When stating the significance consider this: Why would a media-literate person benefit from knowing about this term, innovator or entity?

* Joseph C. R. Licklider and his vision a. While working at BBN, Licklider imagined libraries of the future. His vision was about finding a way to have information stored and then retrieved later. All with a computer. This thinking came out when discovered that he was spending 85% of his time just doing calculations to get the data what he was trying to analyze. He convinced BBN to get a “minicomputer”. At the time that meant it was only the size of two family sized fridges side by side. Instead of having to wait a day for his calculations to go through, he could now get real time interaction with the computer. This got him on his way of writing a whole book about his vision. Sadly he died in 1990 before seeing it come to life.

* Tim Berners-Lee, his vision, innovation b. In 1980 Tim Berners-Lee, while working at CERN, invented a program called Enquire. He called it a "memory substitute," for his personal use to help him remember connections at the lab. When he returned to CERN in’84 Lee started envisioning an information space that anyone could access at any point in time from any computer. It wasn’t until 1990 he is able to realize his vision and create HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol), and URI (Universal Resource Identifier. This is now usually known as a URL—Uniform Resource Locator). HTTP is so files could be sent over the internet in one uniform language, while URI/URL is the address associated with the document. It’s important for anyone to know this so they understand how the World Wide Web was started. It was created from the start, as a way to share information with anyone in a uniform manner.

* Marshall McLuhan c. McLuhan’s view, was that print media was destroying basic tribal emotions and behaviors. Pointing out that these emotions and behaviors are interactive, oral and visual. He then goes on to say that satellite- based electronic media were retribalizing society. That the ability to communicate with anyone around the world was creating a global village or tribe. The reason that this is important, is because he came up with this view point well before he died in 1980. As simplistic as his views are, it would be hard for one to say that is isn’t true. For the best example of how important this is, all one would need to do is just look at the social sites they are on and look at all of their international friends.

* Time-space compression d. The idea that electronic communication has essentially reduced distances between people because of nearly instantaneous communication, which has also “ sped up” our notions of time. (Pavlik pg201) The most important thing about this concept is the fact that people’s perception of time is skewed. Not only time but “space” itself. Space being the concept of area or distance. Before phones, or wire communications, there was mailing letters and hopping the mail man on the horse didn’t die along the way. Or the ship didn’t sink at sea. Those old methods gave the impression that places were far away. But now, if you want to talk to your friend who is across the country you just have to pick up a phone. And they no longer seem so far away.

* Broadband vs. narrowband e. Broadband is a is where there is a lot of bandwidth available so large amounts of data can transfer quickly, while narrowband only has a small limited amount of bandwidth available. The importance of knowing these two terms is knowing how data use to be transferred, and how