capital companies, labor markets, and

[12:50] Aphilo Aarde: professional organizations which - through INTERACTIONS - create synergy

[12:51] Aphilo Aarde: Despite the traffic, congestion of Silicon Valley, people keep coming to SV

[12:51] Aphilo Aarde: People get hooked and never get out.

[12:51] Aphilo Aarde: This is the machine creating this revolution.

[12:51] Aphilo Aarde: The Japanese tried to reproduce this pattern unsuccessfully ... because it wasn't organic.

[12:51] Aphilo Aarde: LAST STAGE

[12:52] Aphilo Aarde: GLOBAL NETWORKING

[12:52] Hydra Shaftoe is Online

[12:52] Aphilo Aarde: connecting to othe rplaces around the wolrd with the same SYNERGY generating capacity.

[12:52] Aphilo Aarde: This didn't happen the same way as in Silicon Valley.

[12:53] Aphilo Aarde: Electronic companies originally started to produce chips in low cost comopanies, particularly in the southeast ASIA

[12:53] Aphilo Aarde: The ADDED VALUE is really in the abiity to ADD KNOWLEDGE for profits.

[12:53] Aphilo Aarde: CRITICAL: is the ability to connect around the world, such as Taiwan does.

[12:54] Aphilo Aarde: So, how NETWORKING works in SOFTWARE

[12:54] Ju Roussel: or, knowledge without commercialization of ideas does not go far..

[12:54] Hydra Shaftoe is Offline

[12:55] Aphilo Aarde: yes, Ju, yet OPEN SOURCE and FREE WARE and NONMARKET INFORMATION PRODUCTION (Benkler) seems to be a new part of economic processes, fascinatingly.

[12:55] Aphilo Aarde: So, how NETWORKS works in SOFTWARE

[12:56] Aphilo Aarde: e.g. in Banglaore - These networks are generally organized by IMMIGRANT ENTREPRENEURS

[12:57] Aphilo Aarde: Someone from India, China or Taiwan comes with an Electrical Engineering degree, stays, learns the trade,and creates a company

[12:57] Aphilo Aarde: and then reestablishes contact with the country they came from, through their company

[12:58] Aphilo Aarde: Through personal connections, Silicon Valley has established worldwide networks, but not to all places in the world.

[12:58] Aphilo Aarde: So there's a different kind of production system worldwide.

[12:58] Aphilo Aarde: SUMMARY

[12:59] Mab MacMoragh is Offline

[12:59] Aphilo Aarde: How the information technology revolution lead to a new PARADIGM OF Technology and Socioeconomic organization.

[12:59] Aphilo Aarde: PARADIGM

[12:59] Aphilo Aarde: A paradigm here is a cluster of interrlated innovations, technoloies, managerial

[13:00] Aphilo Aarde: innovations. This cluster is able to generate new products and processes leading to synergies and improving productivity.

[13:01] Aphilo Aarde: PARADIGM the system needs each other for progress in every field to come together.

[13:01] Aphilo Aarde: So, to close - here are the five aspects of this new information technology paradigm.

[13:01] Kate Miranda is Offline

[13:01] Aphilo Aarde: 1 It's about INFORMATION GENERATION AND PROCESSING

[13:02] Profdan Netizen is Online

[13:02] Aphilo Aarde: 2 It's PERVASIVE, AND IT INVADES AND INFLUENCES EVERY DOMAIN OF SOCIOECONOMIC ACTIVITY

[13:02] Aphilo Aarde: 3 CHARACTERIZED BY NETWORKING - mentalities, companies, people, etc.

[13:03] Breeze Underwood is Offline

[13:03] Aphilo Aarde: 4 there's a quality of FLEXIBILITY - the system is such that it can reorganize and reprogram components without disintegration

[13:04] Breeze Underwood is Online

[13:04] Aphilo Aarde: 5 There's a TECHNOLOGICAL CONVERGENCE in integrating this OPEN SYSTEM, not closing, and which is bounded only by technological devleopments.

[13:04] Aphilo Aarde: NEXT week

[13:05] Aphilo Aarde: 1 Context of braoder social and political circumstances of IT REVOLUTION

[13:05] Aphilo Aarde: 2 DEVELOPMENT OF THE INTERNET

[13:05] Aphilo Aarde: So, that's what I wanted to relate to you this week.

[13:05] Ju Roussel: Great story, amazingly put together by you. Applause!

[13:05] Aphilo Aarde: Thanks :)

[13:06] Melchizedek Blauvelt: yay!

[13:06] sandhya2 Patel: thank you

[13:06] JonathanE Cortes: thx very good

[13:06] Aphilo Aarde: The information technology revolution is fascinating - and I'd also like to acknowledge Professor Manuel Castells' research and contribution to this.

[13:06] XiuJuan Ying: thanx Aphilo, interesting as usual :-)

[13:07] Cat Abeyante is Offline

[13:07] Aphilo Aarde: I'd also like to invite you to begin to talk about World University and School - to explore how the open teaching and learning possibilities there might begin

[13:07] Dusty Artaud is Online

[13:07] Aphilo Aarde: to generate and ongoing culture of innovation ...

[13:07] Aphilo Aarde: There are already a lot of resources there.

[13:08] Mab MacMoragh is Online

[13:08] Cat Abeyante is Online

[13:08] Aphilo Aarde: And thanks for your observations ... type chat allows for multiple concurrent conversations ...

[13:08] Ju Roussel: Yes, very interesting, let me know if there is any way to help you from here out-/in- world

[13:08] Ju Roussel: so I went to the spreadsheets today

[13:08] Aphilo Aarde: Thanks ... will do ... I'd like to invite you all to join this Google Group

[13:09] Ju Roussel: and shamelessly added myself

[13:09] Ju Roussel: [posted via g group]

[13:09] Aphilo Aarde: http://groups.google.com/group/World-University-and-School

[13:09] Aphilo Aarde: Great!

[13:09] Aphilo Aarde: Ju

[13:09] Ju Roussel: The most amazing thing is - I followed your blog from before Christmas

[13:10] Aphilo Aarde: As part of this Google Group, there are spreadsheets with beginning lists of moderators for World Univ a& Sch ubjects

[13:10] Ju Roussel: That is, before I realized you were in-world

[13:10] Aphilo Aarde: 'Subjects,' 'Languages,' and "Nation States'

[13:11] Aphilo Aarde: Great Ju, as well - here's my blog, too - http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/

[13:11] Aphilo Aarde: For the Google Groups World Univ spreadsheets, they're an opportunity to engage what you know, or what you'd like to learn

[13:11] Aphilo Aarde: Adding your name to them is a little like becoming a Wikipedia moderator

[13:12] Aphilo Aarde: And Wikipedia has something like 14 million articles in 272 languages

[13:12] Ju Roussel: I have a team of 900+ business admin./management studies authors potentially contributing.

[13:12] Aphilo Aarde: all shaped by us, so I welcome you to teach something to your web camera at World University & School, about whatever you like :)

[13:13] Aphilo Aarde: or learn something - great free software there -

[13:13] Aphilo Aarde: http://worlduniversity.wikia.com/wiki/Educational_Software

[13:13] Aphilo Aarde: Interesting, Ju.

[13:13] Tarek String is Online

[13:14] Aphilo Aarde: World Univ & Sch is about fee and open teaching and learning - with an academic focus on great universities' open, free content.

[13:14] Ju Roussel: :) I coordinate a semi-open source :) project. Learned so much from them so far!

[13:14] Aphilo Aarde: Please add links to WUaS by clicking 'edit this page'

[13:14] Aphilo Aarde: I'm interested in generating community

[13:14] Aphilo Aarde: So, thank you all very much for coming.

[13:14] Kazuhiro Aridian is Offline

[13:15] Aphilo Aarde: And I'll be here next week

[13:15] sandhya2 Patel: thank you for your presentation

[13:15] sandhya2 Patel: : ))

[13:15] Aphilo Aarde: the web is remarkable for learning opportunities

[13:15] Aphilo Aarde: yw, Sandhya!

[13:15] Tarek String is Offline

[13:15] Ju Roussel: Have a great weekend, everyone.

[13:15] XiuJuan Ying: thany you for a great talk

[13:16] Aphilo Aarde: yw - see you next week - and I have office hours now, if you have any thoughts

[13:16] Aphilo Aarde: obsrvations, questions.

[13:16] XiuJuan Ying: i have now joined yr google grou

[13:16] Kymsara Rayna is Offline

[13:16] Aphilo Aarde: Great, Xiu! Thanks

[13:16] Aphilo Aarde: http://socinfotech.pbworks.com/ is where this transcript can be found





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Welcome to Information Technology and Society





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In this class we'll focus on how the information technology revolution developed, especially vis-a-vis long time Berkeley Professor Manuel Castells' research on the Network Society, as well as webnographers.org - a wiki bibliography on virtual ethnography.



I invite your questions, and I'll post a version of the text from each class to

socinfotech.pbworks.com over the weeks.

There's already a lot of information on this wiki, which will develop with time.



Please join the Google Group for World University and School - like Wikipedia with MIT Open Course Ware -

groups.google.com/group/World-University-and-School


For more information:
scottmacleod.com







(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/02/mantis-shrimp-information-technology.html - February 16, 2010)